CCO liability: How to protect your compliance career

It’s largely impossible to effectively assess an organization’s culture of compliance prior to taking a chief compliance officer job. And yet, regulators’ growing interest in holding CCOs responsible for company misconduct has understandably raised anxiety for would-be compliance chiefs.

They might be asking themselves questions like:

• What if liability is imposed when compliance acts negligently, rather than recklessly?
• What happens when compliance relies on inaccurate data from another employee?
• Are compliance officers still liable if they haven’t participated in the violations caused by the company or other executives?