If your company or organization has a Tyco- or Enron-level problem on its hands, you're beyond Frank Bucaro's help. But for groups trying to be legal, ethical, and aboveboard, Bucaro teaches audiences how to make smart decisions.
In the early 1980s, Bucaro was a high-school moral theology and ethics teacher in the Chicago area, who branched out into speaking in 1985, and has spent the last two decades helping audiences to play by the rules when the competition might not be.
"People need to know what's acceptable and what's not," says Bucaro. "You have to explain, 'These are the rules that we play by, and we don't make exceptions because that would cheapen the game.' I give them a lot of techniques and hands-on stuff that they can use immediately. People don't need a lot of theory nowadays, they need practical information.
"I tell my clients, if you've got a compliance issue, you know who to go to—the compliance officer. If you have an ethics issue, who do you go to? Very few companies have an ethics officer or ethics committee." Bucaro recommends establishing such a committee that meets every other month to sort through any anonymously reported ethics violations. The value, according to Bucaro, is that "people know that their voice is being heard."
In the wake of corporate scandals that rocked the general public's confidence in corporate America, Bucaro has seen interest in his keynotes skyrocket. This he attributes to a desire from companies to quash ethical problems before they become legal catastrophes. "If you can stop something from becoming an ethical issue, nine times out of 10 you can prevent it from becoming a legal issue," says Bucaro. "Some organizations aren't ready to make an investment in ethics training; they think of it as an expense, not an investment. Well, companies need to shift their thinking, because if you want to talk about expense, think about legal fees."
Bucaro, who is also the author of Trust Me! Insights Into Ethical Leadership and Taking The High Road: How To Succeed Ethically When Others Bend The Rules, speaks primarily to management teams, and finds audiences are ready to embrace a discussion about ethics. "My clients are the ones trying to do the right thing. Unethical companies don't hire me," he says.