By Adam Turteltaub

Do you ever ask yourself, “What kind of compliance officer am I?” Netherlands-based  Susan du Becker, Director, Risk & Compliance at Microsoft, thinks we all should. To her experience, there are two answers to that question.

One is a regulatory compliance officer: someone who is focused on the requirements of regulators, potential fines and legal consequence. The other is a business compliance officer, who is focused on what the business needs and how to ensure it achieves its goals while staying within the multitude of white lines the laws and regulations have painted.

She envisions herself as the latter, balancing business and regulatory requirements. She recognizes that the business unit will test the limits, and that she is there to make sure there are always two feet solidly on the ground.

To keep the business team focused on their legal and regulatory obligations, she advocates for making it clear what lines absolutely may not be crossed, taking the time to meet with them regularly and being prepared to have some difficult conversations if necessary.

She also believes that compliance teams are most effective when not positioning themselves as just a gate keeper.

Listen in to learn more about the approach, the role of governance and how to ensure the business understand this it owns compliance.

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By Adam Turteltaub

Rob Tull (LinkedIn), Managing Director at Effective Compliance LLC wants every compliance officer to be both competent and able to demonstrate it. He advocates for the development of four sequential, underlying skills:

Communication

The ability to be aware of risks

Adaptability, and

Decision-making/judgement

Underlying all of them is knowledge, and together they form a framework for effective compliance programs.

The single most important competency area, he argues, is communication. The ability to translate complex laws and regulations into simple language that helps the business make good decisions is paramount. So, too, is the ability to tailor your message to the audience:  management and the board likely need to hear something different than line managers.

Listen in to learn more about what makes for competency for compliance professionals.

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By Adam Turteltaub

Who are you talking to? When you think about all the employees in your organization, who do you see in your mind? You probably, and should, think of several people: the person in the plant, the R&D people, the sales team. They all have different needs, maybe even different cultures.

Adam Balfour, Carsten Tams and Karen Moore (LinkedIn), each of whom is a veteran compliance professional, explain in this podcast why it’s so important to truly know who the people are in your organization and the risks they interact with. They explain that you have to take the time to get in their heads to understand what their needs are and how best to communicate with them.

One technique they advocate for is developing personas: Create fictional, yet realistic descriptions of the types of people in your organization. That will help you better flesh out who they are, their goals and their skills. This process also helps you stand in their shoes and understand not what you want to say but how they are likely to interpret and use that information.

Listen in to learn more about how to bring your workforce to life in front of you and have a real impact on their behavior.

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By Adam Turteltaub

It’s a complex world, we all know, and we all try to simplify it and our lives, at least from time to time. Nitish Upadhyaya, Director-Behavioral Insights at Ropes & Gray’s R&G Insights Lab and podcaster, wants compliance teams to appreciate complexity and, if not embrace it, at least understand how to work with it.

For him this journey started many years ago with the recognition that disincentives don’t always work. He wanted to understand why. This led him to an understanding of complexity, which explores the connections between people and systems and how nonlinear and unpredictable things can be.

Appreciating that knot of connections is important for compliance teams, he argues, since the nature of the job involves affecting individual behavior and culture.

He outlines several principles that compliance teams should follow:

Move away from the idea that you can map everything.

Context matters. Understand the human dynamics and stories.

The only real rule in a complex system is it will have unintended consequences.

When dealing with a complex system, think of the direction you want, not just the end point.

It's about managing energy in the system and following natural contours

Anomalies are helpful. Outliers can be your next risk or innovation.

Map constraints, the things that connect or limit people, such as fear of retaliation or cultural issues,

And when it comes to a root cause analysis, dig until you find not just the root, but the several roots that likely underlie it.

Listen in to learn more about approaching and harnessing complexity.

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By Adam Turteltaub

The Health Care Compliance Association just published the 4th edition of the Research Compliance Professional’s Handbook, and to see what’s new in it we sat down with the editor, Kelly Willenberg (LinkedIn) of Kelly Willenberg & Associates.

The Handbook, she explains is there to help both those who attend the HCCA Healthcare Research Compliance Academy and anyone looking for a desktop reference that addresses the fundamentals of research compliance. It addresses topics such as safety, privacy, monitoring, and biosecurity.

For this edition each chapter was reviewed thoroughly with any and all necessary updates made, including to the chapter on FDA regulations.

In addition, a new chapter was written to address AI. It defines what AI is and why compliance teams need to look at it from a risk management perspective. The chapter also addresses the integration of AI and how therapies are changing.

