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21) Incorporating ethics in daily management is essential to reinforce values. This includes recognising ethics as a criterion in recruitment, performance appraisal and professional development. It also implies recognising good ethical behaviour and applying safeguards to specific risks, such as those arising from conflicts of interests or confidentiality issues.

22) Monitoring controls help the SAI mitigate ethics risks. The SAI may apply the following monitoring controls:

a) maintaining registers to track interests, gifts and hospitality;

b) conducting self-assessment, internal and external reviews that can be used regularly, as monitoring tools, as a way to identify and analyse vulnerabilities and recommend measures for improving ethics management, and/or as a routine to ensure accountability. Evaluations will have to consider that many ethical requirements refer to soft controls, which require the use of specific appropriate assessment methods. Tools available for these assessments include IntoSAINT¹, peer review guidelines, surveys, interviews and feedback questionnaires;

c) establishing and implementing policies on ethical misconduct and whistle-blowing – these include procedures for reporting cases of misconduct and for timely and adequate response, investigation and sanctioning.

23) Information gathered from the procedures above can be used to regularly evaluate, update and improve ethics policies. A SAI may report to relevant stakeholders on these evaluations (for example in its annual performance report).