Hundreds of students and community members filled the auditorium in the Behavioral Sciences Building on Nov. 15 to hear Scott Sullivan, vice president and chief integrity and compliance officer of Newmont Corporation, present “Ready or Not: Ethical Realities for Leaders in 2023 and Beyond.”
Newmont is the world’s leading gold company and a producer of copper, zinc, lead and silver. Founded in 1921 and publicly traded since 1925, Newmont is one of the top 10 publicly traded companies headquartered in Colorado and is the only gold producer listed in the S&P 500 Index. The event was hosted in partnership with the “Meet the Founders” Distinguished Speakers Series, the CSU Center for Ethics and Human Rights and the Provost’s Ethics Colloquium.
“Leaders play a central role in shaping an organization’s culture,” Sullivan said. “Instead of placing the burden on employees to ‘speak up’, leaders must approach employees and ‘Ask, Listen and Act’ to ensure that ethical problems are prevented and addressed immediately and proactively.”
Sullivan encouraged leaders to navigate the “fractured” world of volatility and uncertainty by being proactive and focusing on the culture of the organization. What drives people? How is success measured? What kinds of behaviors are being rewarded? Are the ends being used to justify the means? And if employees are “silent,” he said, it could mean employees have determined speaking up is futile or even dangerous. Sullivan urged leaders to pay attention to anonymous survey tools as well as data on employee engagement and reports on whistleblowing hotlines, which can help identify and target pockets of organizational silence.
Ethical issues in higher education
Following the large seminar presentation to students and community members, Sullivan discussed contemporary ethical issues in higher education with a smaller group of CSU administrators and leaders representing Faculty Council, the Committee for Gender Equity, the Multicultural Staff and Faculty Council, the Center for Ethics and Human Rights and other groups across campus.
“Ethical scandals, whether they occur in the corporate world or at institutions of higher education, are often the products of cultures of suppression and silence and the incentivization of ends over the means,” he stated.
“In cultures of suppression, it is always the marginalized – the least powerful – who are affected most,” said Lumina Albert, an associate professor of management and business ethics at CSU and executive director of the Center for Ethics and Human Rights. However, she continued, “ethical lapses eventually catch up and become costly for the entire organization.”
‘Advocacy Program for Ethical Excellence’
Albert said this can be prevented by incorporating effective systems of advocacy, reporting, accountability and enforcement. A way in which the Center for Ethics and Human Rights is supporting ethical excellence at CSU is by creating a new “Advocacy Program for Ethical Excellence” through collaborations with members of the Faculty Council, Council for Gender Equity, the Multicultural Staff and Faculty Council and other leadership units across campus.
The Center for Ethics and Human Rights is an interdisciplinary center that promotes ethics and human rights as a core area of education, academic research and practice, and community engagement regionally, across the nation and worldwide. The “Meet the Founders” Distinguished Speakers Series, founded by Albert, features entrepreneurs, owners, top executives and business leaders who share insights and strategies for leadership excellence with students, faculty, staff and alumni at Colorado State University.
