Five Insights for Designing Learning Journeys for Ethics Champions
- Carsten Tams
- Mar 12
- 5 min read
Key Action Insights at a Glance
Develop a Broad Capability Set: Balance E&C System Skills with Ethical Life Skills (see definition below), equipping Champions to both understand the organization’s E&C framework and influence ethical conversations and culture.
Use Ethical Life Skills as Engagement Anchors: Include broadly transferable skills that resonate with Champions’ values and aspirations.
Structure Learning as a Journey: Move beyond isolated training sessions toward progressive skill development over time.
Use a Simple Learning Structure: Consider a 3+3 learning journey combining an onboarding bootcamp with follow-up sessions.
Get Started With Journey Mapping: Use our free visual template to map the learning journey, sequence modules, and structure the program timeline.
Champions often carry demanding responsibilities. They are expected to recognize ethical risks, support colleagues navigating difficult situations, and speak up when values are at stake. Doing this well requires a broad set of capabilities, from ethical judgment and interpersonal awareness to guiding conversations about integrity.
Program leaders understand well the breadth of capabilities the Champions role demands. Yet in many organizations, Champions’ skill development remains somewhat underinvested. This is rarely due to lack of insight or commitment. More often, program leaders face several practical barriers:
Resource constraints: Many program managers already operate with limited budgets and staffing. Designing and facilitating high-quality learning modules internally requires time and expertise, while external training solutions are often perceived as too costly or difficult to implement.
The “Too Many Skills, Too Little Time” Dilemma: Champions programs typically run for a limited term of only 12–24 months. Program leaders therefore face a familiar challenge: how to develop a wide range of capabilities within this timeframe without overburdening Champions or stretching program resources.
Prioritization challenges: With many relevant capabilities, from policy literacy to ethical judgment and influencing skills, it can be difficult to determine which skills Champions should develop first.
The insights in this article help address these challenges. They show how program leaders can conceptualize a meaningful and cost-effective learning journey for Champions, and offer practical tools for taking the first step.
These insights emerged from discussions among Champions program leaders during a recent Champions Clubhouse session, as well as from our recent Champions Skills Survey.
Champions Need a Broad Capability Set
The survey results highlighted the breadth of capabilities Champions need in order to succeed. Participants consistently rated 15 skills as critical or highly critical for the role. Among the highest-rated capabilities were Risk Spotting, Maintaining Integrity Under Pressure, and Ethical Voice.
This reinforces an important point: Champions require skills across multiple domains, from understanding the organization’s E&C framework to guiding conversations and influencing ethical culture in everyday situations. Designing effective learning journeys therefore means supporting Champions across a broad capability set.
A Simple Framework for Champions Skills
One insight from the discussion helps simplify the design challenge: not all Champions skills play the same role in a learning journey. Most capabilities fall into two categories, shown in the framework below.
Two Types of Champions Skills
E&C System Skills | Ethical Life Skills |
Goal: Build the technical foundation Champions need to operate within the organization’s ethics and compliance framework. | Goal: Enable Champions to navigate ethical situations and influence ethical behavior in everyday work and life contexts. |
Illustrative examples:
| Illustrative examples:
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Effective Champions learning journeys balance both skill types: they build the technical foundation Champions need while cultivating ethical life skills that sustain engagement and expand their impact.
This distinction also helps explain an important survey finding. While all skills scored high in criticality, the most transferable skills, such as ethical judgment or persuasion, tended to resonate strongly with participants. Transferable skills provide value both within the Champions role and in broader professional and personal contexts. As a result, Ethical Life Skills can serve as powerful engagement anchors in the learning journey.
From Training Sessions to Learning Journeys
Efforts to support Champions’ skills often rely on occasional training or information sessions. This is a good start, but it often falls short in developing the diverse skills Champions need or in sustaining strong program engagement.
A more effective approach is to structure development as a learning journey, a structured sequence of learning moments that progressively nurtures Champions’ growth as skillful and effective ethical agents in their work environment.
A Simple Model for a Champions Learning Journey
One practical structure that emerged from the Clubhouse discussion is the “3 + 3 learning journey,” illustrated below.
Phase | Format | Purpose |
Onboarding Bootcamp | 3 learning modules delivered together | Build a strong foundation and help Champions quickly get up to speed in their role. |
Follow-Up Sessions | 3 single-module sessions spread across a program term of 12 months | Sustain engagement and community, deepen capabilities over time. |
The illustration below shows what such a 3+3 learning journey might look like over the course of a year.
Frontloading key capabilities early helps Champions gain confidence in their role. Follow-up sessions maintain momentum and allow capabilities to deepen gradually across the program term.
Mapping the Learning Journey
For many program leaders, the challenge is not recognizing the value of a learning journey but figuring out how to design one that is feasible and affordable.
To make this easier, we created a Miro template that allows program leaders to map out a Champions learning journey visually. You can download the template here.
Using the template, you can:
select the capabilities you want Champions to develop
sequence learning modules across the program timeline
experiment with different session cadences
Once you begin mapping the learning journey visually, the overall structure quickly becomes clearer.
Turning the Design into Reality
Once a learning journey has been mapped, the next question naturally arises:
How do we deliver the learning modules? Designing and facilitating high-quality sessions requires time, expertise, and resources, something many Champions program leaders have limited capacity for.
To address this challenge, EthicsChampion offers modular training sessions focused on success-critical Champions skills. Because the modules function as flexible building blocks, organizations can assemble a learning journey that fits their Champions program without having to design or facilitate every session themselves.
The Bottom Line
Learning journeys are an indispensable element of high-engagement, high-impact Champions programs. By structuring development over time rather than relying on isolated training sessions, they progressively build the capabilities Champions need to succeed, spark meaningful engagement through ethical leadership development, and deepen Champions’ identity as advocates for ethical conduct. Regular interaction also strengthens the Champions community and creates valuable bridges between Ethics & Compliance at headquarters and colleagues across the business.
While designing such learning journeys may initially seem demanding in terms of time, expertise, or budget, these barriers can be overcome with the right approach. With a clear structure and the right tools, learning journeys become both practical and powerful.
Editor’s Notes:
What Are Your Thoughts on Champion Learning?
What skill has been most valuable for your Champions, and how did they develop it?
Next Up: Our Thursdays Clubhouse Session
Mark your calendar. Our next Champions Clubhouse session is coming up next week.
This time, we will explore: Motivators & Incentives for Champions
Thursday, March 19Webinar
Our Support
At EthicsChampion, helping organizations design and implement effective Champions learning journeys is a central part of our mission. If you would like to explore how these ideas could work in your Champions program, feel free to reach out.
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