INTECHRITY – USING TECH WITH INTEGRITY TO ADVANCE INTEGRITY
Frontier technology has made the lives of ethics and compliance officers easier and more difficult at the same time. Frontier technology has been defined by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as technology that will “reshape industry and communications and provide urgently needed solutions to global challenges like climate change and have the potential to displace existing processes”. The most prevalent example is artificial intelligence (AI). Although the term AI was coined almost 70 years ago, it has become mainstream only more recently, with new concepts such as machine learning (ML), neural networks, generative AI (GenAI), blockchain and big data added to the lexicon.
Before this seeming contradiction of things simultaneously getting easier and more difficult is explored, it is worth noting that ethics and compliance officers have always had a difficult balancing act to follow. The clue is in the name: ethics and compliance. In broad terms, ethics aims to get people to do the right thing, and compliance is about preventing the same people from doing the wrong thing. Dealing with technology also displays a tension: one can use it to advance integrity, but at the same time others can use it to make matters worse.
The job description of ethics and compliance officers has been a bit of a moving target over the years. Originally referred to only as compliance officers, the name morphed to ethics and compliance officers over time, and more recently we see increasing use of the term integrity officers. This change is in line with a move toward a more holistic and strategic approach to business ethics.
Jul-Sep 2024 Issue
Trinity College Dublin