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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.
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.
Keeping up to date on developments in compliance investigation and enforcement priorities is important for planning compliance programs and setting strategic agendas. In a constantly changing regulatory environment, continuing education is a must. Recent developments suggest that regulators are regrouping and preparing new priorities, while companies are trying to contend with regulations and avoid looming legal challenges.
This summer’s trends indicate diminished enforcement efforts, regulators regroup and try to ascertain a new approach to holding corporate criminals accountable for their ethical lapses, in light of previous attempts failing to adequately discourage wrongdoers. In the meantime, companies finding themselves cornered by regulatory pressures hope to gain time to comply or the blessing to continue as-is by negotiating agreements or reaching settlements with regulators.
The mysterious corporate life of Theranos illustrates many of the challenges that a disruptive business model faces when competitive ambitions take precedence over business foundations. A corporate environment that tolerates, or indeed relies, on a lack of ethical controls develops a culture where misleading and non-compliant conduct becomes the unsustainable norm.
Theranos is a technology company in the health care industry. It has become well-known for its eccentric, charismatic founder Elizabeth Holmes, a precocious and provocative entrepreneur who began developing the blood testing technology Theranos purports to be producing while she was a student at Stanford University. Theranos received tremendous attention from the media, undertaking several successful fundraising rounds and winning prized corporate partnerships and awards for its innovations on the basis of this publicity, all before any of its devices were ever proven effective.
Typical of many high-tech startups, Theranos operated in secrecy, with Holmes acting as its chief evangelist and marketer but speaking always in aspirational terms. Confidentiality, of course, has its place in launching new products to market – especially in the highly competitive and fast-changing technology industry. Beating other firms developing in the same space can make or break disruptive products and the companies that market them. However, these companies and their products have to be real, and an overemphasis on secrecy can also be a red flag for a pervasive fraud.
Unfortunately, all that glitters does not seem to be gold with Theranos. Despite huge valuations and capital raises, the blood testing technology has been criticized for lack of peer-review and has failed to stand up to validation studies. FDA inspection reports necessary before the devices could be sold on the commercial market indicated that the devices were not validated or approved. The media and scientific community turned skeptical of Theranos as time went on, and corporate partners have suspended or cancelled their engagements with the company, which is under criminal investigation by the U.S. government. Laboratories have failed inspections, lost their licenses and certificates to operate, and been closed. A whistleblower came forward regarding design defects in the blood testing technology, leading to a storm of negative publicity and investigations. The future viability of Theranos, and possible liability of Holmes herself for potential wrongdoing, remains uncertain.
Theranos and Holmes, who created a cult of personality around herself which even if briefly convinced the media, investors, the board, and the employees of Theranos to accept her at her word, perfectly illustrate the integrity pitfalls of financing a new company about which the investors are only allowed to know what they are told. Traditional critical review and the studied analysis of outside observers shouldn’t be abandoned in the heat of the venture capital moment due to the persuasion of a person who seems ambitious and charismatic. To do so could be as serious as enabling fraud at the expense of due diligence.
For more insight on the case of Theranos, Nick Bilton’s investigative report for Vanity Fair is an excellent resource.
The Ford Pinto debacle of the 1970s demonstrates vividly that focusing on commercial pursuits at the expense of integrity considerations can have a disastrous effect on consumer safety. No historical survey of organizational ethics and decision-making is complete without a study of the controversial production of this vehicle.
The Ford Pinto was a subcompact car made and sold by Ford Motor Company from 1970-1980. The design of the car left it vulnerable to fire in the event of a rear-end collision due to the location of the fuel system between the rear axle and rear bumper. Though crash testing indicated heightened risk, and safety was questioned by some engineers, Ford proceeded with manufacturing the vehicle as designed. As early as 1973, Ford began receiving reports of catastrophic injuries in fires after rear-end collisions at low speeds in Pintos. Relying on standard review routines, Ford found no justification for a recall. Issues with the Pinto’s safety and continued non-action on the part of Ford continued until Ford finally recalled the Pinto in 1978, while claiming it was only doing so due to public outcry and still not acknowledging any design defect in the car. Subsequently over 100 lawsuits were brought against Ford in connection to the Pinto.
This is perhaps the seminal case of business choices to value commercial interests over consumer protection. Individual designers and engineers at Ford realized that the Pinto could have safety issues, but they worked under immense time pressures and in a structured, hierarchical project management system where people made decisions that were disconnected from the ultimate outcome of the product. The production of the Pinto was a process dominated by routines that emphasized expediency and profit. Relaxed regulations due to political pressures on the marketplace meant that companies like Ford Motor Company could choose whether it was economical or expedient to meet certain standards rather than making these decisions based on regulatory requirement or safety concerns alone.
The Ford Pinto case also lays bare the “bad apples” theory of ethics, in which corporate scandals that harm the public are often blamed on a bad person doing bad things. In reality, most people involved in these situations are good people who do not intend to do bad things, but make choices in isolation or under duress, as part of routines, which have a knock-off effect and can lead to disastrous results later.
For a very complete and powerful contemporary analysis of the Ford Pinto case, Mark Dowie’s 1977 Pinto Madness article in Mother Jones is a must-read.
It is essential in all industries and job functions that employees act with integrity and in compliance with applicable rules and regulations, and this must be supported with adequate training. However, a common challenge for compliance professionals concerns how to successfully and sustainably convince senior business management to invest in and support compliance training as a priority. Regulatory changes and enforcement actions, and the necessity for ethical decision-making in the regular course of business, show us that compliance awareness should be valued. Amidst the pressures of commercial activities, changing marketplaces and political environments, and time-sensitive daily necessities, though, training on compliance topics may not always seem urgent. However, there are important incentives which can be emphasized to business partners to encourage their buy-in on this critical training.
The overall impression from the foregoing is that visibility with business partners is crucial for the compliance advisory function to succeed. All compliance professionals should seek to build relationships and interact on these compelling yet challenging topics in order to make them personally meaningful to business partners.
Thank you for visiting Compliance Culture! This blog will focus on three topics, individually as well as where they intersect:
The majority of the posts will be written with the compliance professional as the target audience. This blog aims to provide suggestions on best practices and perspectives on regulatory developments and emerging risks, which will be useful in a ongoing strategic compliance program.
In addition to practical insights for compliance and ethics practitioners, this blog will also offer commentary on compliance topics encountered in current and historical events or in television, movies, or other media. Hopefully these posts will be enjoyable and informative for everyone.
The schedule for blog posting by subject matter is as follows (subject to change at any time):
Please check back August 11, 2017 for the launch of Compliance Culture, with new posts to follow every weekday thereafter.