Dimensions for the assessment of ethical leadership: An internal audit perspective

Ethical leadership is regarded as the key to building trust and sustaining organisations. However, monitoring the effectiveness of organisations in promoting ethical leadership poses a challenge to assurance providers, in particular internal auditors. Although attempts have been made to provide internal auditors with guidelines on how to assess the tone-at-the-top, these efforts are still based on the traditional compliance approach that in the past has fallen short of expectations when applied to questions of ethics. This paper proposes additional dimensions, to be included in a value-based approach to the assessment of ethical leadership. The foundation on which these dimensions are assessed is the Integrated Control Framework prepared by The Committee of Sponsoring Organisations of the Treadway Commission (COSO).