Corporate Compliance and Ethics Week runs November 1 through 7 in 2026. Created by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics (SCCE) in 2005, it’s an annual awareness week when organizations refresh ethics training, remind employees how to report concerns, recognize people who flagged problems early, and generate documentation showing their compliance programs actually function.1Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics. Corporate Compliance and Ethics Week
The SCCE has held the observance during the first full week of November every year since 2005, so the calendar dates shift but the timing is predictable.2Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics. Corporate Compliance and Ethics Week Most compliance teams use it as a fourth-quarter anchor for policy reviews, employee surveys, and board-level compliance reporting.
What Organizations Actually Do During the Week
The SCCE promotes three themes: awareness, recognition, and reinforcement.1Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics. Corporate Compliance and Ethics Week In practice, that shows up as four kinds of activity.
- Targeted training sessions. Webinars, lunch-and-learns, or online modules aimed at the risks most relevant to the business. A healthcare organization might drill on the Anti-Kickback Statute, which imposes penalties of $50,000 per violation plus triple the kickback amount for improper referral fees connected to federal healthcare programs, with those figures adjusted upward for inflation each year. A multinational company might refresh anti-bribery training under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.3Office of Inspector General. Fraud and Abuse Laws4U.S. Department of Justice. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Unit
- Scenario exercises. Mock audits and tabletop exercises that force teams to make decisions under ambiguity, which is where real misconduct happens. These land harder than slide decks.
- Employee recognition. Awards or public acknowledgment for people who identified risks before they escalated. This signals to the rest of the workforce that speaking up is expected, not just tolerated.
- Internal communication campaigns. Email banners, intranet posts, trivia quizzes about past scandals, and short videos from senior leadership reinforcing that reporting concerns is part of the job.
The recognition piece matters more than it looks on paper. Compliance programs live or die on whether frontline employees actually believe the company wants them to speak up, and a dedicated week of visible acknowledgment moves that belief in ways a policy manual never will.
Reminding Employees How to Report Concerns
The week is a common time to walk employees through their reporting options and the protections attached to each. For public companies, two federal laws create the framework, and they work differently.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires audit committees at publicly traded companies to establish procedures for receiving, retaining, and investigating complaints about accounting, internal controls, or auditing matters. The law specifically mandates a channel for confidential, anonymous submissions by employees, and the audit committee, not management, oversees those procedures.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 US Code 78j-1 – Audit Requirements That structural separation matters: it creates a path around supervisors who might be part of the problem.
The Dodd-Frank Act works from the outside. It created the SEC’s whistleblower program, which lets individuals report securities law violations directly to the Commission. Employees who report and later face retaliation can sue in federal court for double back pay, reinstatement, attorneys’ fees, and litigation costs. To qualify for retaliation protection under Dodd-Frank, the employee must have reported in writing to the SEC before the retaliation occurred.6U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Whistleblower Protections
Training during the week should cover both paths plainly. Employees shouldn’t be sorting out the difference between an internal SOX channel and an external SEC filing while they’re already anxious about coming forward.
Why the Documentation You Generate Matters
The strongest business case for taking the week seriously is what happens if the company ever faces a federal investigation. Two federal frameworks reward organizations that can prove their compliance program was real.
Federal Sentencing Guidelines Credit
Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Organizations, a company that had an effective compliance and ethics program in place when the offense occurred can receive a three-point reduction in its culpability score, which directly lowers the recommended fine range.7United States Sentencing Commission. Annotated 2025 Chapter 8 The culpability score is a multiplier applied to the base fine, so the reduction can cut penalties substantially. The credit is rare, though. Out of nearly 5,000 organizational offenders sentenced since 1992, only 11 have received it.8United States Sentencing Commission. The Organizational Sentencing Guidelines: Thirty Years of Innovation and Influence The bar is high, which is exactly why the training rosters, quiz scores, hotline logs, and board reports produced during Compliance and Ethics Week matter: they’re evidence a program was operating, not decorative.
