This integrated Ethics Assurance and Enhancement Program is your personal tool to test and confirm "ethical due diligence." It can be either completely independent of the company or linked with, and supportive of, an internal ombuds. Its work will be supported by a Panel of Experts which EthicScan and FSEAP have brought together.

Corporations who participate will be required to have an Ethics Officer and/or an Ethics Committee. They will be provided with an Ethics Report Card that diagnoses the corporation's ethical strengths and weaknesses. A key part of that analysis will be in-depth, confidential and anonymous, personal interviews with staff. Corporations, governments and Crown agencies who participate will be able to measure themselves against other companies.

The interviews and diagnosis can be applied to your entire organization or to a specific area of operations for which you'd like a better analysis of strengths and vulnerabilities. While companies or organizations can nominate employees and staff may self-nominate, the final selection of interviewees will be chosen by the external Ethics Auditor.

Personal interviews of staff provide more meaningful data than written questionnaire, quality of working life, surveys. Such interviews will give you staff's answers to the following questions:

• are there job-related ethics problems where it isn't clear what is expected?
• is the organization open to dealing with ethical dilemmas?
• are there certain kinds of problems for which no help is possible?
• is volume of work an organizational or ethical dilemma?
• do you know what to do in specific situations such as bribery or conflict of interest?
• to whom would you go with a problem? Has this worked in the past?
• what is the corporation's major ethical vulnerability?

Employees respond very positively to an ethics-based assessment of their employer. Such programs are very well received by staff, and are welcomed by investors and social justice stakeholders, in addition to their worth as a program planning and assessment tool.

EthicScan Canada has been in the business of helping corporations "do the right thing" for over a decade. David Nitkin, its founder and president, together with his consulting associates in Toronto, Montreal and Calgary, provide ethics consultancy and training, including development of ethics codes, ethics reinforcement training, enhanced decision making through a customized "corporate sniff test", and independent social or ethics audits.

Family Services EAP is one of the original Employee Assistance Program providers in Canada. It provides counselling support services and organizational development consulting to over 1000 public and private corporations throughout North America. Its profits are used to further the work of the oldest family agency in Toronto, Family Service Association of Metro Toronto, whose mission is "Strengthened Families and Individuals in Just and Supportive Communities."