The Eight Pillars of an Ethical Culture
The Foundations of Building an
Effective Culture of Compliance
2 0 2 5 U P D A T E
Companies that have strong values-based cultures are better places to work and well-poised for long-term success. This guide focuses on the foundational elements of an effective and sustainable culture, consolidated into the Eight Pillars.
PILLAR ONE
PILLAR TWO
PILLAR THREE
PILLAR FOUR
PILLAR FIVE
PILLAR SIX
PILLAR SEVEN
PILLAR EIGHT
Vice President,
Data Strategy,
Ethisphere
Ethical culture matters – to employees, investors, and all stakeholders. Companies that have strong values-based cultures are better places to work and well-poised for long-term success. In this eBook, we focus on the foundational elements of an effective and sustainable culture, which we have consolidated into the eight pillars of an ethical culture.
This framework defines the key metrics of a strong ethical culture:
Do your employees understand what is expected of them when it comes to ethical behavior?
Do they know where to go if they have questions? Are they willing to speak up?
Do they trust the reporting process enough to engage in it? Or do they fear retaliation or lack of an appropriate response?
Ethisphere defined these key pillars with input from experts, ethics and compliance leaders from our Business Ethics Leadership Alliance (BELA), and also by considering guidance by international organizations and regulators. We distilled this into Ethisphere’s Culture Quotient (CQ), a survey that has been used by top global companies to determine employee perceptions of the organization’s culture of compliance. The data highlighted in this report was gathered between 2023 and 2024 and represents the views of nearly 1.3 million responses across 100 organizations.
There are many benefits to fostering a culture in which employees feel supported when they speak up. Not only will you reduce people-driven risks, but your organization will also hear from a range of voices – sharing new ideas and other ways to make the company more successful.
Our team has helped hundreds of companies measure and improve their speak-up cultures. As we look forward to 2025 and beyond, we’ve refined what and how we measure: helping companies around the world adopt a more frequent cultural temperature check with pulse assessments, going deeper on the lived employee
experience when reporting reporting misconduct to get at what’s not working and what compels employees to speak up.
At Ethisphere, we are privileged to work with leading companies at every stage of their culture journey. We hope you find this eBook valuable and informative to your work.
If you have any questions about
how to assess and improve your
culture of compliance, get in
touch. We are here to help.
Awareness of the E&C
Program and Resources
Perceptions of
the Function
Speaking Up
Managing Pressure
Organizational
Justice
Perceptions
of Manager
of Leadership
Perceptions Peers
and Environment’
