Category: Compliance in popular culture

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Compliance in popular culture

Selected TED/TEDx talks by Dan Ariely on honesty, motivation, and choice

Dan Ariely is a professor of psychology and behavioral economics. He is well-known for his books in these fields as well as for his popular and admired TED talks. Ariely is an extremely effective communicator because his observations incorporate both psychology and business, blending the internal and external motivators for behavior. In this spirit, Ariely is able to debunk assumptions about conduct and provide explanations for instincts, two powerful sets of insights for compliance and ethics.

  • Meaning in Labor: Perhaps people’s assumptions about why we work and what we value most in our work cultures are wrong. Maturing from an idea that most people would rather not work and only do so to make money helps to show that a search for meaning (much as described by Holocaust survivor and psychologist Viktor Frankl in his work on existential analysis) is the most powerful and provocative driver of human labor and achievement. Simply put, meaning gives motivation, and having a purpose to the work performed encourages people to invest in it. The idea of giving purposeful work a priority that is equal to or even sometimes greater than profitable work is novel and challenging. However, this speaks directly to the importance of a robust compliance culture and a corporate identity that promotes ethical decision-making and acting with integrity. These values drive meaningful engagement and therefore can contribute to a more positive working environment and sustainable business.

 

  • Money Changes Everything: Taking the suggestion of the importance of meaning as the true driver behind human behavior (both inside and outside of work) forward, what then is the true impact of money? Clearly the power of money is a timeless and universal notion, but perhaps its actual effect on human behavior is not so straightforward. Money changes the tone of all interactions; adding the financial element to these relationships is transformative and perhaps demotivating. Therefore how do people’s decision-making processes and motivations change between their conduct in their private life, where money is not inherently a factor, and work life, where everyone is paid to be engaged together? Interestingly, this talk was delivered at Burning Man, where exchange of money is mostly not permitted.

 

  • The Unexpected Joys and Problems with Creation: The sense of accomplishment from successfully problem-solving and completing a difficult task may actually be the key motivation behind doing challenging or unpleasant things. The harder something is to do, the prouder people feel about persisting and doing it. Further, the sense that other people will feel this pride too or that the difficult work can benefit others is also a motivating factor. Not only does the altruistic sentiment make people more motivated, it may also make them more honest, as the force of “prosocial behavior” encourages people to engage in better behavior for a common good. This has obvious implications for compliance; a corporate culture which positions integrity and ethics as a core value and rewards it visibly will speak collectively to all these motivations and therefore drive productivity and engagement.

 

  • Self Control: Another important and interesting area of Ariely’s scholarship is in the study of self control. Self control can often be the interference between our long-term goals and our short-term desires, or our internal instincts and the external factors they face. Facing the trade-offs implied by these dichotomies is challenging. This often leads to over-emphasizing present impact of the decision-making over the future consequences. Encouraging people to consider and not discount the considerations of the future is very important for directing the impulse of self control into a more balanced and sustainable influence.

 

  • Temptations and Self Control: Continuing on the theme of struggling to balance current interests with more remote future outcomes, this lecture encourages people to understand what creates the gap in their self control. With this insight in mind, the trade-off becomes more manageable to consider in a more holistic way. Motivations to value future priorities or avoid future problems could include targeted rewards and using rationality against instinct to adjust gain-loss perceptions. This is easily applicable in the corporate environment, where performance evaluations and business strategies should be designed with both short and long term effect analyses in mind. This way, growth will be sustainable and values will be maintained.

 

Ariely’s presentations on people’s choices – including whether to lie or cheat, or not to – go directly to the meaning of why people do what they do, and what factors exist that may change or impact that. Organizational and individual integrity can be sourced back to these motivations for honesty and self-control, and therefore the studied application of Ariely’s insights to a compliance and ethics program is very valuable.

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Compliance in popular culture

Selected Frontline documentaries on financial crisis and compliance

Frontline is a documentary series that has been broadcast by PBS since 1983. The series covers a broad range of social, political, and historical topics. Among these documentary programs have been several episodes that have covered financial crises or compliance issues in the markets or at organizations. These topics range from the 2008 global financial crisis to an overview of corruption and unethical behaviour on Wall Street to fraudulent and misleading practices within specific companies that contributed to market instability and economic collapse.

