SPECIAL FOCUS
2025 GLOBAL ETHICS SUMMIT

A look at this year's content highlights, thematic throughlines, calls to action, and more

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From April 6-8 2025, ethics and compliance leaders from around the world gathered in Atlanta, GA, and virtually for the year's biggest business integrity event. Here's why so many of them vowed to return next year.

by BILL COFFIN | Editor in Chief, Ethisphere

This year's Global Ethics Summit hosted 2,000 (and counting!) attendees from nearly 500 organizations spanning nearly every industry and continent. 307 of these organizations are members of the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance (BELA), representing a whopping 85% of total BELA Membership.

As always, the heart of the Summit is its robust agenda, and this year featured dozens of Main Stage keynotes, discussions and data presentations; breakouts and peer-to-peer sessions; and in-person workshops. All this, in addition to industry roundtables, networking breaks, and nearly constant Ethicast live streaming.

All of this content covered a wide range of topics, but especially the power of ethical management, the challenge and opportunities posed by artificial intelligence, and a valuable reality check on the value of ethics and compliance in a world of growing regulatory turmoil.

Ethical Management

Throughout the event, we heard from a wide range of thought leaders who spoke to the crucial ability of people managers to elevate E&C messages, and the strong influence they have on their fellow employees. Middle managers, floor managers and team leaders have a disproportionately high degree of influence over the culture, values, and tone of any organization. That’s why it is so important not just to train managers on how to lead with integrity, but to empower them and equip them with the tools that they’ll need to really bring ethics and compliance into the teams they manage.

In multiple sessions, attendees learned about the value of fostering strong relationship with the board, senior leadership, and sister control functions. While this subject was touched on repeatedly, one of the most impactful discussions was around the ways in which E&C can embed itself within safety processes and systems and really show the value of the function.

RELATED SESSIONS

Put the Power of Managers Behind the Tone & Culture of an Organization | Understand how managers at every level can affect the culture and tone of an organization, combat organizational pressure, and foster a strong speak-up culture

Aligning E&C Priorities with Business Strategy and Cultivating a Partnership with the Board | Learn the importance of understanding the business, getting E&C buy-in from senior leadership and the Board, and tips for cultivating a partnership with senior leadership and Board members.

The key thing about this conference is the ability to network, benchmark, and learn from each other. This is a time in society that we don’t need to be in a silo. We need to have these kinds of conversations.

YOLANDA RABUN
Associate General Counsel
Trust & Compliance Officer
IBM

Artificial Intelligence

AI was a hotbed of discussion throughout the Global Ethics Summit, and some of the event’s most popular sessions covered this topic in depth. Throughout these discussions, we saw a throughline reminiscent of how E&C leaders reacted to the separate advents of the Global Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) from a few years ago: They know what questions to ask when it comes to AI, and for many organizations, it’s time to take action it, even if only to put parameters in place around its use.

Ethics and compliance leaders spoke of their ability to step in and provide leadership on AI governance as part of an enterprise-wide collaboration over it. Put another way, AI is too big for any one function to own. But more than that, there is a maturity around AI now in the E&C space that simply wasn’t there a year ago. And with that maturity comes perspective.

As one speaker noted, it’s great to implement new technologies such as AI, but if E&C leaders don’t bring more than that to the table, where is the value? Data alone doesn’t tell a story, and if E&C can’t provide the meaning behind the data, then nobody will care what they have to say.

Likewise, the fears around AI have shifted from “what will happen if we use this tool” to “what will happen if we don’t?” As one panelist remarked, AI isn’t going to take anyone’s job…but somebody using AI will.

RELATED SESSIONS

Successful AI Governance: Are We There Yet?
Hear the latest insights on AI governance, partnering with functions, and how to ensure AI's use of AI aligns with the organization’s Code.

A Conversation on AI Risks & Rewards in Third-Party Risk Management | Leaders from Ethisphere and GAN Integrity discuss how AI can tame information and due diligence overload.

What was your most important learning from the 2025 Global Ethics Summit?

How to better integrate AI into my E&C program
Getting insight on what the future of U.S. regulatory prirorities might be
Insights on how to better work with my Board of Directors
Actionable, practical insights on a specific part of my program
Strategies for forging stronger partnerships with allied functions

The compliance function is a strong community. We are not competing here. We can talk about it, exchange ideas, benchmark, and rely on each other.

FELIPE MALDONADO
Director, Compliance Programs
Salesforce

The State of Compliance Risk

Speakers and attendees alike shared notes on how upside-down the regulatory environment feels right now, especially in the United States. But the message that repeated itself again and again was how organizations were doubling down on their ethics and compliance programs. Regardless of the turmoil in Washington, the risks organizations face haven’t changed. And as the former regulators who spoke at the Global Ethics Summit pointed out, the risk of enforcement has not gone away at all to any meaningful degree. If anything, enforcement penalties for organizations have, in fact, increased. At a time of so many different perspectives, this was one area where there was unanimous sentiment: strong ethics and compliance programs should keep going. Their leaders should keep standing up those programs. And organizations should keep backing them.

RELATED SESSIONS

The Times, They Are A-Changin': Insights from Former Government Officials on the Evolving Global Enforcement Environment | Former high-ranking officials for leading U.S. regulatory and law enforcement agencies discuss key enforcement priorities, shifts from the last administration, and essential compliance tips for E&C leaders to prepare for both the expected and unexpected.

DOJ Compliance Expectations: An Inside Perspective | Get an inside perspective on the DOJ’s compliance expectations around what a sound compliance program should look like, the DOJ’s evolving corporate compliance expectations, and strategies for companies to demonstrate compliance.

It's Not Too Late!

All panel discussions from the 2025 Global Ethics Summit, as well as resources from trusted vendors, event polling data, and more are available on-demand through the end of June. Register today to be part of the biggest business integrity event of the year!