Compliance & Ethics
Compliance asks what we must do. Ethics asks what we should.
Compliance is the work of knowing which laws and rules apply to an organisation and showing that they are being followed. Ethics reaches further: it is the culture that decides what people do when no rule covers the situation, or when no one is watching. An organisation needs both, because rules cannot anticipate everything and good intentions cannot be audited.
A working programme is built on a clear code of conduct, policies people can actually read, training that refers to real situations, and safe ways to raise a concern. Law protects people who report wrongdoing, for example South Africa's Protected Disclosures Act, the UK's Public Interest Disclosure Act and the European Union's Whistleblower Directive, and an organisation that punishes them pays for it later. Tone from the top matters more than any policy: people watch what leaders do.
This theme is about turning compliance from a yearly exercise into everyday practice, and building a culture where doing the right thing is the easy thing.
Compliance officers, managers, directors and trustees, and every employee who deals with customers, suppliers or money.