A Corporate Compliance & Ethics Week Success Story

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As you probably know, we sent a call out on all of our social media to share your Corporate Compliance & Ethics Week pictures and stories with us. Well, Jeremy Beakley, Compliance Officer from the State Procurement Office of the State of Arizona Department of Administration, answered our call…with a potluck flyer.

You see, Jeremy arranged a potluck to celebrate CC&E week. And because the potluck was on Monday, May 5th, they did a “Cinco de Compliance” theme. All of this piqued my interest, so I called Jeremy for a chat. When we spoke I learned that this was the first compliance event their office had ever held. Jeremy explained that the official compliance department is new for the procurement office and that their CC&E week event really helped spread the word. Putting a face behind compliance is one of Jeremy’s top goals this year.

Since it was their first year celebrating, Jeremy started small, inviting their 40 staff and Chief Procurement Officers from the other Arizona state agencies. The potluck idea encouraged everyone to participate, and kept the event feeling more like a celebration and less like a meeting. The biggest benefit, Jeremy said, was that once people were there, they were really engaged. So much so, that they were all for participating in some ethical role playing. Inspired by Amy Block Joy’s recent article, Ethics and “Breaking Bad”: Developing and practicing ethical skills in Compliance & Ethics Professional, Jeremy wanted to get his office thinking about ethical grey areas.

Jeremy kicked off the ethical decision making discussion by reviewing the hard and fast, black and white ethical rules. From there, participants were encouraged to role play more difficult scenarios. Because he came prepared, Jeremy had developed scenarios that he thought would engage his participants, and teach them how to think about more difficult ethical decisions. “It was very rewarding,” Jeremy said, “hearing unique points of view, and seeing how people applied our black and white policies to real ‘grey area’ scenarios.”