How ServiceNow ‘Wins the Right Way’ on Engaging Ethics

Thanks so much for having me, Bill, and thanks so much to Ethisphere for this awesome distinction. We party pretty hard and celebrate it when we get it. So thanks again and looking forward to this discussion.

Yeah, you know, Bill, one of the things that one of the tenets that I think I have with respect to our compliance profession is that it's a people job. And when you think of it that way, then I think you have to think about how to best motivate and how people learn and how people interact with information. And so over years of going through sort of codes of ethics in various businesses, you see that folks really don't remember rules, regulations, you know, the C-17, you know, .5-6, right? That's not what sticks. What sticks are the things that you've learned as a kid. You know, your values, the things that, you know, good and bad or, you know, morality, like those types of broader concepts are what really informs behavior, at least that's what I think, right? So, in doing that, in trying to create a code of ethics that was more value-based, right? More as opposed to don't break this particular regulation. You say, you know, we want to win the right way. We want to do things so that our customers are inspired by trust and you want to say that, you know, broad concepts that people can actually buy into things that I think outside of work people aspire to, right? So, it's really just trying to encapsulate the way people get information and then again to inspire folks to take an action and I think a morals value-based probably does that better than trying to adhere to a code or a regulation.

Yeah, I think the way we developed the approach was through lots of failures in trying to come out with, you know, scenarios and situations to make it stick. The way we wound up coming to it, you know, I say it and just but there is some truth to it. The way we wound up coming to the idea of adding these sort of scenarios into the code of ethics itself is where we would get a lot of questions throughout the year from our employees with respect to, you know, where can I get this information and the answer would be, oh, have you read the code of ethics? And then one day I read the code of ethics, right? I kind of read it again in response to one of my own answers and I looked at it and I was like, you know, it's not actually prescriptive. Like the idea of making it value-based is that they're large values but now how do you take that value and how do you put it into an everyday scenario? If I sent someone to the code of ethics and said the answer was in there, it should really pretty much identify something that they could look for. So, we decided to add in these scenarios so that people can see themselves in, you know, the code, how it actually plays out in scenarios. And we've gone from sort of being a very sales-driven anti-bribery, anti-corruption type of code of ethics to more of a broad base. It doesn't matter if you're in sales. It doesn't matter if you're engineering or development. All of these sort of scenarios can happen and visit you. So, we've seen some really good engagement with our code of ethics. You know, one of the things that we measure is in fact engagement with and multiple hits and how long people stay on sort of the code of ethics or web page. And we've definitely seen an increase lately as we move to those value-based questions and scenarios. I think it helps people retain the information and again learn how to apply it.

Yeah, I think it goes back to sort of that first question of why values-based versus rules and regs. It's because that's what people remember, right? You remember a story, you remember a good joke, you don't remember a good law, right? Like you remember those types of things. So again, thinking about how to interact with your audience and what are we trying to get to at the end of the day, right? Like what do we want? Do we want people to just remember what these rules are or do we want people to be thinking about it and seeing it and being able to identify when they see it? You do that better by giving examples, giving scenarios, giving stories, anecdotes, things for people that will stick to understand that when they see that anecdote come up or something anecdote adjacent, they can apply what they've learned or it sort of triggers a response to our code.

Well, step one would be hire excellent people that can do that. I have excellent people on my team who are really awesome at developing and thinking about that. So that's step one if you want to know how to get there. But once you've achieved step one, I think the idea is put yourself into your employees' shoes, right? When you're drafting your code of ethics, let's get out of the sort of the silo that we're in of thinking ethics and compliance and rules and regs and our responsibility to deliver this message and think about how if I am a new employee in marketing at my company and I go to this code of ethics, what would I hope to see, right? Like how would it help me? And I think if you can do that, if you can actually start putting ourselves as we are drafting these things into the shoes of the audience, right? It really is all about call and response, right? If you can do that, if you can think about what would work for me, what you would see, what one in this position would see, then you start coming up with stories and scenarios that plays to that. And then when you look at the full picture, you're able to see, you know, I'm a little heavy on the sales stuff. I'm a little light over here when it comes to, you know, engineering. So then you start to balance it out but I think you just try to really put yourselves into the shoes of the employee and in different scenarios, an engineer or a developer, a product manager or any of those scenarios, how would that play out if I was there and then you hope for the best to be honest.

Bill, thank you very much. Thank you again for having me here and on behalf of ServiceNow and all of its employees, board of directors, and leaders. Thank you, Ethisphere, for this great recognition. We're super pumped about it.