Using employment interviews to get—and give—ethics information
In some companies, hiring interviews include a compliance and ethics component. How should this be done?
One fairly common approach is to have interviewees describe a compliance and ethics challenge they’ve faced in a prior job and how they addressed it. (However, interviewers should make it clear that they are not seeking confidential information about any other company or individual.)
Another approach is to present the interviewee with a hypothetical ethics quandary and ask how they would deal with it.
The benefits of the right questions
These approaches do a few things:
Help determine whether ethics is a strength or weakness for the candidate, which could impact the hiring decision.
Send a message to employment candidates that compliance and ethics are important to the company, which hopefully they will remember if they get the job.
Send a message within the company generally—particularly to those who conduct interviews (human resources and others)—that compliance and ethics are essential to the company.
In my view, this is usually a very good practice. It provides many benefits and does so at little or no cost.
It goes both ways
Additionally, it should be a two-way street. Employees should also ask questions of their prospective employers. What should interviewers ask? It might be a question about the compliance and ethics program in general. Is it strong? Is the tone at the top healthy? How does the workforce typically view compliance and ethics? Perhaps most importantly, how do employees feel about raising sensitive matters to management?
Another approach is to ask about risks of misconduct in the company’s industry. Even where a company seems ethical, one might want to do extra due diligence if its competitors or others with whom it deals (e.g., customers, suppliers) routinely engage in questionable activities.
Also note that the questions should vary by position, at least for higher-ups. Certainly, this would be true with interviews of board members and others near “the top.” And the question process should be supported by appropriate training, communications, auditing, and monitoring.
There are many other topics you or the candidate might ask about but remember not to treat this like you’re conducting an investigation. A balance should be struck.
Source(s): CEP Magazine, received on November 23, 2024