San Diego CPCU Chapter's March 2017 Ethics Luncheon

To celebrate and help promote Ethics Awareness Month, the San Diego CPCU Chapter held an Ethics Luncheon on March 22, 2017, at which 16 attendees played the Fun With Ethics game created by The Institutes. Arthur Flitner, Senior Director of Knowledge Resources at The Institutes, facilitated the game.

Playing the Fun With Ethics game helps participants understand how their decisions can impact other stakeholders, or constituents, who may have different perspectives about an ethical issue. In addition to being fun and providing insights about ethical decision making, the game also gives insurance professionals much-needed practice in making ethical decisions in situations they could encounter at work.

The Chapter's premise for selecting Fun With Ethics as our Ethics Awareness Month activity was this: We cannot expect ourselves to be good at making ethical decisions unless we practice, and the game provides an engaging and fun way to get this practice.

After a brief tutorial on how to play the game, everyone jumped into the game and quickly got the hang of it. When the allotted hour of game time was finished, every player had performed the vital "Decision Maker" role at least once and the supporting "Constituent" role several times.

There was a strong consensus at the end of the game that Fun With Ethics did a great job of simulating ethical dilemmas that any of us might encounter at work and made everyone realize that when making ethical decisions, each of us must consider how our decisions will affect all of the constituents who could be affected by our decisions whether you’re an employee, a supervisor, a policyholder, or any other member of the community.

As the accompanying photos show, Fun With Ethics was a highly engaging learning activity that was fun for all.

One alteration our Chapter made to The Institutes' instructions for Fun With Ethics was not to ask the players to decide on a winning player at each table. At game's end, the facilitator declared all participants to be winners because they played the game well, had fun, and improved their ethical decision-making skills.

Instead of awarding prizes to winning players, the facilitator announced that the Chapter would, consistent with Canon 1 of our Code of Professional Conduct, place the public interest above our own and make a cash donation to

Promises2Kids, a charitable organization in San Diego that responds to the needs of foster children and provides support to children removed from their homes due to abuse and neglect.

The game session was approved for California ethics continuing education for agent/brokers and adjusters, an opportunity that several attendees took advantage of. Handouts included the CPCU Code of Professional Conduct and an outline of steps in the ethical decision-making process. The Chapter also worked with the CPCU Society staff in Malvern to make sure that all CPCU attendees would automatically receive one hour of CE for CPCUs credit.

The San Diego CPCU Chapter is grateful to the CPCU Society for its role in filing our session for California ethics CE credit and for coordinating the CE for CPCUs credit.

Overall the event was a success. In addition to 6 Board Members in attendance, 6 Chapter Members and 4 non-Members also attended which in all consisted of insurance professionals from Agents, Brokers, Underwriters, and Claims.

To help promote the event and Ethics Awareness Month, bulletins were posted on the San Diego Chapter’s website advertising not only our local Ethics Luncheon, but also the Ethics Webinars being hosted online by CPCU Society.

In addition to our website, we launched an email campaign promoting the event but also recognized the Ethics Webinars being hosted online for those busy insurance professionals that might not be able to get out of the office.

After receiving such good feedback from last year’s Ethics Luncheon, our Board Members agreed in the value this interactive activity brought to the Chapter and worked diligently to meet Continuing Education requirements to add even more value to this year’s event. We look forward to an even bigger turn out next year!

I would like to give special thanks to Arthur Flitner from The Institutes who moderated the event again this year and our Chapter’s newest Director and Education Chair Jeraldine Hartson from Zenith Insurance who helped organize and facilitate the event. Outstanding job everyone!

Sincerely,

Jason Hopkins, CPCU

San Diego CPCU Society Chapter President-elect