He’s not a lawyer, an auditor or a compliance officer, but Scott Mitchell sure seems to have caught the attention of conscience-stricken companies since founding the Open Compliance and Ethics Group in December 2002 and beginning his corporate governance crusade. In May, after getting input from more than 200 corporate executives, legal and compliance experts and academics, OCEG produced a 169-page draft set of recommended policies.
Mitchell’s project already has strong backing: OCEG’s 45-member steering committee includes senior compliance officials from the likes of Archer Daniels Midland, Microsoft, Sears and Zurich Financial Services. The recommendations -- open for comment through this month -- include a checklist that walks executives through the governance process and asks, among other things, whether they have a compliance and ethics program, an officer responsible for the program and a board committee overseeing it.
“The objective is to create a common framework and language for companies to put principles of governance and ethics into everyday practice,” says Mitchell, 34, who serves as OCEG president and CEO and previously worked as a technology consultant at Arthur Andersen and, briefly, at a venture capital start-up. “Anybody can write a code, but having one doesn’t correlate with observed conduct. You need other mechanisms for that.”
