INSTRUCTIONS FOR USING THESE CASES

The Facilitator's Role

The facilitator selected to lead the training session should be knowledgeable about your company's code of ethics and compliance with relevant laws and procedures. The participation of senior management as ethics training facilitators is one way to demonstrate your senior management's personal commitment to and support of the core values and principles contained in your company's code of ethics.

Prior to conducting a training program, the facilitator should be familiar with the agenda item issue or issues to be presented. To assist the facilitator, a script of each issue or case study is provided in the last section of this manual. While becoming familiar with the agenda item issue, the facilitator should consider how each of the scenarios is relevant to the training program's target audience. The facilitator also should prepare to present the company's position or rules on the issues raised by each scenario. Finally, the facilitator should decide how many of the agenda item issues will be presented. The facilitator may decide to present several issues in one training session or to present them individually during several different sessions.

To conduct the training session, the facilitator should distribute and briefly discuss your company's code of ethics. The facilitator should remind the audience that ethics training is important to your company's reputation and competitive standing in the government contracting industry and that the company depends on each member of the audience upholding the ethical values and principles contained in the company's code of ethics. The facilitator should recognize that everyone strives to perform his or her duties with integrity and pride. The facilitator should also point out that ethics training is still necessary since situations testing an employee's and company's commitment to ethical values and principles are common occurrences in today's competitive environment. Also, the facilitator should emphasize that in such a complex regulatory environment, employees with the best intentions may inadvertently violate company policy or the law simply out of ignorance or because of pressures or instructions from other employees or management.

In order to assist the facilitator in preparing a presentation that is informative and interesting for the particular audience involved, this manual is accompanied by two videotapes. Based on the target audience and the amount of time for training, the facilitator should decide which tape is most effective for the session. The first tape shows just the agenda item discussions of the Business Conduct Committee and flashbacks of the incidents that are on the Committee's agenda for discussion. The second tape includes these items as well as a discussion of each agenda item by one of two panels of DII ethics directors identified below that participated in the Best Practices Forum.

If the facilitator chooses to use the shorter tape, the facilitator should introduce and show the videotaped discussion of the agenda item issues. At the conclusion of each agenda item presentation, the facilitator should stop the tape and lead a discussion about the issues raised by the case study. The facilitator should encourage each employee to participate actively in the training session and to ask questions or make observations throughout the training session. The employee should be made to feel as if his or her participation is a vital component of the training session.

If the facilitator chooses the longer tape, the facilitator may chose to stop the tape either before or after the discussion by the DII ethics directors so that employees participating in the session may also discuss the issues raised in the case study. It may also be interesting to vary the approach from one case study to the next.

To assist the facilitator in leading the discussion in an organized and systematic way, the next section of this manual contains a summary of and suggested discussion questions for each agenda item issue. If appropriate for a particular scenario, the facilitator also should prepare company-specific discussion questions. At times, the open-ended question format used in this manual, while conducive to free discussion, can make it difficult for the facilitator to keep the group focused on the training objectives. Accordingly, the facilitator should have an understanding of what each question is designed to elicit, and tactfully keep the group's discussion moving forward.

The final section of this manual contains suggested material to assist the facilitator in introducing the program and each agenda item issue. This section also includes a script of the Business Conduct Committee's discussion of the agenda items and of the flashbacks to the incidents so that the facilitator may more easily plan and structure each training session for the audience involved.

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