As so many around the globe have acknowledged over the past year, the marginalization of people of color and indigenous people must stop. Last year, in an effort to honor the memory of George Floyd and to address the deep issues in our societies, the Ethics & Compliance Initiative (ECI) expressed our hope that the global call for an end to the injustice of racism would be heeded. Now that the jury in the trial of Derek Chauvin has reached its verdict, we are gratified that our justice system worked. For many people, this is a relief.

As we expressed last year, we also realized that lasting change can only happen if we are all willing to revisit our values, examine our biases, and truly listen when others tell us how we can do better. To that end, we invited E&C professionals to join us in taking a critical look at the depths of racism, discrimination and the abuse of power in workplaces, our profession, and the communities in which we operate.

We were honored to be immediately joined by business professionals from around the world, all dedicated to the task of understanding the problem and doing our part. Our group has spent the past few months working together to understand how these issues manifest in organizations and evaluating ways that high-quality ethics & compliance programs can help address them. We continue our efforts and invite others to join us in our commitment to doing the hard work needed to bring an end to injustice taking place not just in the United States, but all around the world.

Our working group has further subdivided into subgroups to define the issues of racism, discrimination and the abuse of power, including xenophobic racism and acts of hatred against the Asian community. We are also examining these issues in the ethics & compliance industry, and we are considering best practice among corporations to encourage change in our societies. The working group plans to conduct a survey to benchmark with other organizations and to develop a series of public reports on our findings.

Every one of us has the basic human right to be treated with dignity and respect, and no one should live in fear because of the color of their skin.