Join host Bill Coffin as he interviews the top thought leaders in the world of business integrity as they share the best practices, innovations, and insights that showcase something every truly successful organization knows: strong ethics is good business.
In this episode we speak with Vera Cherepanova, Executive Director of Boards of the Future - a U.S.-based nonprofit advancing ethical leadership and integrity at the highest levels of corporate power - to find out what thousands of SEC filings reveal about the gap between what companies say about ethics and what they can prove.
The 2026 proxy season tested Boards of Directors on several fronts at once: legal challenges, political scrutiny, a fragmented voting landscape, and an SEC that is handing responsibility for governance back to boards and management. Against that backdrop, investors no longer want to know only whether a company says it governs ethics, risk, and AI responsibly. They want to know whether it can show it.
To find out, Boards of the Future analyzed 4,766 SEC filings from S&P 500 companies and from the honorees of two major reputation rankings, including Ethisphere's 2026 World's Most Ethical Companies®.
The result is the recently released report, 2026 Proxy Season Review: Ethics, AI Ethics, and Risk Disclosures, which shows a steady gap between what companies claim and what they disclose as proof. Ninety-four percent of companies name AI as a risk, but only 40% have assigned a board committee to oversee it. Ninety-two percent run an enterprise risk management program, yet just 22% state a risk appetite, and those are concentrated in heavily regulated sectors like financial services. And while nearly every company calls ethics foundational to its culture, only one in ten reports culture or ethics measurements to its board.
Get your copy of 2026 Proxy Season Review: Ethics, AI Ethics, and Risk Disclosures, visit https://newboards.org
Connect with Vera on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/follow-vera-cherepanova/
Follow Ethisphere on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/899505/admin/
Visit the Ethisphere Resource Center: https://www.ethisphere.com/resources
5 Oct 2026
Christian Hunt on How to Humanize Compliance
Managing people-created risk is at the heart of what ethics and compliance is all about. Whether it’s making sure people understand, follow, and properly interpret the rules, advancing cultures of integrity, or measuring those systems to ensure that they’re effective…this work plays a crucial role in reducing organizational risk and building value.
But it’s so easy to get caught up in the creation and maintenance of programs, policies, and procedures, that we can lose sight of the reason why they exist at all: to modify human behavior.
Whether it’s by stick or by carrot, these things—and indeed, ethics and compliance itself—is really there to get people to behave with honesty, transparency, and integrity. And that’s where the discipline of behavioral science can play an important role in helping E&C programs make the greatest impact for the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
Our guest for this episode is Christian Hunt, the founder of Human Risk, a behavioral science-led consulting and training firm, specializing in the fields of Ethics & Compliance. He is also the author of the book, Humanizing Rules: Bringing Behavioral Science to Ethics and Compliance. And in our discussion, he'll dive into how the way we enforce the rules can be as important as the rules we’re enforcing.
Connect with Christian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/humanrisk/ Visit Human Risk at: https://www.human-risk.com/ Read the Human Risk Substack: https://humanrisk.substack.com/ Listen to the Human Risk podcast: https://www.humanriskpodcast.com/ Order your copy of Humanizing Rules: Bringing Behavioral Science to Ethics and Compliance: https://a.co/d/0crAdOD9
Subscribe to Ethsiphere Insights: https://ethisphere.com/newsletter/Ethisphere Resource Center: https://ethisphere.com/resources/
25 Sept 2026
Why Managers Are the Missing Link in Ethical Culture and Compliance
Ethics and compliance programs often look strongest on paper. The policies are written, the training is assigned, the hotline is live, and the governance structure is in place. But their real test comes later, in the everyday moments when people face pressure, uncertainty, competing incentives, or a gray area that no policy can fully anticipate.
This is where culture makes the difference between a compliance program that merely exists and one that helps people understand how to apply established rules and procedures when the business is moving quickly and the right answer may not feel obvious.
In this episode, veteran compliance expert and compliance culture champion Evie Wentink, Founder of Ethical Edge Experts, shares how you can make your ethics and compliance program more practical, actionable, and connected to your way business actually runs.
Evie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eviewentink/Ethical Edge Experts: https://www.ethicaledgeexperts.com/Ethisphere Culture Assessments: https://ethisphere.com/solutions/culture-assessment/
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