I am not one to beg but I have decided I have nothing to lose here – please, when it comes to compliance, everyone has to adopt a new mantra. The purpose of compliance is not to prevent legal and code of conduct violations. Such a purpose is way too limited in scope and almost guarantees failure, because at one time or another, company employees...

We all have heard the scenario involving a compliance professional. A new CCO joins a company with promises from the board, the CEO and senior executives of cooperation, compensation and support for a robust independent compliance function. The new CCO arrives with an idealistic spirit only to discover that he or she has been misled. Sure, the CCO has a title, and a nice salary,...

The FCPA Paparazzi have a thick head and a stubborn chin. They just do not understand the significance of Compliance 2.0 to corporate governance and they blindly adhere to simplistic, yet unexplained, solutions to complex problems – kind of sounds like a presidential candidate we all know. Without getting into politics, which I avoid here on this blog, DOJ’s recent FCPA guidance on voluntary, disclosure,...

The New Year brings new promise for compliance professionals. I always sympathize with compliance officers because of their inevitable conflict – their idealism often is confronted by corporate realities – a CEO who fails to live by his or her promise of support for compliance, or the slow assignment of personnel and resources needed to implement an effective compliance program. When you add to these...

I always use the “Streetcar Named Desire” line to describe the challenges a  Chief Compliance Officer faces – CCOs depend on the kindness of strangers.  It is a little bit of an exaggeration but bear with me. CCOs are not superheroes and cannot by themselves ensure an effective ethics and compliance program. An effective compliance program depends on a positive working relationship among the key...

These are heady days for Chief Compliance Officers. Over the last 20 years, the CCO has moved from the backwater of corporate offices to the front and center of the power structure. We now have debates over the independence of the CCO from the legal function, the reporting obligations and the relationship between the CCO and the board. There is no question that CCOs have...

This week I am devoting five postings to defining the “new” model of ethics and compliance – Compliance 2.0. If you read through compliance writings, blogs, articles, white papers, and other sources, you will see the term “Compliance 2.0” bandied about.  It is a term that has yet to be defined but is taking on a life of its own – a reflection perhaps of...

Compliance has to continuously improve – as companies innovate, so do critical foundation functions like compliance. The forces of change on corporate governance and compliance were unleashed years ago. There is no way to put the genie back in the bottle – the wave is continuing to grow and so long as corporate misconduct continues, corporate compliance will continue to reinvent itself in new ways....

Webinar: Compliance 2.0 — A New Model for Ethics and Compliance Programs Tuesday, November 10, 2015, 12 Noon EST Register Here In the last year, ethics and compliance leaders have been describing a new model for ethics and compliance programs, referring to it as “Compliance 2.0.” For compliance professionals, Compliance 2.0 includes a number of important principles relating to the role of the Chief Compliance...