In the wake of the financial crisis, many large financial institutions created new, board-level risk committees to oversee their most critical risk issues. For other industries, the decision to create a risk committee isn’t so simple—and isn’t without some risk-taking itself.

Jaclyn Jaeger is a freelance contributor to Compliance Week after working for the company for 15 years. She writes on a wide variety of topics, including ethics and compliance, risk management, legal,...