A new web site for your Working for Integrity news and information

There is now an official website for Joe Murphy and Building a Career in Compliance and Ethics. You can visit it here.

Expect a banner link to the site to appear prominently on this blog later today (replacing two other banner links above all posts). The link will also be added to the 'Working for Integrity Links' section in the sidebar.


In related news, this will be the final post on this blog. Joshua Leet, who has been the primary blogger, is now moving on to new work, having completed his role in the Working for Integrity project. This blog will be left as is for as long as Blogger leaves it, but with both books out and no immediate plans for further projects, the blog has served its purpose.

Please visit Joe's site for all your future Working for Integrity needs.

Thank you

Working for Integrity linked by another site

We've just heard from a site dealing in jobs and careers that they've chosen to link to our blog. Check them out at:

SearchJobsCareers.Com - International, Overseas & World Wide Jobs and Careers - International Jobs and Careers. Free employment site free corporate job site and career tools from Search Jobs Careers Recruiting corporate career site service, including free resume search, free job postings and free resume postings.

You'll also find a link to that site in a new link category in our sidebar: Sites that Link to this Blog

An Excerpt to Tide You Over - Risk Areas

Still don't have a copy of the book?
Here's another small excerpt, this time from a list included in the books.

From Chapter 1 of both books:

Potential Compliance Risk Areas
· Antitrust/competition law
· Conflicts of interest
· Consumer protection/advertising
· Document management/retention
· Employment discrimination/labor
· Environmental
· Government investigations/dealings
· Harassment
· International
· Money laundering
· Political contributions/bribery/lobbying
· Privacy
· Product/service safety
· Taxes
· Wages and hours/ fair labor standards act (flsa)
· Workplace safety and health


To see a larger list and read about how compliance programs address these risks--and how this relates to the need for compliance professionals--order your copy of Building a Career in Compliance and Ethics.

Article Alert - JobWeb

Today, more article news, as JobWeb has posted an article by Joshua Leet. The article is titled "Do I Have to Sacrifice my Values to Succeed in Business" and it offers advice and information about Compliance and Ethics to college students.

The article is currently accessible at the top of the Career Library page or by clicking here.



This article joins last week's at SmartPros in helping to promote the new book and the field.

Reminder: You Can Buy the Book Today

Well, it's March, and that means that Building a Career is now available for immediate order at both SCCE and Amazon!

Further, while it was discounted for pre-order at Amazon, it is now listed at its regular price of $29.95, so unless you're using an Amazon gift certificate, we suggest ordering directly from the publisher SCCE.

There should be a more extensive web page up for the book soon. We'll keep you updated on that.

Marshaling Integrity - Rodney Smith

These excerpts are taken from our interview of Rodney Smith, a former in-house environmental, health, safety and ethics analyst.

I would say a nice chunk of my time is done for training. I do business law and ethics training, though not comprehensively; I just get into a few of the topics, including Harassment Prevention, Foreign Corrupt Practices, Copyright Compliance, and Environmental Law. The majority of my educational emphasis is Environmental, Safety and Health, so occupational health, safety and environmental is what I specialize in. In addition to training, I do a lot of procedure writing, auditing. Those are my three primary roles: auditor, policy and trainer (to make sure they uphold the policies).

They definitely have to be open-minded. A huge mistake would be to be close-minded, not willing to change, because you are going to be challenged, constantly. If you come up with a solution or program you think will work, there are always going to be people that tell you it won’t. They’ll have good reasons why, and you need to be able to defend yourself without being close-minded. You have to be really open-minded to all possible alternatives. There are a lot of ways to approach any single problem, and a lot of solutions. You have to be extremely creative with some of the solutions when it comes to compliance. Especially when the law’s not entirely defined. It’s not always concise; it doesn’t tell you what to do. It just leaves it open-ended, sometimes. So in situations like that, the person has to be willing to work with other people, be a team player and be open-minded. Always open.

Rodney Smith's interview appears in both Working for Integrity and Building a Career in Compliance and Ethics.

