How to Develop a Business Ethics Checklist

Every business faces the challenge of clear communications during implementation of a business ethics policy. A declaration of principles and memos about changes to a company's corporate responsibility statement may be interpreted differently by workers. A checklist of ethical business practices can help employees understand their roles in maintaining ethical standards.

Things You'll Need

• Business ethics test
• Independent consultants or auditing firms
• Employee assessments

Instructions

Exercise Proper Ethics in Every Aspect of Business

1. Mandate memorization of your business ethics checklist from all new employees as they complete training. Your requirement that each member of your team pass a business ethics test with flying colors will drive home the importance of these standards.

2. Arrange frequent and random employee assessments as part of your business ethics checklist. These assessments allow your managers and supervisors to keep track of potential ethical issues that can be mediated before they fully develop.

3. Publish your business ethics checklist for public consumption to develop strong public opinion behind your company. You can place advertisements in local newspapers as an inexpensive way of educating the public on how your company maintains a high standard.

4. Develop a list of independent consultants and auditing firms that can review your entire company in the context of a business ethics checklist. These professionals are unhindered in their analyses and provide reports on ethically gray areas that your employee assessments did not find.

5. Distribute your business ethics checklist for every office in your company. Your checklist should utilize the highest standards possible, even in facilities located in regions with lower corporate standards.

6. Add a provision regarding potential copyright and intellectual property issues as you develop an ethics checklist. This issue should be placed at the top of the list to avoid development of an idea that is already claimed legally by another company.

7. Outline an extensive section for production ethics in the development stage of your checklist. Your plant managers should check measures for worker safety, production sustainability and product testing before proceeding with a project.

8. Steer clear of accounting issues by creating a section in your checklist for transparency in accounting. This portion of your ethics checklist should feature a higher threshold for signatures than other sections due to the amount of attention paid to corporate finances following the Enron scandal.

Tips & Warnings

• Schedule meetings with your human resources and legal teams to develop the basic components of an ethics checklist. Your human resources manager can outline hiring and confidentiality requirements set forth by state or federal laws. Corporate lawyers can establish the outer limits of action based on legal precedent.