The White House has just launched a mandatory (!) Ethics Refresher Course for the 3'000 staff members who work at the White House compound. The one hour-long briefings are mostly a discussion about classified information and the proper handling of classified national security information. An article in the Los Angeles Times gives more details. Apparently, only the President and the Vice-president are exempt from following the course.
I think the subject of ethics goes a lot farther than just dealing with the proper handling of classified information.... and it is a pity that this refresher course is limited to 1 hour and to this subject. As CitiGroup found out, when you set out to live up to higher ethical behaviour, then you need a culture change. And it takes commitment from the top, and lots of effort. CitiGroup's mandatory training is actually a whole day seminar. Nike found out over time that its' Corporate Social Responsibilty efforts went from a PR issue, to a risk management issue, to a business issue, to a radar for the business, and they believe it will take them to new business models and to perform better as a company. It all has to start somewhere - but what with the bad news coming out of the US government (indictments, leaks, firings for whistleblowing, torture in covert prisons... ), we can only hope that they will not stop at this one hour mandatory refresher course.
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