(All interviewees spoke to us about their own personal experiences and opinions; interviewees were not acting as a spokesperson or otherwise representing their current or former employers.)

Marshaling Integrity - Joseph Murphy

These excerpts are taken from our interview of Joseph Murphy, an in-house compliance lawyer and outside advisor (and Working for Integrity co-author).

In my role in CSLG I provide advice to companies. Much of this I can do from my office, on the phone or by e-mail. I may write or review draft company documents—codes, policy statements, audit reports—and provide the client with changes and ideas. I also do training and audits for companies. The training involves on-site visits and presentations to employees. These sessions are typically interactive, using exercises like role-plays or other techniques to involve the employees in the learning process. The audits also involve on-site visits including review of documents and interviews with employees, as well as walking the premises. I also participate in client meetings addressing a variety of compliance program elements.

Government needs to do more to recognize compliance programs and compliance professionals. For example, if you look at the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, you will not find any reference to compliance programs or compliance officers, even though this law deals with preventing corporate misconduct. This omission is a mistake. Government needs to make it clear that it will treat companies better if their compliance programs are rigorous and staffed by empowered compliance professionals. Government also needs to take steps to eliminate the legal barriers to having effective compliance programs. It should be clear, for example, that the results of compliance audits cannot be used against companies.

The people who are doing this work need to see themselves in a larger context as practicing in the field of ethics and compliance. They need their employers and society to recognize this as a discrete and very important field of practice, and that it is becoming truly a profession. It is necessary because the people doing this work need that degree of protection; they need that degree of independence and empowerment if they are going to work effectively.

Joseph Murphy's interview appears in both Working for Integrity and Building a Career in Compliance and Ethics.

(All interviewees spoke to us about their own personal experiences and opinions; interviewees were not acting as a spokesperson or otherwise representing their current or former employers.)


(This entry - and most of the blog - was written by Joshua Leet)

Marshaling Integrity - Linda Lipps

These excerpts are taken from our interview of Linda Lipps, a compliance officer who worked her way up into the field.

I’ve been in the Ethics arena since 1996. I was in an HR role with a large privately-owned company in Houston, and one of the principal owners came to me and said, “Linda, we’re thinking about implementing a values-based ethics program, and I’d like for you to become involved and work with our general counsel on this.” At the time, even from an HR perspective, to hear the term “values-based ethics program” was pretty unfamiliar. I really was clueless about what he was talking about, but I started doing some research, and of course, came across the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, and spent many hours talking with our general counsel. I decided this was something that was really intriguing to me, that I would enjoy doing, and could still use my people skills.

I started working with our general counsel, as well as our vice president of human resources, and spent a year just researching, because in 1996, there wasn’t a whole lot out there. We joined the Ethics Officers Association; I remember the first EOA meeting I went to, we filled a large, private dining room in a hotel. Today, EOA has to search for a hotel property to host a conference in order to be able to accommodate everyone. Within the first year, I attended an executive course, co-hosted by Bentley College and EOA, near Boston called Managing Ethics in Organizations (MEO). So from research, the EOA, networking and an executive course, we started putting a program together: implementing a helpline, putting in a case management database, designing a code of conduct, and rolling out ethics training. I was with this company for five years.

If someone is out there, and wants to get involved in the world of ethics, the best way to do it is to try to get on with a company and start out handling some of the calls for case intake. That provides you a really broad feel and understanding of what the employees’ issues and concerns are.

Linda Lipps' interview appears in both Working for Integrity and Building a Career in Compliance and Ethics.

(All interviewees spoke to us about their own personal experiences and opinions; interviewees were not acting as a spokesperson or otherwise representing their current or former employers.)

Marshaling Integrity - Odell Guyton

These excerpts are taken from our interview of Odell Guyton, a compliance officer for a large corporation.

The time I spend is really involved with a lot of senior executives at the company both in promoting and educating, making them and other employees aware of what compliance means and what we do as a group. We are also being partners with them. When I say partners, I mean that in a broader sense, in terms of assisting them in navigating through some of the complexities of this compliance area. We’re exposing them to how compliance touches their day-to-day work, and how we can be useful in making their work less risk-full, from a compliance-risk perspective, as well as providing guidance with regard to policies and company positions that they may not be exposed to on a regular basis, or have specific knowledge about.

