By Adam Turteltaub
adam.turteltaub@corporatecompliance.org
On August 21st, Dr. Donald Ainslie Henderson died at the age of 87. Few know his name, but more should. He led the successful fight to eradicate smallpox. In so doing he saved countless lives. Not dozens, hundreds, or even thousands, but likely millions.
It was a very long fight. Edward Jenner discovered that exposure to cowpox prevented smallpox. In 1796 he developed what turned out to be the first successful vaccine against the disease, in fact, against any disease.
By the 1940s smallpox had been eradicated in the US, but elsewhere in the world it persisted.
Dr. Henderson’s strategy was simple: “surveillance-containment”. Basically learn about an incident of the disease as quickly as possible, and then vaccinate everyone who came in close contact with the victim.
The strategy was highly successful, and the last naturally occurring case of smallpox was recorded in 1977.
Good compliance programs may want to think about following the same strategy. We already know that surveillance (or monitoring as we typically call it) is critical: the sooner we find a problem, the faster we can respond, and the better able we are to mitigate the damage.
The challenge is that containment is often practiced by business people in an unproductive way. There is a temptation to keep incidents as quiet as possible, to move forward, to not rehash the bad that has happened.
The problem with this version of containment, though, is that others in the organization have already been exposed to the “virus” of wrongdoing. Moving on just to move on doesn’t help.
The lesson to be learned from the smallpox fight is that, instead, we have to vaccinate everyone exposed: They need to understand what happened, why it was wrong, what they should do to keep it from occurring again, what the organization will do, and that the company takes these matters seriously. In short, they need education and as much transparency as possible.
That’s a much healthier form of containment, and likely a much more successful strategy.
I’m realistic enough to know that, unlike smallpox, wrongdoing in business will never fully be eliminated. But I’m optimistic enough to think that by emphasizing both surveillance and proper containment, we might prevent an epidemic.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Smallpox and Compliance @AdamTurteltaub” quote=”Smallpox and Compliance” theme=”style3″]
Great post, Adam! Following along the lines of “where there’s smoke, there’s fire”, we certainly are learning from many past scandals that misconduct can be contagious. An employee or company sees another doing it and assumes it’s either ok, not scrutinized or not penalized. Ethics is a social process. While we don’t necessarily want to penalize others in the sphere of the wrongdoer, ensuring that they understand the transgression and its penalties is smart business.
Absolutely. Bottom line is people around the incident watch to see what happens. If you don’t respond appropriately, if they don’t see consequences, they’ll get the message that they can get away with things.
The title of the piece was a total hook. I was not disappointed. Brilliantly written analogy.
Comments are closed.