CONVERGE is in its 5th year of bringing together the world’s leading companies for 2 days of dynamic speakers, thought-provoking breakout sessions, and opportunities to connect with like-minded professionals. This year the conference has gone virtual. You will leave the conference with new resources and best practices allowing you to continue the hard work of driving ethics to the center of your business. In today’s episode I visit with Russ Berland, Chief Integrity and Risk Officer at Aventiv Technologies. We visit about his presentation at Converge20 on The Ethics Movement Part 1: Aligning your Allies. In this interactive session Berland will share experiences and techniques to truly engage other departments as champions of your program, enabling greater efficiency, trust and communication. In 2020 and beyond, ethics and compliance not only deserve a seat at the table—it demands cross-collaboration from your peers. Sometimes, you have to bring pizza. For more registration and information on Converge20, click here.
Day: September 8, 2020
How should you assess your internal controls regime for international operations? It is incumbent that you need to review as much information as you can to understand the financial and operational structure of an entity and how it is integrated with the corporate headquarters, or the U.S. business unit’s financial and operation structure, if the foreign operation is part of a U.S. business unit.
You could begin with the TI-CPI to garner a sense of the reputation of the country in which your business unit is located, as well as the CPI for all other countries in which the location either markets business or has current customers. Another area for inquiry or review is the scope of your foreign operations. This means you will need to consider your sales model, whether employee based or primarily using third party representatives. You will also need to consider if such third-party representatives are coming into a commercial relationship with your company through your supply chain.
Other areas of inquiry should include whether your company’s finance and accounting staff produce financial statements that are integrated into the parent’s financial statements; whether your international business locations utilize a local bank account for local sales receipts as well as funds transfers from the U.S. and whether the account has local check signers and whether dual signatures are required on the checks. You may also want to consider the extent to which disbursements are made in the local currency and, of course, is there a local petty cash fund.
Three key takeaways:
- You must understand the financial and operational structure of your company and how that structure outside the U.S. is integrated with the corporate headquarters.
- Are your financial statements and reporting systems integrated?
- Always consider the fraud triangle.
The Compliance Life details the journey to and in the role of a Chief Compliance Officer. How does one come to sit in the CCO chair? What are some of the skills a CCO needs to success navigate the compliance waters in any company? What are some of the top challenges CCOs have faced and how did they meet them? These questions and many others will be explored in this new podcast series. Over four episodes each month on The Compliance Life, I visit with one current or former CCO to explore their journey to the CCO chair. This month, my guest is DeAnna Nwankwo who served as Corporate Compliance Officer for Core Laboratories from 2003 May 2020. In that capacity, she led Core Laboratories ethics and compliance activities.
As CCO, DeAnna reported to the general counsel and secretary and to the audit committee of the board of directors. She was responsible for formulating and implementing Core Lab’s ethics policies and procedures, including its Code of Ethics and Corporate Responsibility and making sure they were communicated and trained upon across the company. DeAnna managed the company’s employee Helpline resources and served as a final internal resource which concerned parties could communicate after other formal channels and resources were exhausted. As Corporate Compliance Officer, she was authorized to implement all necessary actions to ensure achievement of the objectives of an effective compliance program. In her role, she collaborated with other functional departments (Internal Audit, Human Resources, Information Security, etc.) to receive and direct compliance issues to appropriate resources for investigation and resolution.
In this first episode, we consider Deanna’s journey to the CCO role, which she described as “no different than anyone else’s because it was so different. She began her professional career in QA/QC at NASA. She later moved to Core Laboratories. From there she transitioned into a compliance position and then the CCO.
Categories
Episode 026–Samantha Kelen
On this episode of The Ethics Experts, Nick speaks with Samantha Kelen about joining a new company, listening when people talk, and getting to know compliance.
Check out more episodes, and don’t forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform!
This week’s special guest is Yonason Goldson, an expert in ethical leadership, TEDx speaker, and consultant. He joins Tom Fox to discuss why ethics matters, as well as five important lessons the COVID-19 pandemic is teaching us.
Trust – the Key to Business Success
Yonason shares a story that illustrates how one moment of disrespect can destroy trust between an employer and an employee. He explains, “When you create a culture of trust, that generates loyalty, it generates passion, it generates productivity… The employees are engaged and want to give their all… And so they’re looking for opportunities to prove themselves by doing the best they can. And you have a company culture that thrives, it’s vibrant, it’s exciting. People want to come to work, and success is a foregone conclusion.” How Alcoa’s market value increased by 900% because of Paul O’Neill’s ethical leadership is a testament to the value of building a culture of trust, he says. He then talks about the huge cost of worker disengagement and points out that “Companies that are ranked highest for ethics, they grow faster than average, employees report being more satisfied, being more energized, being more loyal, recommending this job to friends and family.”
Listening Is a Key Leadership Skill
Tom comments that the ability to listen is the second most important step in fostering a speak-up culture. Yonason says that listening is how we get to know other people, and the more we know other people, the more we know ourselves. “The more discussion there is looking from every possible angle, the more likely it is that the conclusions and the decisions that we reach are going to be the best possible conclusions and decisions that we can reach,” he remarks.
Lessons from Coronavirus
Tom asks Yonason to share the practical lessons about ethics that we can learn from the pandemic. Yonason summarizes them as:
- Everything you do matters: the essence of ethics is to be aware of how your actions affect the world around you.
- Protect your ethical health: behavior is infectious.
- What you don’t see can hurt you.
- We need each other.
- Don’t wait for the next epidemic.
Secrets of Ethical Affluence
You can become ethically affluent by minding the CoDE of ethics. Yonason explains that this acronym stands for Communication, Diversity, and Ethics. He details why each aspect is important. Of diversity, he says, “Diversity is not just cultural or ethnic diversity, it’s intellectual diversity. It’s having people coming from different points of view… and different experiences… That intellectual diversity stimulates thought and new ideas…”
Resources
YonasonGoldson.com
Yonason Goldson on LinkedIn
The ROI of Ethics
The Ethics of Epidemic
TEDx Talk: How I Became My Own Worst Nightmare
Ebook: The Secrets of Ethical Affluence
Categories
A Tale of Two Careers
It was the best of times, it was the worst of time, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness. These words from Charles Dickens “The Tale of Two Cities” is the inspiration for this week’s episode.
Two auditors start out graduating from similar universities, get similar starting positions, but in 10 years those two auditors are in very different places.
One is still a junior or senior auditor and the other is a director or chief audit executive earning 3-5 times the salary of the first auditor.
Do you know the difference between these two auditors?
Find out in this week’s #jammingwithjason #internalauditpodcast. Listen in at: http://www.jasonmefford.com/jammingwithjason/
When you are ready to take your career as a #chiefauditexecutive to the next level, join the CAE Briefing executive leadership program mentioned in this episode at: https://jasonmefford.mykajabi.com/caebriefing
Join thousands of lifelong learners in internal audit, risk and compliance at: With hundreds of learning options, you are sure to find exactly what you need: https://ondemand.criskacademy.com/?affcode=105582_jpp6czlf