There’s probably a larger, more visible opportunity now in multi-national corporations, in publicly traded corporations, primarily because of the impact of Sarbanes-Oxley. But then you have other laws that are coming into play at the state and local levels that are emphasizing compliance and emphasizing corporate ethics, company ethics, company compliance. You have things that are occurring in companies now that show a greater sensitivity/visibility to ethical conduct: not necessarily conduct that violates a legal standard, but conduct that violates ethical-sensitivity precepts.

I've never hired anyone just based on their degree; I hire people on the whole person. I’ve taken chances on people that haven’t had any formal training in compliance, because I knew that they had the ability and aptitude to understand (they would get the job done) over someone that had formal education in it. What can I say? I don’t think that having any particular piece of paper is going to make you more marketable; it depends on the individual job.

Odell Guyton's interview appears in both Working for Integrity and Building a Career in Compliance and Ethics.

(All interviewees spoke to us about their own personal experiences and opinions; interviewees were not acting as a spokesperson or otherwise representing their current or former employers.)

Marshaling Integrity - Richard Gruner

These excerpts are taken from our interview of Richard Gruner, a law professor and author in compliance.

I do a substantial amount of research and teaching in this area, particularly in the context of Continuing Education programs and scholarly research articles that I write about the standards governing compliance, as well as some discussion of techniques relevant to compliance programs…I do teach courses on white-collar and corporate crime in which I discuss the impact of compliance programs and the developing standards governing compliance techniques.

I view the compliance field as a chance to be positive, really at two different levels. One is that I really do believe that effective compliance programs prevent offenses, and thereby serve the public and serve the interests of the corporation involved. So in that sense a compliance-oriented practice can be a very positive, constructive practice, more so maybe than a lot of legal, where you’re just trying to clean up somebody else’s problem. The other is that the setting of corporate liabilities is a setting where corporations can distinguish themselves in a positive way. They can show that they are indeed responsible and forward looking and publicly oriented by taking an aggressive, preventative stance. So in that sense it’s part of a corporate-level ethics that is very positive and which has gained increasing interest and concern in the last few years. So those aspects of both public service and particularly, corporate ethics and positive corporate action, are very positive sides of the compliance field.

Richard Gruner's interview appears in both Working for Integrity and Building a Career in Compliance and Ethics.

(All interviewees spoke to us about their own personal experiences and opinions; interviewees were not acting as a spokesperson or otherwise representing their current or former employers.)

Marshaling Integrity - Peter Wymard

These excerpts are taken from our interview of Peter Wymard, who discussed the provision of online compliance training.

My role, specifically, is in our sales group. I spend my time out there in the world, quite frankly as best I can trying to get our message out. Now, if you think about it...what we do is provide a service over the Internet. Typically owners of a program are the legal departments of publicly traded or large companies that really have to care deeply about compliance & ethics issues, and the risk of compliance failure. So I am out there in the world, trying to get as close as I possibly can, to speak with the owner of the company’s compliance or ethics program. More and more frequently, companies have stand-alone compliance or ethics departments where there’s a clearly identified compliance officer or director of ethics.

Whatever you’re selling, it’s strategic selling, meaning they’re multiple buyers who weigh-in in the process: there’s the ultimate buyer, who’s going to sign the check; the ultimate owner of the program; perhaps user buyers, those people who on a daily basis may help administer the program internally; there’re the technical buyers, those folks who can’t say yes to a project, but they certainly can weigh-in heavily on saying no, that sort of thing. So whatever product you’re selling, it really requires significant buy-in from the prospective client from a number of forces. That’s making it a strategic sell.

Peter Wymard's interview is included in Working for Integrity: Finding the Perfect Job in the Rapidly Growing Compliance and Ethics Field.

