The perhaps incredulous question titling this month's newsletter underscores one of the great paradoxes of our time: as we see more ethical mishaps, lapses and worse, we are also seeing a lot more discussion and commitment to ethics than I have seen in over 25 years of doing work in this space. Maybe an ethical vacuum creates greater awareness of its true, intrinsic value?
Speaking of ethics, I just got back from two ethics-related trips in August - Puerto Rico and Colombia. See features below - one sharing the 2019 Annual Report of the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico (for whom I serve as independent ethics advisor and wrote the ethics update on pp. 69-75) and the other sharing the Colombian newspaper Portafolio's interview relating to my kick-off keynote for the 2019 Colombia's LAFT Anti-Money Laundering conference. And I'm not done with ethics-related travel this month - in 2 days I'm off to Edinburgh, Scotland, to attend the launch of an exciting AI ethics start-up on whose Advisory Board I serve - I will share that news in September's edition.
Finally, here are our #ESGT features of this month:
The #ESGT Monthly Chart features a Glassdoor study that basically equates happy employees to happy customers - take note employers!
The #ESGT Monthly Resource features the Business Roundtable's groundbreaking "beyond shareholders" declaration - for my analysis also see this E&C Pulse interview with Ben DiPietro
The #ESGT Upcoming Event of the Month - hoping to see many friends in DC late September when I do my "ESG+Technology Board Oversight Workshop" at the NACD Global Summit 2019
It's been one of the busiest Augusts I can remember - I hope that you too have had a relaxing or productive (or both!) month as well!
