Ethicast

Erica Salmon Byrne, Executive Chair of the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance, answers another question from the BELA Membership: Who should really be in our champions program? Erica also answers a second question around how to know when your champion, ambassador, or liaison program is really working.

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. It also provides a concierge service by which members can submit questions around best practices, and our internal experts will provide an answer, plus helpful resources with more information.

To request free guest access to the BELA Member Resource Hub and speak with a BELA Engagement Director visit: www.ethisphere.com/bela

In this episode, Ethicast host Bill Coffin and Ethisphere Chief Strategy Officer Erica Salmon Byrne discuss the insider trading implications involving a suspiciously timed Polymarket bet on the U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Attend the 2026 Global Ethics Summit! Register here: www.attendges.com

Check out the Ethisphere Resource Center for free: www.ethisphere.com/resources

Appear as a guest on the Ethicast: www.ethisphere.com/ethicast

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Book an editorial call with host Bill Coffin at: https://calendly.com/bill-coffin-ethisphere/30min

Investigations are serious business, but what happens after one concludes is just as important as the speak-up that promoted the investigation, and the investigation itself.

Jodie Fredericksen (VP of Data & Services, Ethisphere) and Eric Jorgenson (Director, Data & Services, Ethisphere) share post-investigation best practices that get help ensure equitable outcomes and support organizational justice, from address workplace retaliation, to discipline calibration, to when the time is right for root cause analysis.

2:21: Retaliation is a perpetual problem for companies. Year after year it rates as one of the top 3 reasons why employees are reluctant to “speak up”. Do you see the climate around retaliation as improving or getting worse? Are there outside factors that companies should be considering when addressing retaliation?

4:33: Discipline Calibration really sounds like something more suited for a Human Resources podcast and discussion, why are we talking about it from an Ethics & Compliance point of view?

9:12: Once an investigation is closed, should root cause analysis be conducted for all investigations? Or are there certain criteria that should trigger a root cause analysis process?

FULL EPISODES

How to Stop Retaliation Before It Starts
https://youtu.be/Q_N2xjKkLJM?si=Gyf4jh8TRYjGACIg

Calibrating Discipline in Investigations
https://youtu.be/hq1izslHUuY?si=J81PU-TD_L-SPR2Y

When to Conduct Root Cause Analysis
https://youtu.be/785CAUPUERo?si=s8LEkko2z2-h7b4N

For a ton of free, in-depth reports, guidance documents, articles, videos, and more to help you reach ever-higher levels of excellence in ethics and compliance, visit the Ethisphere Resource Center, at www.ethisphere.com/resources

Here at Ethisphere, we believe there is no competition in compliance. That’s why we’re using this show as a platform to answer high-level questions about business integrity that have been posed to us by the members of the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance, or BELA.

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. It also provides a concierge service by which members can submit questions around best practices, and our internal experts will provide an answer, plus helpful resources with more information.

Many of these questions are particular to a specific company’s needs. But many more of them speak to challenges or opportunities facing E&C professionals everywhere. So in this episode, we’re going to answer one such question as part of our ongoing mission to make the world a better place by advancing business integrity.

In this episode, revisit a series of interconnected questions around the topic of investigations, through the insights of BELA Chair Erica Salmon Byrne.

0:54: 
5:23: 
12:51: 
15:55: 

After a year of CEOs getting caught on kiss cams, facing charges for looting their own company, or fielding tough questions form the DOJ about financial mismanagement, Ethisphere Editor in Chief Bill Coffin looks to what we should really be taking away from all of this leadership churn...and what it means for E&C programs everywhere.

RELATED EPISODES

Visit the Ethisphere Resource Center,: www.ethisphere.com/resources

Once an investigation into reports of workplace misconduct is closed, organizations often conduct a root cause analysis (or RCA) on the issue. But is that always the right course of action? Should root cause analysis be conducted for all investigations, or are there certain criteria that should trigger a root cause analysis process?

It’s a good question, because there are plenty of obstacles to overcome when conducting effective root cause analysis, from incorporating the right data analytics to securing leadership buy-in. And perhaps the biggest one of them all is ensuring that the lessons learned after conducting root cause analysis translate into sustainable change, rather than become an unimpactful check-the-box exercise. Ethisphere's Jodie Fredericksen and Eric Jorgenson explain.

In this episode, BELA Chair Erica Salmon Byrne returns to the topic of internal investigations and answers a most interesting question from the membership of the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance (BELA): What strategic role should your substantiation rate play? Stick around for a compelling story Erica shares in which an unsubstantiated claim at one company led to a shocking discovery.

To learn more about BELA, request guest access to the Member Resource Hub, or speak with a BELA Engagement Director, visit www.ethisphere.com/bela

On a long enough timeline, an inevitable outcome of workplace investigations is disciplinary action. Applying the right level of outcome to an investigation is crucial to a fair and effective ethics and compliance program. It’s something that the Department of Justice’s Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs encourages, but doesn’t necessarily require, which places it in the realm of voluntary best practices. But what is the DOJ really looking for? And what really constitutes a best practice?

In this episode, Ethisphere's Jodie Fredericksen and Eric Jorgenson discuss how calibrating discipline is an important—yet often overlooked—aspect of an effective workplace investigation.

For a ton of free, in-depth reports, guidance documents, articles, videos, and more to help you reach ever-higher levels of excellence in ethics and compliance, visit the Ethisphere Resource Center, at www.ethisphere.com/resources

In BELA Asks, we answer to high-level questions submitted by the members of the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance (BELA) - a membership community for ethics and compliance professionals - for the benefit of E&C teams everywhere. In this episode, BELA Chair Erica Salmon Byrne explains what consequence modeling is, how you can use it to advance your E&C program, and why E&C practitioners everywhere should look to their allied functions for ideas.

To learn more about BELA, request guest access to the Member Resource Hub, or speak with a BELA Engagement Director, visit www.ethisphere.com/bela

Ethical culture is at the heart of business integrity. It is measurable and can create a virtuous cycle of psychological safety, values-based leadership, and higher financial performance. But it doesn’t always go that way. Every culture, no matter how well-meaning, lives with certain pressures that, if not handled the right way, can foster poor-decision making and foment unethical behavior.

In this episode, organizational culture expert Tobias Sturesson describes how his experience in freeing himself from a religious cult and unlearning its toxic behavior patterns has given him unique insight on how to help organizations build strong, ethical cultures that enable people to perform, thrive and act with integrity when under pressure.

Learn more about how Tobias can help your organization here: www.heartmanagement.org

Read Tobias's book, You Can Culture, here: https://youcanculture.com/

Listen to Tobias's podcast, Leading Transformational Change, here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/leading-transformational-change-with-tobias-sturesson/id1504162092

For a free demo of our Ethical Culture Accelerator, visit here: www.Ethisphere.com/solutions