Three main responsibilities of an Ethics Officer.

The law requires many business companies to have an Ethics Officer (EO) plus a Legal Compliance Officer (LCC) (or a combination officer - LCEO) operating at the "substantial authority" level of management.  Beyond the legal requirements, there are many practical business reasons for having an Ethics Officer and an operative corporate ethics culture.  Whoever is your Ethics Officer--- he/she has three big ethics culture responsibilities that require a high level of ability -and a substantial time involvement. The big three responsibilities:

• Responsibility for compliance. Ensuring that ethical procedures are (1) installed and (2) consistently adhered to throughout the organization, usually needs someone whose whole job is ethics.  Someone has to do the necessary work, and neither the CEO nor other members of the senior management have the time required to install ethics cultures and then ensure ethics compliance. (That time requirement is one of the reasons General Counsel often prefer to supervise, but not do, the work of an Ethics Officer.)
• Responsibility for initially creating and then maintaining the ethics culture that the highest level of corporate authority wants to have.  A cohesive ethics culture is the glue that holds a company together as it moves forward on a success track.  Training executives and employees into the desired set of right conduct principles is a most time consuming (repeat - time consuming) responsibility, with myriad details to direct.
• Responsibility for being one of the key Knowledge and Contact Points. On issues relating to corporate principles and ethics,  the Ethics Officer, along with corporate counsel,  is a knowledge and contact person for officers, directors, shareholders, employees, customers, corporate trainers and educators, and even suppliers.  Certainly public authorities will regard the Ethics Officer as a key knowledge and contact point in the company.

In creating the position of Ethics Officer, the CEO or Board of Directors underscores the importance the company attaches to high standards of legal compliance and business ethics.   More than that, the Ethics Officer is the anchor of a successful corporate ethics culture.

No two corporations are the same. But most need a separate Ethics Officer in some relation to the legal department.  There are advantages and risks to all options, dependent on the particular company's organization and strategic plan.  Some companies combine the ethics officer's job with the duties of  someone in the corporate legal counsel department, to create a combined Legal Compliance and Ethic Officer. Some organizations split the jobs and put them both under the umbrella of general counsel.  Some companies have the corporate counsel as legal compliance officer and put  a separate ethics officer's job outside the office of the corporate counsel.  Some companies contract for independent outside services for the Ethics Officer.

Why have an ethics officer? 

What does an ethics officer  do?