Unconscious bias (or implicit bias) is often defined as "prejudice or unsupported judgments in favor of (or against) one thing, person, or group as compared to another, in a way that is usually considered unfair.” We have all experienced the concept of unconscious bias in the workplace at some point in our career whether we recognized it at the time or not. Many researchers believe unconscious bias will occur as an automatic response of the brain when quick judgments are required. Many unconscious biases in today’s world tend to be exhibited toward minority groups based on factors such as: nationality, class, gender, age, race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, and disability.
Leaders may rely on their past experiences as background for discerning on future judgments. When unconscious biases occurs in an organization, some people benefit while other people are penalized.
Organization’s must be able to recognize the concepts of unconscious bias and proactively develop practices that help the organization move beyond those practices. This will ultimately assist in supporting your DEI program.
Publication Date: July 2022
Designed For
Chief Executive Officers, Senior Executive Management, Board Members, Compliance Professionals, Legal Professionals, and Audit professionals.
Topics Covered
- Recognizing and Defining Unconscious Bias
- Types of Unconscious Bias
- Overall Strategies to Combat Unconscious Bias
- Listening and Employee Psychological Safety
- Organizational Training
- Training Examples
Learning Objectives
- Recognize and define unconscious biases
- Identify types of unconscious bias and methods to combat it
- Recognize how to evaluate overall methods and strategies for combating bias
- Recognize the concepts of how to listen to and understand the need for employee psychological safety
- Recognize how to develop the proper organizational training concepts that can assist in developing the structural dynamics to combat unconscious bias and support a strong DEI program
- Identify how affinity bias can be reduced
- Recognize the remedy to micro-inequities
- Identify what is not a measurement category when training to combat unconscious bias
- Identify one of the first steps towards combating unconscious bias
Level
Basic
Instructional Method
Self-Study
NASBA Field of Study
Behavioral Ethics (2 hours)
Program Prerequisites
None
Advance Preparation
None
Instructor
Lynn Fountain
Lynn Fountain has over 38 years of experience spanning public accounting, corporate accounting and consulting. 20 years of her experience has been working in the areas of internal and external auditing and risk management. She is a subject matter expert in multiple fields including internal audit, ethics, fraud evaluations, Sarbanes-Oxley, enterprise risk management, governance, financial management and compliance. Lynn has held two Chief Audit Executive (CAE) positions for international companies. In one of her roles as CAE, she assisted in the investigation of a multi-million-dollar fraud scheme perpetrated by a vendor that spanned 7 years and implicated 20 employees. The fraud was formally investigation by the FBI and resulted in 5 indictments estimating a $13M fraud loss.
Ms. Fountain is currently engaged in her own consulting and training practice. She is a highly sought-after trainer and international speaker. In addition, Ms. Fountain has assisted numerous companies with enterprise risk management frameworks, internal audit processes and financial accounting. She also serves as a discussion leader for the AICPA for numerous classes finance, accounting and risk management topics.
Ms. Fountain is the author of three separate technical books. Her first book released in 2015 by the Institute of Internal Auditors Foundation is entitled “Raise the Red Flag – The Internal Auditors Guide to Fraud Evaluations”. Her second book “Leading the Internal Audit Function” was released in October 2015 by Taylor & Francis Publications. This book serves as the initial launch for a series of leading practice internal audit and information technology publications. Her third book “Ethics and the Internal Auditor’s Dilemma” was released in December 2016.
Ms. Fountain obtained her BSBA from Pittsburg State University and her MBA from Washburn University in Kansas. She has her CPA, CGMA, CRMA credentials.