This post originally appeared on the Conflict of Interest Blog and is reposted with the permission of Jeff Kaplan.
The late Nobel Laureate in physics Isidor I. Rabi once said: "My mother made me a scientist without ever intending it. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school: 'So? Did you learn anything today?’ But not my mother. She always asked me a different question. ‘Izzy,’ she would say, ‘did you ask a good question today?’ That difference – asking good questions – made me become a scientist!”
Asking good questions can also help companies promote compliance and ethics.
In The Road to Character, David Brooks notes that he once met an employer who asked every job applicant: “Describe a time when you told the truth and it hurt you.” This is, to my mind, a good C&E-related question, as it can help identify those who practice, as well as preach, ethical behavior. It also reminds those asking the questions about the importance of C&E to the organization. A frequently used variation on this question is: “Describe an ethical challenge you’ve faced and how you dealt with it?”
Of course, employment interviews are not the only setting in which it is important to ask good C&E-related questions. Another is employee engagement surveys, in which one commonly sees questions about relative comfort in reporting violations and perceptions of the ethicality of the organization’s management.
another setting for asking C&E questions is the compliance audit
These are good topics for questions, and I think every company that fields an employee engagement survey should use them. But my favorite question of this sort comes from a survey conducted by the Economist (discussed here), which measured respondents’ perception of the need for ethical flexibility to advance one’s career within an organization. What I particularly like about this question is the focus on flexibility – which may be easier for respondents to admit to than asking outright about their engaging in ethical transgressions.
questions about C&E training may offer a “soft” way of approaching a “hard” topic.
Yet another setting for asking C&E questions is the compliance audit. While most of what is done in C&E audits revolves around document reviews, interviewing employees can be part of the picture as well. Among the topics that should be considered for such questioning: Does the interviewee think that the company’s training is effective? In addition to producing useful information about training itself, posing this question may make it easier for employees to identify concerns about risks and actual violations. For example, like the question above about ethical “flexibility,” questions about C&E training may offer a “soft” way of approaching a “hard” topic.
Read More: 20 Questions to Ask when Prioritizing Your Policy Development Efforts
Moreover, questions about training can be asked not only in audits but as part of (and typically at the end of) the training itself. One possibility here is to ask whether after the training the employee now feels that she understands how the company’s compliance program applies to her job – again, a variation on the “soft” question approach.
Finding the right question can also be important in developing a C&E-component to a company’s exit interview template. Options include general culture questions, such as how do you rate our company as a values and ethics driven employer – with an opportunity to say why; specific questions about key aspects of the program, such as whether the departing employee understood all the options for reporting concerns; and, of course, asking whether the employee was aware of any unreported concerns.
I should stress that this post is not intended to cover the whole world of asking C&E-related questions. Among the areas not addressed: the importance of Q&A in codes of conduct and approaches to asking questions in risk assessments.
Finally, to an extraordinary degree, boards of directors can have the power to impact a C&E program simply by asking the right questions. Here (on page 2 of the PDF) is an article which offers not actual questions but topics that boards can turn into questions in overseeing their respective companies’ C&E programs.
Read More: How to Go Beyond the Words to Craft Smarter Policies
