Erica Salmon Byrne, Executive Chair of the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance, answers another question from the BELA Membership around how to date investigations case volume data. In particular, should case volume be dates when investigations are opened or closed?

To learn more about joining the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance, visit https://www.ethisphere.com/bela to request guest access to the Member Resource Hub and to speak with a BELA Engagement Director.

In the highly regulated world of financial services, running a top-notch ethics and compliance program is table stakes for maintaining one's ability to do business at all. But Principal Financial Group recognizes that this goes deeper than merely abiding by regulatory expectation. By maintaining high ethical standards and reinforcing the understanding of (and adherence to) its Global Code of Conduct, related policies, and legal and regulatory requirements across the organization by delivering education, training, and conducting risk assessments, Principal has earned the coveted Compliance Leader Verification designation through 2026 from Ethisphere.

In this episode, Noreen Fierro, Senior Vice President, & Enterprise Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer of Principal explains how the company maintains its best-in-class ethics and compliance program by keeping culture at the center of it.

BELA Chair Erica Salmon Byrne tackles an interesting question from the members of the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance around how to handle the risks that arise when employees relocate temporarily to an international location - either for professional or private reasons - but must maintain their connectivity to their virtual workplace.

To learn more about joining the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance, visit https://www.ethisphere.com/bela to request guest access to the Member Resource Hub and to speak with a BELA Engagement Director.

The Business Ethics Leadership Alliance (BELA) is a global ethics & compliance community that provides exclusive access to helpful data, benchmarking, events, and other resources to advance your E&C program.
 
Each year, BELA honors select member companies and individual ethics and compliance leaders for their extraordinary commitment to advancing community engagement, growth, and transformation. These are the BELA Impact Awards, and they reflect BELA’s own dedication to moving the integrity agenda forward for all companies.
 
In particular, the BELA Community Champion award recognizes outstanding contributions to the member community by way of content resources, event participation, publications, mentorship, or peer-to-peer support.
 
This year, BELA recognizes American defense, aviation, information technology, health services, and medical research company Leidos—which has also been a World's Most Ethical Companies honoree since 2018—as one of its BELA Community Champions.
 
With us today to discuss how Leidos earned this award—and how the organization exemplifies the credo that there is no competition in compliance—is Jelahn Stewart, Chief Compliance Officer, Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Leidos, where she oversees the organization’s global ethics, compliance, and business integrity functions. 

People managers are the front line for delivering to employees the expectations (and aspirations) of not just the ethics and compliance team, but that of senior management and even the Board. And yet, managers often struggle with these burdens because they just don’t receive the right support...which creates otherwise preventable friction and risk within the organization.

In this episode, Ethisphere’s Eric Jorgenson, Director, Data & Services, and Katie Kruger, Senior Culture Analyst, will discuss how organizations can improve their manager communications on topics involving ethics and compliance.

Learn more at the Ethisphere Resource Center: https://www.ethisphere.com/resources

In this episode of BELA Asks, Erica Salmon Byrne dives into the data surrounding best practices in governance and oversight for Ethics & Compliance. From data surrounding where the function sits, to how the Chief Compliance Officer should interact with the committee and the board, this episode is chock-full of valuable insights stemming from the 2026 World's Most Ethical Companies data set.

Want more data? Reach out to us to get access to the Sphere, our on-demand data platform!

#Ethisphere #Ethicast #BELAAsks #Governance #EthicsandCompliance

In today's episode of BELA Asks, Erica Salmon Byrne, Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Chair of BELA, addresses who should ultimately own an organization's compliance program. The answer is: it depends.

One of the most pronounced concerns of the 2026 risk landscape so far is that of external investigations that involve multiple jurisdictions. Many businesses operate on an international, multi-national, or global basis. And if they don’t, their third-party suppliers and partners certainly do.

At the same time, a worldwide fracturing of regulatory expectations, enforcement paradigms, and legal controls have made the threat of a cross-border investigation an even greater risk than it has been traditionally. For any business facing the possibility of dealing with legal troubles that span jurisdictions, there has never been a better time to prepare in advance than right now.

Joining us this episode to explain how you can manage the risk of cross-border external investigations is Sagarika Chakraborty, CEO – India and Gulf, and Global Head of Investigations, of IIRIS Consulting, the largest Indian Digital, Risk, and Intelligence consulting firm.

In today's episode of BELA Asks, Erica Salmon Byrne answers the question, "We are reviewing our approach to service on external boards, both governing and advisory. In particular, what are circumstances in which we would or would not allow compensation for service on such boards?"

Erica addresses best practices on ensuring board service is documented as a conflict of interest, getting permission for service, and what to watch out for, particularly in allowing compensation for external board service. 

The Business Ethics Leadership Alliance (BELA) is a community of organizations committed to strengthening and maturing their E&C programs. In BELA Asks, we take time to address members' questions, and we share that information widely, because we believe there is no competition in compliance. 

#BELAAsks #Ethicast #Ethisphere #ConflictsofInterest

As businesses face relentless market challenges, technological transformations, leadership misconduct, and geopolitical whiplash, Boards of Directors play a vital role in providing the kind of ethical leadership that will help organizations build value and manage risk. And yet, those same pressures also expose the thin ethical oversight that many Boards provide—mainly because they lack practical ways to promote culture, conduct, and trust as core business values.

In response, Boards of the Future—a U.S.-based nonprofit advancing ethical leadership and integrity at the highest levels of corporate power—has released How Boards Should Oversee Ethics, a guide that distills ten concrete practices to help boards bring ethics into the center of strategy, risk, and performance conversations.

In this episode, Boards of the Future Executive Director, Vera Cherepanova speaks to the distinct practices that can help Boards be better drivers of ethical business culture.