  • To Catch A Trader and insider trading – This 2014 episode covers the history of SAC Capital Advisors, a group of hedge funds founded in 1992 by Steven A. Cohen which was very successful for many years but declined after numerous investigations by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for insider trading. Several former traders were indicted by the US Department of Justice and the firm itself pled guilty to insider trading charges, subsequently shrinking away after returning external investors’ money to them and divesting the rest of its capital. SAC Capital Advisors no longer exists as of 2016, but the divestment process is ongoing and continues to raise questions about conflicts of interest and ethical practices at the firm. As for Cohen himself, he runs what was once SAC Capital Advisors as a family office and remains active in the financial industry despite his failure to supervise at SAC.

 

  • Dot Con and financial markets fraud during the dotcom bubble – From 2002, this episode looks at the “dotcom bubble” of the late 1990s, when the financial markets were crazy for new internet companies and their IPOs were aggressively marketed to the investing public. At the time this was a totally new frontier and the growth of the bubble was fuelled by aggressive allocation practices in the IPO process. Did the eagerness to exploit this new market tip over into fraudulent or misleading handling of the IPOs? In the rush to take companies public, risks were certainly ignored or unknowingly assumed by investors. Transparency in the marketplace was really lacking, and no one wanted to miss on profits to slow down and question whether what was going on was appropriate or advisable. This is a formula which is bound to repeat over and over again in future financial market advances and collapses.

 

  • Inside the Meltdown and the causes of the 2008 global financial crisis – This 2009 documentary starts with the seeds of fear that were sown in late 2007 about the effect that the bursting housing bubble would have on Wall Street investment firms. Saddled with bad debt and hounded by rumors of instability, in 2008 financial organizations began to decline and collapse precipitously. First Bear Sterns, and then Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, failed and needed rescue. Then finally in September 2008 came Lehman Brothers – and from the Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who was subject to immense political pressure and criticism from the handling of prior crises, there came no bailout. In the aftermath of this, the financial crisis unfolded and ensued. Questions still remain about how this happened so quickly and severely, who caused or could have avoided it, and whether the plans to fix it and avoid it happening again have been effective.

 

  • Money, Power and Wall Street and the effects of the 2008 global financial crisis – In a sense picking up where the previous documentary left off, this 2013 episode looks at the often problematic efforts to recover from the financial crisis. In the many efforts to repair the global economy and strengthen the system to withstand future crises that are similar or more several, the financial markets and the governments that regulate and supervise them have struggled against themselves and each other. With investors and taxpayers all over the world on the hook for the risk and the bill, bold decisions as well as failures to act have characterized the rescue and rebuilding process, and continue to raise doubts about the resilience for the future.

 

  • The Warning and failure to regulate the derivatives market – This 2009 documentary looks at the financial crisis not from the perspective of the firms that weakened the market or collapsed within it, but from one segment, the derivatives market. This market is mysterious and key regulators took a hands-off position in investigating or managing it. The fears were that regulating the market could lead to financial crisis; it’s possible that not regulating it was one of the key causes of the downturn, in the end. These complex dynamics which prevented changes in the risky derivatives market still exist in governments and the markets today. Failing to change or move on from these to close the regulatory gap suggests that future crises are inevitable.

 

These are only just some Frontline episodes from over the years of the program that have touched on historically important events and issues relating to financial crisis and corporate compliance. These compelling documentaries provide a rich and informative, yet accessible, view into the complex and wide range of these topics.

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Compliance in popular culture

Selected lectures on dishonesty and mistrust

In a follow-up to last Friday’s collection of videos on honesty and trust, now the polar opposite, dishonesty and mistrust. It is equally important to understand the motivations behind unethical behaviour as it is to have a view of the reasons for good behaviour. Unsurprisingly, most often these impulses are intimately related. Dishonesty, for example, is encouraged when individuals do not see trustworthiness as an important measure of success or character. On the other side, giving trust is very difficult when credibility has not been established.

