Ethical Culture Without Borders: What Global Compliance Programs Often Miss
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As organizations expand across regions and continents, one challenge becomes increasingly clear: ethical culture does not scale as easily as policies do.
Codes of conduct can be translated. Policies can be rolled out globally. Training can be assigned with a click. But behavior, trust, and decision-making are shaped by culture - and that’s where many global compliance programs struggle.
In the latest episode of the ZUNO Talks, we explored this challenge with Rodrigo Ventura Merg, a global ethics and compliance leader who has built and led programs across Latin America and Europe, working with organizations such as Google, Hitachi Energy, VMware, and TNT Express.
What followed was a grounded, experience-driven conversation about what actually makes ethics programs work - and why good intentions alone are not enough.
Rodrigo began his career as a lawyer in Brazil before moving in-house and eventually into a global ethics and compliance role. What drew him in wasn’t just regulation, but the complexity of human behavior.
Unlike traditional legal work, ethics and compliance require professionals to look beyond laws and policies - into business processes, incentives, leadership signals, and culture.
“You’re not just giving legal advice,” Rodrigo shared. “You’re understanding how people behave, how decisions are made, and how culture influences both.”
This multidimensional nature is what keeps compliance “fresh,” even after years in the field.
One of the central themes of the conversation was the tension between global standards and local context.
Many compliance laws - anti-bribery, antitrust, data privacy - have extraterritorial reach. Organizations are expected to comply globally, often under the legal and cultural expectations of the regulator issuing the law.
But employees operate locally.
Rodrigo highlighted how organizations often underestimate the ethical and cultural implications of this reality. While legal contradictions can be managed with frameworks and risk assessments, cultural friction is harder to detect - and far easier to ignore.
When companies fail to explain why a global standard applies, or dismiss local practices without dialogue, they risk losing credibility. And once trust erodes, compliance effectiveness follows.
A recurring message throughout the webinar was simple, but powerful: most people want to do the right thing.
Ethical culture does not start with suspicion - it starts with trust.
Rodrigo emphasized that policies, reporting channels, and hotlines are necessary, but insufficient on their own. In some cultures, employees will actively raise concerns. In others, silence is the norm - not because people don’t care, but because they don’t feel safe.
Building trust requires visibility and active engagement:
Ethics programs succeed when employees believe the organization is genuinely listening - not just collecting data.
One message was clear: engagement alone is not impact.
Even the most sophisticated learning experience fails if the content isn’t relevant to an employee’s role, daily decisions, and real-world pressures. Ethical culture isn’t built by asking people to remember rules - it’s built by helping them practice judgment.
This is exactly the gap we see organizations struggle with at ZUNO.
Too often, ethics and compliance training is treated as a one-time obligation rather than a living system. Content is generic, static, and disconnected from how people actually work. The result? High completion rates, but low behavioral impact.
That’s why at ZUNO, we design ethics and compliance learning differently:
Recognition also plays a critical role. Not through swag or symbolic gestures, but by visibly acknowledging ethical leadership, good decision-making, and engagement with the learning process itself.
When training reflects reality - and respects the learner - it stops being a checkbox and starts becoming part of the culture.
Looking ahead, Rodrigo sees technology - including AI and internal chatbots - reshaping compliance work.
Routine, low-value advisory tasks can increasingly be automated. Investigations and monitoring can become more data-driven and robust. But the real opportunity lies elsewhere.
As operational work is reduced, compliance professionals gain time to do what matters most:
“Compliance will become more strategic, not less,” Rodrigo noted. “More human, not more distant.”
If you’re building or scaling a ethics and compliance program, this conversation offers practical insights into what policies can’t solve - and where real impact begins.
🎥 Watch the full webinar on YouTube - https://youtu.be/K8erI7Q-aeo 🎧 Listen on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/episode/6mnkGTm4nyb43y8R1mt2oK?si=vpdY8U4gRVS87h7AjnS3KA
At ZUNO, we work with organizations to turn ethics and compliance from static documents into learning experiences that influence real behavior - across roles, regions, and cultures. Contact us if you want to learn more.
