In the posts collected here we will discuss assessment-related issues concerning a) various types of C&E program roles and reporting relationships, including those involving the board of directors; senior management; C&E department management; other staff, such as members of the…
Author: Kaplan Walker
Assessing Codes of Conduct
Codes of conduct are often described as the most important document in a compliance program. Codes help set the right tone for compliance and ethics (“C&E”) programs. They are educational tools that should serve to raise awareness and understanding of…
Revisions to DOJ Program Evaluation Guidance
On June 1, 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”), Criminal Division, updated its guidance on the “Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs” (“the 2020 Update”) to provide increased clarity on several of the key questions prosecutors might ask in assessing…
The New Antitrust Compliance Program Evaluation Criteria
For more than a quarter of a century the Antitrust Division of the US Justice Department (the “DOJ”) was an outlier among the components of the DOJ with respect to crediting compliance programs in enforcement matters. That changed on July…
Conducting Program Assessments Using the Department of Justice’s New Evaluation Standards
The modern era of corporate compliance began on November 1, 1991, when the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Organizations (the “FSGO”) – the first set of general standards for assessing the efficacy of what were then called “program[s] to prevent and…
Using behavioral ethics in compliance program assessments
Behavioral economics is a school of social science that teaches that we are not as rational as we think. The application of that learning to the realm of ethics is sometimes called “behavioral ethics,” which is a social science that…
Culture assessment – the why and the how
Research conducted over the past twenty years has provided an evidentiary basis for what has – for just as long – been accepted wisdom in the E&C community: that an ethical organizational culture is even more effective than a strong…
Legal Guidance related to Program Assessment
Legal guidance in the area of C&E program assessments accords with professional wisdom in this area, emphasizing the importance of periodic assessments to an effective program. In this post, we review a few of the relevant legal standards from U.S.…
Assessments and Confidentiality
A threshold issue which often arises in conducting C&E program assessments is to what extent the process and report should be treated as confidential. There are two components to this question, the first of which concerns the use of the…
Certification as a form of program evaluation
By Joe Murphy, CCEP A newly evolving approach to program evaluation is certification, particularly to meet an ISO standard. Mostly notably, ISO 37001 provides for certification of anti-corruption compliance programs. There is a great deal of controversy about this certification.…