  • How to spot a liar (Pamela Meyer) – Lying is not always motivated from a desire to be actively dishonest. It can be automatic, implusive, or even motivated by altruism, insecurity, or curiosity. However, it is always deceptive. Understanding the “tells” that people give when they are being dishonest is important in remaining alert and checking for credibility before giving trust.
  • How to Spot Liars at Work and How to Deal with Them (Carol Kinsey Goman) – Also in the domain of reading people’s non-verbal cues to detect their dishonesty, there are signs specific to the workplace that someone is not trustworthy and dynamics of co-working or being in a team setting that may make people more likely to lie. Identifying when colleagues are lying and understanding why can be a management technique if this is applied to trying to create a tailored environment that will protect and reward honesty. Successful leaders will communicate clearly that they expect their employees to be truthful and will measure honesty and ethical decision-making as part of their performance.
  • The truth about dishonesty (Dan Ariely) – Self-betrayal and the rationalization it provides are major motivators of dishonest behaviour. Intrinsically, people lie and break promises to themselves in every dishonest act they do, because they are overriding their own ideas about right and wrong to give themselves permission to proceed. In this way individuals persuade themselves to ignore their conflicts of interest or flaunt what is socially acceptable because they have deceived themselves into thinking their behaviour is necessary or justified.
  • Why we think it’s OK to cheat and steal (sometimes) (Dan Ariely) – Behavioural economics goes further even than the above, to suggest that people do not always have to actively be dishonest to themselves to be deceptive to others. Possibly, people actually think lying or behaving immorally is acceptable because cultural norms often tolerate and dismiss “minor” dishonesty. Situational context, intuition, or heuristics can be very powerful and override the individual’s obligation to question or consider right from wrong. All opinions about moral behaviour should be thoroughly challenged in order to avoid relying upon false assumptions.
  • The future of lying (Jeff Hancock) – In scenarios such as taking an exam with the opportunity to cheat or filling out a form with the possibility of misstating information, moral reminders of individuals’ legal or social obligations to tell the truth have proven effective in curbing dishonest choices. Could technology and the internet, influences in our society which seemingly have made the truth ever more remote, actually discourage lying by making people’s statements and representations permanent and searchable? Perhaps the accountability of the internet to record everyone’s personal records can encourage them to avoid discrepancies by resisting dishonesty.

Causes of, and rationalizations for, dishonesty and lack of trust are everywhere in both business and life. Because of how common these forces are, it is important to recognize and understand them, so that individuals and organizations may contribute positively to working against their influence.

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Compliance in popular culture

Selected lectures on honesty and trust

Honesty in life is the foundation for integrity in business. People with a strong personal sense of correctness will be loath to discard their internal moral register easily just because they are in the workplace. Those who respect the truth, however challenging standing by that may become, and wish to be rewarded for it with being seen as trustworthy, are responsible stewards for organizational and individual values. The impact of a corporate culture that venerates honesty and trust is far-reaching into decision-making, business strategy, sustainability, and co-working.

  • The Growing Inequality of Trust (Richard Edelman) – One of the great challenges to establishing and maintaining trust in society today is the “trust disparity” – the difference between the portion of the public that is credibly informed and the population in general. This is a growing and far-reaching challenge to giving and getting trust, when people cannot agree on a view of the facts or are so predisposed toward mistrust. The contextual motivation for good corporate citizens to model integrity and impact societal change for the good is very strong, especially as trust is on the decline. CEOs and other business leaders should answer this call and leverage their honesty and unwavering commitment to tell the truth and disclaim misleading or false information.

 

  • What’s trust got to do with it? (David Horsager) – Lacking credibility will cost you. Trusted leaders and organizations are more successful, agile, and prepared for long-term survival. Establishing trust be the best motivation and the most effective marketing. The positive impact on business and life of trust should be underestimated. Trusting someone is a choice with benefits and consequences, and supporting trustworthy people to succeed can make a real change in our communities and organizations.

 

  • The behaviour of trust in the workplace (Jacqueline Oliveira) – Intercultural communication is one of the great challenges of the modern workplace. Global teams and international leaders have to reach across the norms of their home culture to find a way to relate to each other that can be understood by everyone but still meaningful and productive. Trust is a universal value which can create that connection for everyone to build upon.

 

  • Whom Can We Trust? (Richard Edelman, David Leonhardt, Tom Wilson) – Public perceptions of trust are on a sustained decline all over the world. What can individuals and their organizations do about it? Are we just doomed to a faithless future? If we can’t trust any of our institutions, how can we trust the people who work at them or, eventually, each other? The potential for moral decline in our private lives is precipitated by the deteriorating credibility of the organizations that dominate our news and the public attention. Personal leadership that is values-based and emphasizes the truth and trustworthiness over all other character traits is one possible path forward. If society starts to reward and appreciate people for their honesty and their eagerness to earn trust, then the public measures of success and expectations on businesses will follow in kind.

 

  • The Value of Trust (Dan Ariely) – How does trust impact decision-making and individuals’ perceptions of their own interests? The value is likely significant, especially insofar as many decisions are made and promises are kept or broken for practical, emotional, or even irrational reasons. Trust in themselves as well as in others does more to determine how people actually behave than their intentions.

 

Check back next week for the follow-up to this collection: selected lectures on dishonesty and mistrust.

