Bonus: Kelly Richmond Pope - Ethics in the 21st Century

In this special edition of Count Me In, Kelly Richmond Pope
returns to help commemorate Global Ethics Day 2022. We discuss
her latest IMA report, Ethics in the 21st Century: Management
Accounting Practices for Robust Compliance Programs as well as
her forthcoming new book, Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories, and
Secrets from the Trillion-Dollar Fraud Industry.  In
addition to her role as IMA Research Fellow for Corporate
Governance and Ethics, Kelly is professor of forensic accounting
at DePaul University as well as the award-winning documentary
film maker behind All the Queen’s Horses, an in-depth look at the
largest municipal fraud in U.S. history.   


Ethics in the 21st Century: Management Accounting Practices for
Robust Compliance Programs
Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories, and Secrets from the
Trillion-Dollar Fraud Industry
Connect with Kelly


Full Episode Transcript:
Adam:



Welcome back to Count Me In, the podcast that takes you inside
the impactful world of management accounting. This is Adam
Larson, and today is a special edition of Count Me In to
Celebrate Global Ethics Day 2022. And there's no better guess for
such an occasion than Kelly Richmond Pope, IMA's Research Fellow
for Corporate Governance and Ethics, professor of forensic
accounting at DePaul University, award-winning filmmaker and the
author of the forthcoming book, Fool Me Once: Scams Stories and
Secrets from the Trillion Dollar Fraud Industry. Kelly and Neha
discuss her latest IMA report focus on how management accountants
are modernized in compliance in the 21st century. Plus we get a
preview of her new book and lots of other updates. It's always
interesting when Kelly stops by. So let's start the conversation.



Neha:



Welcome back to Count Me in. Kelly, it's such a pleasure to have
you again on the show.



Kelly:



Thanks for having me back.



Neha:



First of all, congratulations on your new report, Ethics in the
21st century that came out recently.



Kelly:



Thank you.



Neha:



Our listeners would love to know what the report is all about.



Kelly:



The report is an overview of how to not only update the
compliance function within your organization, but utilizing
managerial accountants in those updates. So that's really what
the gist of the report is, and we focus on three recommendations
on how to update that.



Neha:



Wow, that sounds like a very helpful report for management
accountants and finance and accounting professionals around the
world. So I've went through the report and saw that you call
designing an Effective Compliance program, both an art and a
science. Can you help our listeners understand what you mean by
that?



Kelly:



Well, you know, it's one of those jargon terms you use a lot and
it sounds good when you use it, but now you've asked me a
question about it. So let me tell you what I mean by that. I
think that the science part is the fact that a lot of programs or
organizations are siloed into departments, and so that's the
scientific understanding of how we believe organizations should
work. So you have your legal department, you have your accounting
department, You may have your internal audit department, you may
have operations, and all of these departments are siloed. And so
I think that that's the science of how we organize companies. But
the art is how to utilize all of those different departments
together and finding the strengths of each of those groups and
bringing them together. So they're one cohesive machine that
works together, is the art part of it. And that takes some skill
because we don't think about an approach of everyone working
together. We think about a very siloed approach of how we work,
and I think that when we are trying to update our, our compliance
programs, we really need to look at these various silo
departments and pull from those so that we can have this one
cohesive team



Neha:



That is very insightful and it might be a jargon, but thanks for
helping us understand it better. Now of course, most companies
try to have some sort of compliance program in place, right? What
do you think is the biggest inhibitor when it comes to the
effectiveness of these compliance programs?



Kelly:



Well, I think there's two inhibitors. One is compliance. The word
compliance triggers people to think, all I need to do is check
the box and just get this done. And the second is, most people
believe that they don't need it. They believe that they're
ethical. They believe that they don't need this type of
reinforcement. So you have these two forces that you're battling.
And quite honestly, most organizations do have very boring
compliance training. And some of it is routine, but there is room
for it to be more engaging and more dynamic. So I think the fact
that we have conditioned people to think about this as, Oh
goodness, here comes compliance again. Just let me get this done.
And so we have a level set, a level shift that we need to make
within our employee base to even get them excited about what we
have around compliance. So you're fighting an uphill battle from
the beginning. And so how, what, what can we infuse into
compliance to really change that to get more people on board, is
the big question.



Neha:



That's so true. Every time I've had conversations in companies,
people think compliance training is going to be a snooze fest. So
thanks for bringing that up. And can you help us understand how
can companies avoid that kind of mentality or perception about
compliance training?



Kelly:



Well, I think when compliance, there are some routine things
about compliance, and that is true, but I think where you have
the opportunity to be creative, you should be. And so my passion
area, my research area is around fraud and forensic accounting.
And I think that there are areas within the compliance training
realm that can lend itself to more creative and more engaging
types of approaches. And we tend to not do those. If we do that
more, I think that we can change the attitude around compliance
and make people more excited about it.



Neha:



Absolutely. Love that, Kelly. Let me pivot from that and ask you
another question about whistle blowing. Now, how can companies
incentivize internal reporting? So employees feel empowered to
speak up when they see any misconduct?



Kelly:



You know, whistle blowing is an interesting topic because again,
you have this same uphill battle that you're fighting. And a
couple years back, I did a TED Talk entitled how whistleblowers
shape history. And one of my motivations around doing the talk,
because the whole idea around TED is do you have an idea worth
sharing? And so my motivation around doing the talk was because
whistleblowers are so valuable to organizations and to society,
but how can we encourage more people to come forward when it has
such a negative stigma? So I think one of the things that we need
to do within our organizations is first remove the stigma and
almost celebrate it. And it's, it's hard because despite the
benefits that whistle blowers offer us, we tend to not trust them
when they ...