Colombia is a country marked by corruption, from political spheres to cultural spheres. Many times it is suggested to do small tricks to grow and climb in your personal and professional life. For this reason, EY Colombia published the results of the 2024 Global Integrity Survey, which shows percentages and conclusions about the integrity of workers in the country and the scope of their ethics.
According to this, 48% of those surveyed in Colombia consider that executives would be willing to behave unethically to improve their career or personal financial situation.
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Some of the actions that could be observed include breach internal policies, provide false information to management, ignore unethical conduct in their teams, falsify customer data, among others. It should be noted that at a global level the results are similar.
“Although there is a greater effort to generate awareness and a culture of integrity in organizations, we are seeing a warning sign in the predisposition that employees have to engage in unethical acts in order to seek benefits for the results of the organization.” company and/or personal benefits (career or remuneration)”, highlighted the leader of Corporate Integrity, Compliance and Forensic Investigation for EY Latin America, Rafael Huamán, who pointed out that it is “a trend that we see reflected at all levels.”
The results also suggest that the culture of integrity would be at risk of disappearing, because 30% of respondents in Colombia agree that unethical behavior is tolerated when management or high-performing personnel are involvedwhen this should not be tolerable for any position or any level of performance.
In the last two years, improvements were perceived, since 68% of those surveyed in Colombia consider that greater attention was paid to the culture of integrity. This perception of improvement is mainly due to management efforts (51%), regulatory momentum (48%) and shareholder requests (39%).
Despite this, the pressures when reporting an act of misconduct are obvious. This is reflected in the fact that 65% of those surveyed in Colombia indicated that at least on one of the occasions in which they had to report misconduct they felt pressure not to do so. On the other hand, a good part of the executives did not report because they thought their concerns would not be addressed (50%), felt it was not their responsibility to address it (28%) or felt pressure from management not to report misconduct (22%).
The associate partner of Forensic and Integrity Services at EY Colombia, Sandra Calderón, mentioned that In recent years, integrity and trust have become fundamental pillars for business excellence, which encouraged ethical and responsible decision-making by all company workers.
According to her, in Colombia, although improvements have been evident in recent years, the reality is that irregular situations still occur that go against good professional practices and that generate negative impacts on different aspects such as internal trust and organizational culture, so 31% of respondents in Colombia indicated that organizations experienced a significant integrity incident in the last two years.
“The business sector must continue working to improve the ethical awareness of Colombians, creating spaces that strengthen commitment and guarantee compliance with internal agreements,” said Calderón.
Similarly, 64% of respondents in Colombia indicated that it is a challenge for the organizations they are in to maintain integrity standards in periods of change or difficult market conditions. However, 51% also consider that integrity in their organizations has improved due to management carried out by management.
At both a global and regional level, more than a quarter of respondents, 28% and 27%, respectively, say that the greatest internal risk comes from employees not internalizing the rules that should govern their behavior. HoweverIn Colombia, 38% of respondents indicate that the greatest internal risk is the lack of resources dedicated to compliance. Added to these are other internal factors such as high rotation or management pressure.
On the other hand, in Colombia, 40% accepted that they are willing to do an unethical activity to improve their professional development, while 61% accepted that they have not yet reported acts of misconduct to the company’s management, either because they They felt pressured or by variables such as a lack of feeling of responsibility, they do not feel heard, or they are not sure if the behavior should be reported.
