Crimson and Gold Connection; Ladonna Flynn

Welcome to Crimson & Gold Connection, keeping you connected to the people and current events at Pittsburgh State University. This is Trent Johnson, thanks for joining us for Crimson & Gold Connection. Today our guest is Ladonna Flynn, who has served as the Director of Internal Auditing since February of 2012 at Pittsburgh State University. What is your job title at Pittsburgh State University and what duties does that entail? I am the Director of Internal Auditing here at Pitt State University, those duties entail, performing internal audits, both financial compliance and operational across campus in areas of high risk. What is your favorite part about working at the University? I'm a alum from here, so that's one of the things I actually have come back, a full circle, and I'm working here now, and I really enjoy working here. Everyone's really nice and friendly and helpful. Today you're joining us to talk about a new compliance and ethics hotline for the campus of Pittsburgh State University.

Can you explain to us what that is? The compliance and ethics hotline is a new hotline that we are setting up based on some audits we've had, and a hotline is a best practice in the industry to receive anonymous tips about compliance and ethics. This is something we're doing, and almost all universities are slowly getting one, and we're just adding that to our two bucks. What kinds of things are encouraged when someone does call this hotline? For example, what are you looking for people to call you with? What types of information? The types of information we're looking for is any type of policy violation, or you see someone doing something that just doesn't seem correct, or in a proper use of university assets? Those are the type of things we're looking for. Nothing HR-related, or performance-related, or scheduling-related. This is more just for policies and procedures that are not being followed, or you just see something that just doesn't feel right, look right across campus.

Where did the idea for this hotline come from? We had a couple audits that let us down this road that thought we probably need to come do this now. The Association of Fraud Examiner's say the best way to have is a hotline. They say that's the best way to have to mitigate risks in this area of compliance and ethics. So that was the reason we decided to go about doing it. And like I said, most universities across the United States are slowly implementing a hotline, which is a third party servicer. It is not someone here at Pitt State that is taking those calls, a third party handles it for us. While in the research process of this hotline, what types of information did you find to be helpful? I went out on, I sent out an email across the list served that I'm part of, the Association of College and University Auditors. I sent out questions to them to see who they were using, how much it was costing, how they did their implementation. I also went on other university's websites to see what were their policies and procedures, and how did there's operate so we could kind of follow best practices here.

What was the process like of getting this hotline implemented? We had several meetings with several departments trying to get the policies and procedures set up because it does affect so many areas. It affects HR, legal, compliance, we had everyone in the room working on the policies and procedures to make sure we had them that would work here at Pitt State. Why do you think it's important for the university to have this hotline in place? I think as we move forward and we grow, this is a way for if someone's not comfortable saying something, if they see something that's not correct and they're not comfortable about it, or they're not sure if it's not correct, they can use this hotline as an outlet. How important did you think it was to have so many different areas of the campus working on this subject matter together? I think it was very important for us to work together because we wanted to make sure we had the policies correct the first round before we started rolling it out. So we got all the policies, procedures, set up, and the vendor selected before we even started the rollout right now.

We've got all that done and now we're starting the rollout meeting with departments doing training about the hotline. What other steps in this process were important and how long has this process been being worked on? This process probably started back in January to start working on getting the hotline implemented, getting the vendor high selected and the policies procedures done. We started back in January. What does the future hold for this hotline and what do you hope comes from it? I hope it just gives people an avenue for if they, like I said, if they do see something that's improper policies or procedures being performed or they see something that's just not quite what they think it should be that they'll call the hotline. They can remain anonymous or they can give their name that's up to them and that they'll use it as a tool. In terms of somebody calling the hotline and choosing to remain anonymous kind of on that topic, do you think there will be more feedback coming in since there is now something that can be anonymous to where if they don't want to put their name to it necessarily? I would hope so. I mean, in the past, if they've seen something they were to either call myself or legal or talk to their supervisor, which they still can do that, but this just gives them a way if they want to remain anonymous they can because before they really couldn't if they talked to one of us, it would be difficult.

How encouraged were you and are you currently after you did all your research with all the other universities sending out emails and feelers? How encouraged are you now that this hotline is active and how encouraged were you when you found out it could become a reality? I was very happy to see us making this move because this is something that as we grow, we're going to need to have and the fact that we have Dr. Scott's blessing on this and he was the one that said go forward with it and go ahead and get it implemented. I think that's a good sign. Today, our guest on Crimson and Gold Connection has been the director of internal auditing at Pittsburgh State University, Ladonna Flynn. Join us for Crimson and Gold Connection Wednesdays at 8.50 and Fridays at 350.