(All interviewees spoke to us about their own personal experiences and opinions; interviewees were not acting as a spokesperson or otherwise representing their current or former employers.)


This is the final interview excerpt from Working for Integrity alone. Tomorrow, five excerpts from interviews that also appear in Building a Career in Compliance and Ethics will be posted.

Marshaling Integrity - George Wratney

These excerpts are taken from our interview of George Wratney, a former corporate ombudsman.

The function of the office rests on two pillars: one is neutrality; and one is confidentiality. The neutrality part is that we assure employees who call us or write us or otherwise contact us—knock on the door or trip us in the hall—that we don’t act as their agents, and we don’t act as agents for management. We’re a communications channel, and again I have to emphasize the word, alternate communications channel, for employees to raise issues in confidence.

Ombuds are not part of the management team of a company; they don’t investigate; they’re a conduit for information, back and forth, from the employee to the company, and then, when the results are determined, somehow the company, through the ombudsman, gets back [to the employee].

George Wratney's interview is included in Working for Integrity: Finding the Perfect Job in the Rapidly Growing Compliance and Ethics Field.

(All interviewees spoke to us about their own personal experiences and opinions; interviewees were not acting as a spokesperson or otherwise representing their current or former employers.)

Marshaling Integrity - Rebecca Walker

These excerpts are taken from our interview of Rebecca Walker, who we asked about providing compliance advice from a large law firm and also as a solo practitioner.

My interest in the beginning really lay in white-collar, criminal defense work. Compliance, especially then, in the early 90s, was in many ways an adjunct to criminal work, and in some ways it still is. I say that because (especially in the beginning) compliance really emanates from the Sentencing Guidelines, which are criminal; the Sentencing Guidelines guide judges in terms of sentencing for crimes. When companies got in trouble, whether they were under investigation or under indictment, they would often go to compliance to better their situation with prosecutors, or because the SEC or another agency insisted as part of a consent decree.

From my practice perspective, what I think is the mistake that is sometimes made is that outside compliance professionals, and in-house too, perhaps forget that their client is the company. Keeping in mind that the client is the company means keeping in mind that the client is not the general counsel or the CEO or high-level management. Every outside lawyer is subject to that issue, not just in the compliance field.

Rebecca Walker's interview is included in Working for Integrity: Finding the Perfect Job in the Rapidly Growing Compliance and Ethics Field.

(All interviewees spoke to us about their own personal experiences and opinions; interviewees were not acting as a spokesperson or otherwise representing their current or former employers.)

Marshaling Integrity - Christopher Vigale

These excerpts are taken from our interview of Christopher Vigale, who told us about being an outside compliance analyst.

Essentially, I help figure out how to relay particular supplies by looking at who the client is and assessing the risk involved (particularly the risks the client will face). I examine how other similar companies perhaps dealt with the same issues, and whether or not these issues pushed them towards compliance. Just basic client work.

…it was somewhat upsetting when I first started and had to do a synopsis of Sarbanes-Oxley. It is a huge piece of legislation, with no opposition, in response to massive scandal. And it’s not specific to the corporate world. Sarbanes-Oxley shouldn’t have come out because of Enron; I saw the changes instituted by Sarbanes-Oxley and wondered where was it all before? Everyone knew about those things [scandals], and finally something was done, but it was a little too little, too late. With more involvement and attention, it could’ve all been helped.

Christopher Vigale's interview is included in Working for Integrity: Finding the Perfect Job in the Rapidly Growing Compliance and Ethics Field.

(All interviewees spoke to us about their own personal experiences and opinions; interviewees were not acting as a spokesperson or otherwise representing their current or former employers.)

It’s Official: The new book is available at SCCE!

Building a Career in Compliance and Ethics is now available in SCCE’s store!

The book also shows up on the main page.
If you prefer to order by fax, there is a pdf available for download/viewing.

The price for both SCCE members and non-members is $29.95.


Spread the word, and order your copy here!


(A new banner link will be added above all posts, joining the one for Amazon. This post will also be added to the sidebar in the Important Posts and Working for Integrity Links sections.)