Your CEO is either on board for compliance, or he/she is not. There is no half-way mark here, no way to deceive or soft-shoe your way through the compliance requirement. Yet it is common to see a CEO who is not committed and a Chief Compliance Officer who is in denial and points to half-hearted steps to justify their own self-deception. CCOs need to take...

I am a positive person (anyone who has to say that raises doubts). At least I like to think I am. I am not yet sold on the wisdom of DOJ’s hiring of a compliance counsel. Frankly, I have a lot more respect for the knowledge and experience of line prosecutors at DOJ and their supervisors on this issue – they know and understand compliance...

Everyone likes to give advice on the importance of tone-at-the-top. Like many things in life, it is easy to talk about but much more difficult to implement. There are lots of ways to describe or analyze the same issue. In the end the result has to be reached. To boil it down, tone-at-the-top requires leadership. That is pretty obvious. But, what kind of leadership? This...

We all know the importance of the sentencing guidelines and the impact the revisions, especially the 2010 amendments, have had on corporate governance and compliance. The history behind the sentencing guidelines tracks the rise of the compliance profession. The time is now for the Sentencing Commission to launch a further review of the guidelines to reflect the rapid changes in the compliance profession. The Sentencing...