Ethical Audit

Ethics are moral principles in respect to a particular group of people. It is doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do. Interest in business ethics augmented during the 1980s and there was an emergence of rules and regulation to govern business conduct and practices with increased scrutiny to the level of professional standards an enterprise could produce. The purpose of the emergence of ethical practices in business was to set up a procedure and a code of conduct for both internal and external activities within a company (Moon, 2001). This is in an effort to ensure respect to both the workers and their companies in an effort to create a constructive working environment. Different companies set up these codes of conduct based on the nature of the transactions that they deal with. These rules of conduct are only effective if they are strictly followed, as the discernible business ethics of an enterprise are only as strong as the ethics of its weakest member.

One way of protecting business ethics is through an audit. An audit is in essence an appraisal. It is usually conducted in respect of financial records; however, quality or any other sector that requires regulating can be audited. Ethical Audits are usually conducted in an effort to, gauge, account for, and help improve an enterprise’s collective performance and due to this factor should ideally be conducted by a third party to ensure impartiality. An enterprise may also have internal auditors whose tasks mainly include maintaining consistency in the company’s internal standards.

Purpose of an Ethical Audit

Audits are meant to give an analysis of and address potential ethical dilemmas that employees may face in the course of they are employment. They are also meant to highlight discrepancies between what a company states should be the code of conduct and what the situation actually is on the ground in order to quell uncertainties (Moon, 2001). An effective audit should also show how working conditions in an enterprise could be improved. To this effect, it should also show how different factions and factors present in an organization work to the benefit or to the detriment of the employees of an organization (Cory, 2005).

An ethical audit is also a chance to show to the stakeholders in an organization how effective its policies are to the bottom line of an organization. The results of an audit, precisely a positive one, should help show the commitment of an enterprise toward quality and transparency to its stakeholders. If the results happen to be negative or indeed less than savory then it simply helps establish a platform from which the company can improve on. In this way, audits can be a tool for risk management in that problem areas are swiftly identified, assessed and dealt with. This ultimately helps align the priorities of an enterprise straight and minimize or manage the occurrence of unforeseen events in an organization in order to get the most out of the output of an enterprise.

Process of an Ethical Audit

Review Of The Company’s Ethics

The first step to conducting an ethical audit is to look at the rules a company has identified as its code of conduct and compare it to an employee’s actual behavior. This is done in order to ascertain whether a company’s rules are clear, enough to the employees supposed to follow them thus the plainer and less vague the rules are the better it is for the workers this is in an effort to root out ambiguity or lack of clarity in the rules of an organization (Frederick, 1999). In addition, an enterprise needs a defined system of performance review such that the employees know what is expected of them, and what to expect in the event that they commit a transgression.

Review Of Past Conduct

The second step to conducting of an ethical audit is to look at the past conduct of the employee under review and tackle any breaches or uncertainties that the employer may have toward the employee. This is done in order to address any issues that come up during the course of employment and look into areas that may need correction or improvement. It is crucial to conduct the audit efficiently as even though they are for the benefit of the organization they tend to disrupt normal working days and thus should be scheduled appropriately in order not to cause undue delays. It is also important to give prompt feedback to the audit.

Look For Areas Of Improvement

During the course of the audit, it is important to constantly keep an eye out for areas, which might be of concern to the policies and rules of procedure of the company. While there is nothing new about ethical auditing it is imperative for a company to continually innovate ways that could improve work place conditions (Frederick, 1999). It is important to note that ethical differs from legal such that a company may meet all its legal requirements and still be engaged in unethical practices.

Reference

Moon, C. (2001). Business ethics. London: Economist.

Frederick, R. (1999). A companion to business ethics. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishers.

Cory, J. (2005). Activist business ethics. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.