When I talk with chief ethics and compliance officers (CECOs) and ask them what is their biggest challenge in doing their job well, often the answer is something like “I don’t have time to take a step back, think and strategize.” Everyone is always busy putting out fires and trying to prevent the next one. They know they need to step back and evaluate what is working and what isn’t, but that task most often gets pushed to the bottom of the to-do list. This is further complicated by the very human desire to have completion of a task—to put something in place and then move on to the next urgent issue that must be addressed.
While the CECO receives reports, and may have some useful analytics about controls put in place to address regulatory obligations, it is virtually impossible to distill even that limited information and draw meaningful conclusions from it without the opportunity to really discuss and think about what it means. The level of understanding, in many cases, is merely “shallow knowledge,” as discussed by Daniel Willingham in his column entitled “Ask the Cognitive Scientist, published by AFT, the American Federation of Teachers.”
