Good news for chief compliance officers frustrated with the effectiveness of your compliance program, or the lack thereof: you are correct to feel that way. That’s the conclusion of an eye-opening academic paper, “In Search of Effective Ethics & Compliance Programs,” published last month by University of Tennessee law professor Maurice Stucke. If you ever […]
Matt Kelly
Posted inEthics & Culture
The Sour Tone of Chris Christie
Spare a thought this morning for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has just given us all a fresh reminder of how important tone at the top really is. Today Christie is front-page news at the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, the New Jersey Star-Ledger and probably a bundle of […]
Posted inAnti-Bribery
How Compliance and Procurement Can Work Well Together
Lots of people these days like to compare the chief compliance officer to a primary care physician. That is, the CCO is responsible for the overall health of the compliance program, but enlists specialists in other parts of the business—legal, accounting, IT, internal audit, human resources—to help with specific tasks. It’s a good metaphor. Lately […]
Posted inAnti-Bribery
Quick & Easy Guidance on FCPA Programs
Good news for compliance professionals who have an addiction to anti-bribery guidance: two of the more notable names in the field have just provided a fresh fix. Tom Fox and Jon Rydberg, both ex-compliance officers who subsequently became independent consultants on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, have just published Global Anti-Bribery Leadership: Practical FCPA and […]
Posted inAccounting & Auditing
Five Big Compliance Events in 2013
You might want to dismiss 2013 as an irritating year for corporate compliance, marked by botched healthcare reform, a government shutdown, litigation that left new regulatory efforts in limbo, and the like. And you’d be right: all of them were distractions, whose significance over will fade to nothing. I’d be irritated by that too. Still, […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
The Problem Underneath Conflict Minerals Compliance
I had the pleasure last week of talking to a top legal officer at a large manufacturer, someone who will be speaking at the Compliance Week 2014 conference next spring about conflict minerals compliance. The program his company has developed so far is excellent, and I won’t spoil it by naming him and disclosing all […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
More Compliance Week 2014 Sessions Announced
The Compliance Week 2014 conference continues to take shape, so all you compliance, risk, and audit professionals either looking for a chance to speak on topics you love or attend the industry’s premier event on the cheap, read on. May 19-21, Washington D.C., my friends. First, the agenda. Six weeks ago we announced the first […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Compliance Week Book Club: An Astronaut’s Guide to Excellence
It’s time for another meeting of the Compliance Week book club, this month with a title particularly well-suited to audit executives and devotees of training and project management. The book is An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, by Col. Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency. One part autobiography, one part mediation on success, […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Social Media Policy Management, Without the Social Media
MENLO PARK, Calif.—There we were, in the heart of Silicon Valley, hosting Compliance Week West and talking about the most pressing challenges compliance officers face today in privacy and data management. Suddenly, we stumbled into a superb string of insights about policy management generally. Let me share a few of them here. Thank the two-person […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Warren 2016 Whispers Raise a Point on Reform
I’m loathe to bring up 2016 presidential politics, but an article on Politico.com the other day about one possible candidate three years hence does raise a point compliance and regulatory officers might want to consider. The article speculates about the possible candidacy of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Warren herself has said repeatedly that she has […]