A responsible organisation is built on core ethical values, and should continually strive to conduct its business activities according to good governance standards.
Ethics is unlike standard organisational functions such as quality control, human resources, product development or marketing. Ethics is not parallel to these functions, but in all of them at once. Organisations may perform their standard functions ethically or unethically.
EthicSA can:
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Assess whether an organisation follows best-practice standards for ethics management; and
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Rate an organisation's capacity for ethical business conduct and its ethical culture, using objective measuring instruments based on internationally accepted principles and standards.
Ethics auditing focuses on an organisation's ethics effectiveness (ethics infrastructure and ethical culture). It does not make claims or judgments about either organisational ethics performance or the integrity of individuals in the organisation.
For example, a CEO who communicates an inherent, unwavering commitment to integrity can set the tone in an organisation with an otherwise weak formal ethics infrastructure. Conversely, an organisation with an exemplary formal ethics infrastructure may be seriously harmed by the misconduct of one influential individual.
Thus, the result of an ethics audit is an indication of probabilities, not certainties.
An ethics audit of organisational ethics capacity and ethical culture is accompanied by confidential feedback, in the form of a comprehensive report, indicating specific guidelines and procedural steps necessary for improving a rated organisation's ethics capacity and ethical culture.
Please contact us should you require more information regarding the methods and benefits of performing an ethics audit in your organisation.
