World’s Most Ethical Companies®
The World’s Most Ethical Companies recognition honors organizations that prioritize ethics, accountability, and a commitment to doing what’s right—while helping them build trust, attract talent, and outperform peers.
The Value
In today’s values-driven marketplace, leading with integrity is a moral imperative and a strategic advantage. Earning this recognition signals to employees, investors, and the world that your organization is committed to doing business the right way.
Unlike traditional corporate award programs, the World’s Most Ethical Companies is built on rigorous evaluation and delivers more than recognition. It offers measurable insights, practical feedback, and the opportunity to benchmark your program against the world’s top-performing companies.
Benefits of Recognition
Receiving the World’s Most Ethical Company recognition means more than making a list. It means making an impact.
1 Strengthen Your Brand
2 Celebrate Your People
3 Attract Top Talent
4 Advance Your Program
Strong Ethics Is Good Business
For nearly two decades, we’ve tracked the performance of the World’s Most Ethical Companies. The results are clear: companies recognized for their ethical leadership consistently outperform their peers.
This is what we call the Ethics Premium—the link between ethical business practices and long-term financial success. Over the last five years, the 2025 World’s Most Ethical Companies honorees outperformed a comparable global index by 7.8%.
This performance is driven by what sets these organizations apart:
a deep investment in people, culture, transparency, and community impact
—practices that reduce risk and increase trust.
World’s Most Ethical Companies®
2025 Honorees
Celebrating companies leading with integrity worldwide.
The Evaluation Process
Nearly 80% of a company’s value now lies in intangible assets—brand reputation, employee trust, customer loyalty, and intellectual capital. These assets are vulnerable without a strong ethical foundation.
How We Measure Success
The journey to becoming one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies begins with a qualitative and quantitative assessment across five core categories. This proprietary framework, the Ethics Quotient® (EQ), features 240+ multiple-choice and open-ended questions. The EQ assesses a company’s ethics and compliance program in an objective and standardized way. This gives organizations a clear view of what’s working, where they can improve, how they compare to global peers, and how to help them protect and grow long-term value.
Through the application process, you’ll:
- Collaborate across departments to complete the EQ
- Submit documentation that supports your practices
- Receive a comprehensive scorecard with your results
- Benchmark your program and refine your strategy
All applicants receive a detailed scorecard that includes an overall EQ score and individual category scores, benchmarked against that year’s recognized companies. These insights, along with documentation feedback and access to program resources through The Sphere, provide meaningful, practical value to help ethics and compliance leaders strengthen their programs year over year.
Participation is as valuable as recognition itself—giving your team the data, clarity, and confidence to lead with integrity.
Click a slice to explore each categoryEthics & Compliance
- Program structure, responsibility, and resources
- Program oversight and tone at the top
- Written standards, training, and communications
- Detection, monitoring, auditing, and risk assessments
- Enforcement, discipline, and incentives
Culture of Ethics
- Efforts to establish ethical tone from the top to middle
- Frequency with which culture is evaluated
- Methods, outcomes, and action planning
Governance
- Oversight of risk management
- Director preparedness and independence
- Principles of effective board governance
Third Party Management
- Onboarding, engagement and oversight
- Monitoring and performance evaluation
Frequently Asked Questions
Find answers to your questions about the World’s Most Ethical Companies award and how you can start building your legacy of ethical behavior to join their ranks.
The World’s Most Ethical Companies is an annual recognition, honoring organizations that lead with integrity, prioritize ethical business practices, and demonstrate a commitment to doing what’s right.
Earning this recognition involves collaboration with your Ethics and Compliance team to complete a comprehensive evaluation through Ethisphere’s proprietary Ethics Quotient® (EQ), which assesses a company’s ethics and compliance program, culture, and governance practices.
As part of the application process, participating companies receive a scorecard with exclusive insights and benchmarking data, allowing them to compare their scores to those of honorees and gain further guidance on enhancing their ethical practices.
This recognition not only helps stakeholders identify companies that genuinely prioritize ethics and integrity but also provides organizations with valuable feedback to strengthen their ethical frameworks.
Being one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies gives organizations a competitive advantage, enhancing trust with customers, employees, and partners while reinforcing their reputation as leaders in ethical business practices.
This is the 20th year Ethisphere will honor organizations with the designation of World’s Most Ethical Companies.
Yes. We evaluate an organization’s (i) Ethics and Compliance Program, (ii) Culture of Ethics, (iii) Corporate Citizenship and Responsibility, (iv) Governance, and (v) Leadership and Reputation. Each category is evaluated through a combination of answers to our Ethics Quotient (EQ) questionnaire, submitted supplemental documentation, and where necessary, independent research and follow up with a candidate. Evaluation of the Leadership and Reputation category also includes a review of publicly available information with a bearing on an organization’s reputation for acting ethically (e.g., public filings, regulatory activity, media review).
An organization’s final Ethics Quotient (EQ) score is evaluated relative to those of its peers within the context of its structure, size, and operating environment. Those organizations demonstrating the strongest application across our methodology receive the designation of being one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies. As applicant organizations come from a variety of industries with significant differences in regulatory and operating environments, the overall EQ score is used to understand an organization’s performance in context of similar organizations, not to set a floor. However, reputation and legal issues are carefully evaluated. Receiving a materially deficient score in the category of Leadership and Reputation will prevent an organization from being selected as one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies.
Past participants consider completing the World’s Most Ethical Companies process to be extremely valuable, regardless of the recognition that may or may not come from it. The application process enables organizations to understand the elements of an effective program and to also compare their approach to leading practices. It also provides opportunities for ethics and compliance teams to collaborate with other key stakeholders across business functions and work together to answer certain questions.
Upon completing the process, applicants receive a scorecard which outlines their evaluation scores as they compare to honorees and documentation scores. Companies have found this information to be valuable for establishing priorities, celebrating their strengths, building a business case for additional budget, and focusing their teams. The scorecard also includes exclusive data and insights only available to applicants, and links to valuable, curated resources to help improve their programs.
Applicants with exceptional program elements may be featured in Ethisphere Magazine, Ethicast, and other Ethisphere platforms, such as our Global Ethics Summit or webinars.