Addressing conflicts of interests in your organisation Much of what is considered a normal part of the workplace has been a result of many iterations to improve controls, increase business efficiency, safeguard employees and customers, and maintain an ethical organisation that adheres to legal requirements and policy.

However, ethics and compliance are not quite the same. While compliance can be described as pertaining to the law itself, ethics are best thought of as the spirit of the law moral principles that guide behaviour rather than attempting to force conformity via threat and sanction. Where ethics are concerned with values, compliance focuses on rules. It is therefore possible to make ethical choices that violate the law, or for decisions to be compliant with the law but lacking in ethical foundation.

For this class-wide discussion forum, think of an example of an ethical failure in an organisation that you may have come across in the news, blogs, or journal articles. Alternatively, conduct some research on ethical failures. Share your example with your peers, and discuss how a greater appreciation for ethics may have prevented this ethical failure.

In your discussion, speak to the following points:

What kind of behaviour resulted in the ethical failure? What kinds of tension or conflicts manifested as a result of the ethical failure? As a compliance officer, do you feel that you would be able to hold the stakeholders accountable for the ethical failure, even in the case where it was technically not a breach of the legislation?