Earlier this week I had the privilege of co-hosting an executive roundtable in Atlanta with a dozen ethics and compliance officers, this time with the audit firm Crowe Horwath where the topic was fraud. The discussion was excellent and Compliance Week will have full coverage of it in a newsletter in another week or two, but I do want to share one of our more spirited moments here.
I was curious about the board’s role in monitoring and addressing fraud. In theory, after all, the board sets its tolerance for various types of risk—including fraud—and then executives strive to ensure that the business operates within those boundaries. That implies that boards should be willing to ignore some small frauds to focus on the bigger picture.
