Compliance Training That Doesn’t Feel Like Punishment

Empty conference room with chairs, projector on table, papers scattered on carpet, blank projection screen

I once sat through a 90-minute compliance training that consisted of a man in a suit reading bullet points off a screen. I passed the quiz. My colleagues passed the quiz. Nothing changed.

The problem with most compliance training isn’t the content. It’s the assumption that one-size-fits-all delivery will change behavior.

AI is changing that. Imagine training that adapts to your organization’s actual policies, culture, and risk profile — customized at scale, without months of development time.

After 20+ years building ethics programs, I’ve seen what works. Relevance works. Engagement works. Generic doesn’t.

The technology to fix this finally exists.

What Every Graduate Should Know Before Starting Work

Graduate in cap and gown standing before a large maze with a city skyline and sunrise in the background

College graduations are around the corner.

In my 26 years in the corporate world, I’ve seen too many young professionals sabotage their career start. They fail to recognize new pitfalls. To the Class of 2026, here are a few things to keep in mind:

  • If you grew up sharing your Netflix and Disney+ passwords with friends, please be warned: you will likely get fired if you share any work passwords with anyone, inside or outside of the organization. This is true even if your supervisor asks you to share your password with a colleague while you are on vacation (true story).
  • Think before posting pictures of your colleagues or work environment on social media. Even though you grew up doing this at school and at camp and at Starbucks, many organizations have policies prohibiting such posts.
  • Chances are you will also have to add a disclaimer to all of your online profiles (LinkedIn, Instagram, X, etc.), reading something like “Any views expressed are solely mine and not those of my employer.” And that disclaimer doesn’t give you permission to post anything you want. A racist post will bring discredit to your employer and can be cause for termination. I recall the story of an employee disciplined for posting a picture of himself holding a Confederate flag on his private Facebook page. A “friend” was rightfully offended and forwarded the post to the company’s hotline.

I could provide other examples but my point is that some of the behaviors your parents and teachers found acceptable or tolerated during your teenage years won’t fly in the workplace. It’s not always intuitive. Ask HR for your company’s policy manual on your first day and read it, especially the sections on social media, intellectual property, and conflicts of interests.

This is an exciting time for any young adult. Make sure your first work experience is a positive one by reevaluating your everyday behaviors through this new filter of the workplace.

Fifty Years of Business Ethics: A Milestone Worth Celebrating

The W. Michael Hoffman Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University is turning 50 this year. That’s worth pausing on.

Founded in 1976, the Hoffman Center is one of the oldest and most respected business ethics institutes in the world. Think about what 1976 looked like: Watergate was barely in the rearview mirror, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act hadn’t been signed yet, and the idea that a university would dedicate an entire center to business ethics was ahead of its time.

They were right to do it early. The world caught up.

On October 15 and 16, 2026, Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts is hosting a two-day celebration. The festivities begin Thursday evening with a reception and dinner ($50 to attend), followed by a full conference and reception on Friday. If you work in ethics, compliance, or business leadership, this is not an event to miss.

Ethics doesn’t sell itself. It never has. Getting business leaders to take ethics seriously — really seriously, not just as a line item in a compliance budget — takes sustained effort by people who believe the work matters even when the headlines don’t demand it. That’s what the Hoffman Center has been doing since Gerald Ford was president.

Their mission is simple to state and difficult to execute: align effective business performance with ethical business conduct. Not one or the other. Both. The “and” in that sentence is where most organizations stumble.

As a member of the Center’s Advisory Board, I’ve seen firsthand how seriously they take that mission — bringing together academics and practitioners through programs like their Brown Bag Research Series and ethics@work, where real dilemmas get examined by people who live them.

Fifty years of that kind of work deserves a celebration. I hope to see you there.

Register here.

Open-door policy

I once had a boss who always smiled and asked me how I was doing when we crossed paths in the hallway. Every day at lunch he would sit at a large table in the cafeteria and more than half the department would join him for conversation. The only forbidden topic was work. If you were sitting nearby, you would see about ten of us laughing for thirty or forty minutes, sharing personal stories. Not once did I hear him say that he had an open-door policy. We all knew that we could walk into his office any time, and we did.

I also worked for another leader who repeatedly said that they had an open-door policy. That leader always looked stressed, rarely smiled, and barely acknowledged anyone in the hallway, evidently rushing to the next meeting. Their office door was closed most of the time. No one knocked on it.

If you have to announce that you have an open-door policy, you probably don’t have one.

Culture and tenure

Apple is turning 50 this year.

One of its employees – and only one – has remained on the payroll since 1976.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Chris Espinosa, Employee #8, shared that he could never be let go because his severance package would be too expensive for Apple.

I won’t suggest that Espinosa coasted at Apple for 50 years, confident that he couldn’t be let go. On the contrary, he made significant contributions over the decades. But his unique story should make us pause and ask “Why do some employees stay in our organization for so long?”

Find your long-tenured employees and ask them.

It might turn out to be your most actionable culture survey yet.

What is good for the hive…

Australia is the latest country to pass a law protecting workers who don’t respond to work-related messages outside of working hours.

According to NPR, “a 2022 survey by the Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute […] found that seven out of 10 Australians performed work outside of scheduled working hours, with many reporting experiencing physical tiredness, stress and anxiety as a result.”

As a result, these employees are likely to experience resentment, which they often use to justify some form of retaliation against the company (lying about their performance, stealing time or resources, etc.)

Giving our employees some breathing room between shifts is good for their health, and that of the organization.

Unfavorable winds

Think of employees as sailors and leadership as the wind.

Sailors can navigate forward no matter the direction of the wind, but anything other than beam reach is more challenging and time consuming.

If your organization is struggling with a poor compliance culture, could it be that leadership is blowing in the wrong direction?

We should have seen it coming

We knew there would be a corruption scandal around the Paris Olympics when the city was selected in 2017. This is not a jab on Paris. It happens with every Olympic event.

We also know that sales professionals who are paid only on commissions and required to meet unreasonable targets are almost certain to cheat and lie. We know this the minute we create the incentive program.

What else is your organization doing today that clearly points to a compliance failure in the future?