Welcome to a special five-part podcast series, A Conversation with Skillsoft and StoneTurn: From the Code of Conduct to Risk Assessment to Continuous Improvement. This week’s podcast series is jointly sponsored by Skillsoft and StoneTurn Group, LLP. In this podcast series we will explore the recently released 2020 Update to the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs (2020 Update). We focus on your Code of Conduct and how it is informed by your Risk Assessment, training on your Code of Conduct, performing a Risk Assessment and conclude with how all this ties to continuous monitoring and continuous improvement. Participants in this podcast series include: from Skillsoft, Charlie Voelker, Director, Compliance Products; John Arendes, Vice President and GM of Global Compliance Solutions; from StoneTurn, Toby Ralston, Managing Director, Jamen Tyler, Managing Director, and Stephen Martin, Partner. In this first episode, I visit with Toby Ralston on Code of Conduct.

Obviously, your Code of Conduct is viewed as a foundational document by the DOJ and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as they laid out in the FCPA Resource Guide, 2nd edition. Yet many compliance practitioners struggle with how to benchmark a code of conduct. Ralston believes there are a number of ways that a compliance professional could potentially benchmark a Code of Conduct. He suggested “a matrix approach that uses a modified scorecard or a balanced scorecard where we measure objectives early and subjectively rank an individual Code. We then consider those components against the Codes of competitors and those recognized as best practice.” This can make such a benchmarking exercise a peer comparison, but that peer to peer comparison should not be limited to organizations in your industry. “We find that this approach helps us identify missing or underdeveloped topics as well as sections of a Code that likely need to be condensed or reorganized.”

Join us tomorrow where Charlie Voelker, Director, Compliance Products, Skillsoft, discusses how a Risk Assessment informs your Code of Conduct.

Webinar

If you enjoyed today’s podcast, I want to let you know about an upcoming webinar Skillsoft and StoneTurn are hosting. The webinar “Evolving Your Compliance Program” will be held on Wednesday Sept 23 and will explore how companies are leveraging data and information to improve and evolve their compliance programs. Information and Registration click here.

 Resources

For more information on Skillsoft’s compliance offerings, click here.

For more information on the Skillsoft/StoneTurn partnership, click here.

For more information on StoneTurn, click here.