DOJ Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs
The Department of Justice takes a wider view. Its Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs guidance, most recently updated in September 2024, shapes whether prosecutors charge a company, what deal they offer, how large a fine they seek, and whether they impose a compliance monitor. Prosecutors ask three questions:9U.S. Department of Justice. Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs
- Is the program well designed? Risk assessment, training quality, reporting channels, and whether policies are tailored to the company’s industry, geography, and regulatory environment.
- Is the program adequately resourced and empowered? A program with no budget, no staff authority, and no senior leadership support fails this test.
- Does the program work in practice? Prosecutors look for evidence that the program catches problems, that employees use it, and that the company acts on what it finds.
The DOJ does not apply a rigid formula. Each evaluation is individualized based on company size, industry, and the nature of the misconduct.9U.S. Department of Justice. Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs One newer area of scrutiny is ephemeral messaging. Prosecutors now specifically examine whether companies have policies governing disappearing messages on platforms like Signal or WhatsApp, and they will not accept at face value a claim that relevant communications simply vanished.
Training attendance records, quiz scores, hotline usage statistics, scenario exercise results, and board-level compliance reports answer these questions directly. Companies that treat the week seriously build a paper trail that can matter enormously later.
What to Add for 2026: AI Governance
Programming that only covers legacy risks like bribery and fraud is increasingly incomplete. Two developments are pushing AI governance onto the 2026 agenda.
The NIST AI Risk Management Framework provides a voluntary structure for identifying and managing AI-related risks across four core functions: Govern, Map, Measure, and Manage.10National Institute of Standards and Technology. AI Risk Management Framework The Govern function is most relevant to compliance teams, since it calls for accountability structures ensuring the right people are trained to handle AI risks. NIST also released a Generative AI Profile in July 2024 addressing risks specific to generative tools.
For multinational companies, the EU AI Act introduces binding obligations that phase in through 2027. Eight categories of AI practices have been prohibited since February 2025, including social scoring and certain forms of biometric surveillance. Rules for high-risk AI systems take effect in August 2026, requiring risk assessments, data quality standards, detailed documentation, and human oversight before deployment in the EU market.11European Commission. AI Act – Shaping Europe’s Digital Future Companies using AI for hiring, credit decisions, or safety-critical applications need compliance teams that understand these requirements. Compliance and Ethics Week falls a few months after that August 2026 deadline, making it a natural checkpoint for measuring whether the organization has caught up.
Free SCCE Toolkit for Planning the Week
The SCCE offers a free resource toolkit for organizations observing the week. The 2026 kit includes downloadable logos, email banners and signature graphics, a poster illustrating the seven elements of an effective compliance program, print-on-demand motivational stickers, trivia questions built around notable compliance scandals, and social media graphics for external promotion.1Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics. Corporate Compliance and Ethics Week The logo can be used on internal communications without attribution.
One of the more useful pieces is the Scandal Calendar, which lists notable corporate compliance failures since 2020 with links to the underlying coverage. Real examples land harder than hypotheticals, and the trivia questions built from the same material work well for lunch sessions or all-hands meetings.
Certification for the Person Running the Week
Compliance and Ethics Week tends to drive interest in formal credentialing. The Compliance Certification Board, which operates under the SCCE, administers the Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional (CCEP) designation. To qualify, candidates need at least one year in a full-time compliance role or 1,500 hours of direct compliance work within the two years before applying. Candidates who completed a CCB-accredited certificate program within the past two years can sit for the exam without meeting the work experience requirement, as long as they take it within 12 months of finishing the program.
Before applying, candidates must earn 20 CCB-approved continuing education units within the 12 months preceding their exam date, with at least 10 coming from live training such as in-person sessions or real-time webinars. The exam application fee is $350 for SCCE or HCCA members and $450 for non-members, plus a non-refundable $75 processing fee.12Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics. Certification Fees Rescheduling costs an additional $75. Refunds are not available for candidates who cancel or fail to schedule by their eligibility deadline.
The CCEP is not legally required for any compliance role, but Compliance and Ethics Week programming can count toward the continuing education requirement, giving the compliance officer organizing it a practical reason to participate beyond the organizational benefits.