What does the code of conduct tell us about the organisation's ethical culture? This is one of the topics being debated in the open class this Thursday, February 22nd, held as part of the launch of the third edition of the Executive Course on Ethics, Compliance and Whistleblowing in Organizations.

Helena Gonçalves, coordinator of the Ethics Forum at Católica Porto Business School and coordinator of the executive course, and Manuela Silva, EDP Ethics provider and responsible for EDP's corporate Ethics Office, will debate codes of ethics and present the Code of Ethics/ Conduct Index [PSI] Portugal.

“Codes of ethics/conduct are a crucial tool for organizations to express their ethical culture, give clear guidelines to their employees and share expectations with interested parties”, highlights Manuela Silva, who also states that organizations that do not have this type of codes end up missing an opportunity to reinforce their own ethical culture. In 2019, Manuela Silva was in charge of reviewing the EDP Code of Ethics. “This new code, reconstructed at the level of best international practices, was considered one of the best among PSI companies, by the Institute of Business Ethics (IBE) methodology for evaluating the quality of codes”, highlights the provider and responsibility for the Corporate Ethics Office of the company.

In Helena Gonçalves’ opinion, organizations must use “Law 93/2021 and the General Corruption Prevention Regulation to create legally framed environments conducive to developing an ethical climate and culture in organizations”.

In this open class, the Code of Ethics/Conduct Index [PSI] Portugal will be presented, which allows a comprehensive assessment of the codes of ethics/conduct of organizations based in Portugal through an analysis of four dimensions: nature, language and tone; ease of use; reporting channel/’speak up’; and leadership.

The session “Code of ethics/conduct: what does it tell us about the organization’s ethical culture?” takes place online on February 22nd, this Thursday, at 2:30 pm. Sign up now here.

The third edition of the Executive Course on Ethics, Compliance and Whistleblowing in Organizations will start in March. It is a short-term program (16 hours), which will take place over four days, from 9 am to 1 pm. To find out more about the course, see our program page here.