Chief compliance officers and general counsel, beware: The Trump administration’s merging of its whole-of-government enforcement approach with its political agenda forewarns of escalating compliance risk on a national scale.
Opinion
Posted inInternal Investigations
Best practices for responding to government investigations
In the current business environment, companies must have a documented plan for responding to government investigations. Shifts in tariffs, dynamic export controls, and a potentially less strict enforcement environment around international bribery all increase the risk that an employee or representative could violate the law – inadvertently or intentionally.
Posted inBoards & Shareholders
Interpretation precedes execution: Why “just do the work” fails in regulated organizations
Most organizational failures are not failures of effort, discipline, or follow-through. They are interpretation failures misdiagnosed as execution problems.
Posted inBest Practices, Opinion, Whistleblowers
Creating effective compliance messages for specific employee groups
As 2026 arrives, have you considered the efficacy of your compliance messaging efforts? We have all seen these compliance taglines “Speak Up!,” “See Something, Say Something,” “Ethics Matter!”
Posted inRisk Management
Risk literacy as a compliance accelerator: Teaching the business to speak risk
Compliance professionals understand the value of risk assessments. We conduct them annually, map risks to controls, and present heat maps to the board. But there is a strategic opportunity that many compliance programs overlook: Teaching the business itself to think in the language of risk.
Posted inAccounting & Auditing
SOX was built for humans. AI doesn’t fit that model.
For more than two decades, assurance and compliance frameworks have rested on a simple assumption: Material decisions are made by people. Post‑Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) assurance reset worked because it aligned accountability with human behavior. That assumption shapes how internal controls are designed, how accountability is assigned, and how assurance is delivered.
Posted inRegulatory Enforcement
Top Ethics and Compliance Failures of 2025
The 2025 year has been so rich with compliance stinkers, and rife with poor judgment, compliance missteps, outright malfeasance and greed, greed, greed, that it was almost impossible to choose just six epic compliance failures from this year’s massive poop pile.
Posted inEthics & Culture
Write supply chain resilience into the contract
The only thing constant is change. Shouldn’t we be ready for that in our contracts?
Posted inRisk Management
The AI audit burden: Why ‘Explainable AI’ is the key
AI decisions are only defensible when the reasoning behind them is visible, traceable, and auditable. Explainable AI delivers that visibility, turning black-box outputs into documented logic that compliance officers can stand behind when regulators, auditors, or stakeholders demand answers.
Posted inEthics & Culture
Turning compliance into a competitive advantage in defense tech
For emerging defense tech companies to take full advantage of acquisition reforms and increased funding, they will need to overcome a defining feature of the U.S. defense industry: It is highly regulated, and will likely remain so.