Whether you're part of a public or privately held company, a non-profit or a government agency, ethics training should be an integral and ongoing effort in your organization. And in public companies, Sarbanes-Oxley training is not a substitute for ethics training.

Every organization should ensure that its executives, managers and employees understand what the definition of ethical behavior is within their environment. Complete breakdowns in ethical behavior or even one-time ethical lapses within your management and employee ranks can cost you lots of dough. And worse, can tarnish or even ruin your organization's hard earned reputation with customers, vendors and the public.

• A lack of a clear definition with regard to ethical behavior
• Earnings pressure
• Cost reduction mandates
• Sales quota initiatives
• A corporate culture imbued with a dog-eat-dog mentality
• Bonus plans and benchmarks that require short term gains in stock price
• People that have been promoted despite a lack of skills necessary to succeed in their new positions.
• A culture that rewards people that have "crossed the ethical line" as perceived by their peers and subordinates
• Create and implement significant service discriminators that will turn satisfied customers into loyal customers.
• Service tech compensation and retention strategies.

Any one of the above can cause a lapse in ethical behavior. Several of them coming together may cause the "perfect storm," which enables basically good people to make really bad ethical decisions more than once-or collaborate with others to reach objectives in a manner inconsistent with ethically acceptable behavior. Ethical lapse are a slippery slope. And most ethical lapse are never seen or heard about by senior management—and many are covered up or glossed over by managers or executives to "save" a star player from being fired.

Managers and executives must be trained in order to distinguish between "honest ethical lapses," as opposed to a decision to intentionally breach the organizations' ethics. In the latter case, a zero tolerance policy must be in place and visible. In the former, coaching, review and additional training can often put things back on track and forestall similar lapses in the future.

Our PhD, licensed clinical psychologists will work with your organization's senior management to design an ethics training program that suits the unique requirements of your organization. For any program to be successful, it must be ongoing, and have built-in feedback loops, evaluation and improvement, and of course, the visible support of senior management. Maverick will design your organization's training program with all of those things in mind.