Anyone looking for a step-by-step approach to conducting lawful corporate investigations can steal some ideas from the Association of Corporate Counsel.

The ACC presented a panel discussion on internal investigations during its annual conference in Boston last week, and posed the following hypothetical: One of the company’s office managers has received an anonymous e-mail, where the writer claims to have compromised the salary and bonus information of several executives. The writer also claims to have stolen proprietary software from the company, whose customers are mostly manufacturers, and plans to give it to a competitor.

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,...