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Compliance in popular culture

Selected documentaries on the 2008 global financial crisis

The Great Recession, which began in 2007-2008 with the collapse of the subprime mortgage market and led to an international banking crisis, offers many lessons for compliance practitioners and enthusiasts alike. Many documentaries have been produced in the ensuing years to offer new insights on the crisis and its causes.

  • American Casino and the origins of the subprime collapse – The filmmakers of American Casino started their work in 2008 with a theory that the housing market was in trouble. Over the year that they filmed, this idea took root in reality and unfolded before them. The 2009 documentary that resulted offers a vivid explanation of how the subprime mortgage market evolved and then fell apart. The stories of average Americans who held the mortgages that were underlying the bonds created by big investment firms humanize the origins of the crisis and help to ground the actions in the financial markets by connecting them to the many people that were affected.

  • Inside Job and non-disclosure of conflicts of interest – This 2010 documentary reaches back into the international origins of the financial crisis, to begin with an look at the collapse of the Icelandic banking system. One of the movie’s principal assertions is that academics and scholars who are professors at many of the prominent educational institutions have conflicts of interest due to their financial ties to firms such as Goldman Sachs and other large market makers. The film’s argument suggests that these conflicts of interest are not subject to mandatory disclosure and so the economists express opinions about investments and financial systems which cannot be transparently evaluated.

  • Capitalism: A Love Story and the dangers of deregulatory trends – Michael Moore’s 2009 documentary takes a wide view on general contemporary economic conditions in the United States, ethically questionable practices of major corporations, and the status of the American worker in modern capitalism. Germane to the subject of the 2008 global financial crisis, Moore takes a look at the lending practices of Countrywide, one of the main players in the subprime lending practices that led to the market collapse and ensuing crisis. Countrywide operated in an generation of regulatory relaxation, leading to unduly risky practices of giving loans to people who could not reasonably afford them as well as giving discounts and special deals to politicians and regulators in hopes of keeping the good times rolling.

  • The Flaw and the evolving state of modern American capitalism – A good companion movie to Capitalism: A Love Story, this 2011 documentary focuses on explaining how the consumer society in the United States has a symbiotic relationship with the markets, at the expense of the American citizen whose main value in society becomes determined by spending power.   In this dynamic, the rich get richer while the poor stay poor and the middle class drifts ever downward, with interventions such as the easier extension of lending in the pre-2008 years only seem to present a possibility for upward mobility for them, but rather just create financial crises where they bear the brunt of the losses.

  • Money for Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve and the cyclicality of major financial crises – The ebb and flow of regulatory pressures in the United States are enabled by the lack of understanding most Americans have about what the Federal Reserve System is and how its policies impact the economy and the markets. This 2013 documentary suggests that these policies had a major role in the 2008 financial crisis and will continue to contribute to the creation of bubbles that culminate in future crises. The firm suggests that awareness of the public and citizens’ engagement in activism for more accountability and greater transparency by the Federal Reserve System are critical for protecting society from ever-greater financial crisis in the future.

These are just a few examples of documentaries which can provide an informative and compelling view into the events of the 2008 global financial crisis. For years to come there will surely be many more such documentaries to add further insights to the historical record on the Great Recession.

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Compliance in popular culture

Margin Call and unethical crisis management in the financial services industry

The 2011 movie Margin Call focuses on the conduct of the employees of an investment bank in disaster mode. The movie takes place in the prelude to the 2008 global financial crisis. During a reduction in workforce, an analyst reveals that the firm’s predictive models are showing that its portfolio of mortgage-backed securities will soon experience losses which will exceed the highly-leveraged value of the firm and lead to its bankruptcy.

The rest of the movie centers on the behavior of the firm’s employees and senior management and the choices they make in handling this discovery. Unsurprisingly, many of them model unethical decision-making and provide cautionary examples from which governance and compliance structures can take advice for what to prevent.

  • Key man dependency and lack of transparency – The entire movie revolves around the too-late discovery of the projected losses by an analyst. His boss was working on a project to try to figure out what was wrong with the firm’s models, but he was laid off before he finished his analysis. This scenario suggests the conclusion that if the boss had not been working alone or had been sharing his work in progress sufficiently, then the problems could have been discovered earlier and the entire dilemma could have been avoided or at least mitigated. An insecure overdependence on the work of one vulnerable man and a lack of honest disclosure led to this firm’s undoing from the very start.

  • Corporate code of ethics and culture drivers – A firm’s compliance program sets a tone and provides a rules-based structure for employees. Ultimately each individual still has the freedom to make unethical or inappropriate decision for his or herself, but the choice architecture provided by a firm’s governance controls matters for setting expectations. Corporate enablement of immoral or ethical behavior starts at its simplest practices, such as reimbursement of expenses, especially in a business where the financial upside for compensation is immense. In a firm where an anything goes culture reigns, the downside of this culture is also immense.

  • Tone at the top and unethical executive decision-making – In a series of overnight meetings, the firm’s senior management decides to hold a “fire sale” and dump their toxic assets to limit their own exposure by dispersing the risk through the markets and ripping off their counterparty broker-dealers. They also know that their customers will quickly realize what they are doing and be disenchanted by the deceptive sale of only their troubled mortgage-backed securities holdings. Senior management justifies and solidifies their choice to destabilize the entire market and subject counterparties and clients to losses to avoid their own bankruptcy.

  • Lack of business sustainability due to dishonest practices – By selling the toxic mortgage-backed securities to the counterparty firms which should be their trusted partners, the traders end their careers, as no one will do business with them again in the future. They are compensated handsomely with promised bonus pay-outs, but there is another large reduction in workforce once their dirty work is done. The principals of the firm plan to profit from the coming financial crisis, but their business as it was, as an investment bank, is over.

  • “It’s just money” – moral relativism as justification of unethical behavior – The CEO and chairman of the board takes an apparent long view on the actions of his firm, seeing their choice to deceptively unload toxic assets on the market in order to stem their own losses by kicking off systemic disorder, as a mere reaction. “It’s just money” is a wilful disconnection from the human and integrity costs; believing that the entire economic system is a historic construct makes wrongdoing within it blameless. However, this is not reality; financial crises have real impacts and victims, and money is not just “pieces of paper with pictures on it.”

At every turn, Margin Call exemplifies bad corporate conduct, insufficient compliance and governance controls, and unethical decision-making. This movie provides a primer as to the devolving organizational accountability that set the stage for the 2008 financial crisis.

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Compliance in popular culture

Selected TED/TEDx talks for compliance and ethics insights

TED and TEDx conferences and events have become important and popular venues for speakers from all walks of life.  This includes academics and business leaders but also ordinary people who have had inspiring or extraordinary experiences, to share their insights and stories. Given how ever-present ethics and morality are in business and life, many talks touch on useful compliance topics.

  • Creating Ethical Cultures in Business (Brooke Deterline) – We must question why we don’t speak up on behalf of other people or ideals, and how it makes us feel after we encounter a situation where we want to say something but don’t. Challenging discomfort and fear can help us advocate for each other and our principles and create corporate cultures where standing up courageously and speaking our values is seen as safe and helpful. Courage is an inspiring and powerful antidote to corruption and unethical behavior.

  • Building Business on Character Ethic (Kevin Byrne) – Commercial profitability and competitive advantage dominate most metrics of business success, but how can these be achieved and sustained without integrity? Taking care to do the right thing in all areas of business – from dealing with customers to retaining employees and everywhere in between – and avoid reputational risk are powerful drivers in building a business designed to last.

  • Why Credibility is the Foundation of Leadership (Barry Posner) – Speaking to the perennial compliance topic of tone at the top, leaders must be people worth believing and following. We evaluate whether those in senior management or supervisory positions are competent and credible. Expertise, intelligence, passion, and innovative thinking – all of these things are also necessary for leadership to succeed, but in order for anyone to believe in them, integrity must come first.

  • We Need a “Moral Operating System” (Damon Horowitz) – A strong, developed moral framework is necessary for knowing what to do with all the information and power we possess and must make decisions about how to use on a regular basis in both business and life in general. Ethical decision-making is challenging and nuanced and can even be awkward. Thinking, discussing, debating, and defining beliefs are all integral to understand our human ability to distinguish right from wrong and make a principled choice on how to act.

  • Our Buggy Moral Code (Dan Ariely) – Confronting the theory that purely bad people are to blame for the majority of bad things that happen in society, the work of behavioral economists such as Dan Ariely suggests that human behavior is far more complex than static good or bad values. Rather, wrongdoing in decision-making is influenced greatly by intuition and context. Situational awareness and a strong affinity for personal morality are therefore important mitigating factors to unethical behavior.

This is merely a brief selection of TED/TEDx talks touching upon personal empowerment, entrepreneurship, leadership, decision-making, and behavioral economics – all topics which are linked powerfully to compliance and organizational ethics.