One admonition that she provides for compliance teams is to watch Europe. As with privacy, Europe has taken the lead in AI regulation.

Be sure to listen in and then take a look into buying your own copy of Research Compliance Professional’s Handbook, 4th Edition.

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By Adam Turteltaub

It’s one thing if a company wants to protect its trade secrets. But, what if it wants to keep its dirty little secrets from getting out? Then, the SEC may want to step in.

Stephen Cohen (LinkedIn), partner at Sidley Austin, and a former senior leader in the Enforcement Division at the SEC, explain in this podcast that, to understand the issue, we need to look back to the Dodd-Frank Act.

The law led to the SEC whistleblower program and included anti-retaliation authority. The SEC believed it had implicit authority to punish efforts that impeded direct communication by whistleblowers with the Commission and its staff. Both the SEC and CFTC have created similar rules prohibiting organization and individuals from taking any action that inhibits someone communicating directly with the SEC about a possible securities law violation.

The SEC has interpreted that to mean that language in non-disclosure and severance agreements, codes of conduct, policies and elsewhere that either require employees to report issues internally rather than to the government, or require non-disclosure to the government as a condition of severance, are illegal.

Several companies have since run afoul of the SEC on this issue, with cases going back to 2015.

So what should companies do? For one, make sure that they are properly balancing the need to protect confidentiality without interfering with whistleblowing. Watch for language prohibiting disclosure of information to third parties that doesn’t provide an exception for the government. Be on the lookout, too, for policies requiring departing employees to attest that they did not disclose information to the government. Look, too, at what your employment agreements say. Likewise, watch what language you include in agreements with your third parties. The SEC looks askance, there, too, to language that it perceives would inhibit reporting of wrongdoing.

Listen in to learn more about this evolving issue and its many pitfalls.

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By Adam Turteltaub

Greg Walters is an attorney in the Cyber Risk and Governance Branch at the SEC. But in this podcast he’s not speaking as an enforcer but as someone who has seen a lot of compliance training during his career as a government attorney across numerous agencies.

He warns that while an organization may boast of 100% completion rates for their training, that doesn’t mean 100% of the employees got the message. That’s especially true of online training, where, unlike live training, it’s hard to tell if people are truly following along and then adjust the learning.

The goal, he argues, is not to just give knowledge but to affect behavior. So, to see what impact the training has had, look to changes in the number of types and questions you receive, as well as incidents that do or don’t occur.

Also, take the time to understand your audience and make sure that the training is relevant to them and reflects the culture of the organization.

Listen in to learn more tips for improving the effectiveness of your compliance training program.

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By Adam Turteltaub

There is an expectation in many, if not most people, that at some point they will, or should be, promoted. But how do you know if you are ready? And, once you are promoted, what does it take to succeed in your new role?

To find the answers we spoke with compliance veteran, Debbie Hennelly, Founder & President of Resiliti.

The first piece of advice she shares is that not everyone needs or wants to be a manager. For many it’s okay to say that they love being a subject matter expert and advisor, and they aren’t ready, or maybe never will be ready, to be something else.

If you are looking to move up, how do you know you are ready? She reports that you don’t until you are actually in the job. That’s especially true for compliance people, since we who often don’t benefit from the leadership and management training that is given to other parts of the organization.

Once in the role, let the team know that you value them. If there was someone else on it that you beat out for the role, acknowledge the situation and let the person know you recognize the sensitivities and hope to earn their trust.

If you are new to the organization, know that it’s okay and better to spend the first 90 days doing a lot more listening than talking. Resist the urge to make changes until you have a better understanding of the organization’s culture. Also, take the time to introduce yourself to peers and leaders. Ask them about their roles and how you can support them.

Listen in to learn more about how to step up successfully.

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By Adam Turteltaub

What if you had a compliance program and nobody noticed? It’s not likely. But what if you had a compliance program, and nobody understood what it did? That, sadly, is more than a bit of an ongoing problem.

To take on that challenge we spoke with Carolina Santos de Silva, Head of Ethics & Compliance EMEA for Bridgestone EMEA and Pauline Blondet, Co-Owner and Chief Operating Officer of Upright Solutions. The two recently published the article “How to Sell Ethics and Compliance to your Organization” in the October issue of Ethikos.

They persuasively argue in this podcast for compliance teams to think about their product, brand and having a robust message.

Start with your product. Is it ethics, ethics and compliance, integrity? Think through which best defines what you are offering.

Your brand is the image the compliance team communicates within the organization and what differentiates you from other departments. It needs to reflect the department’s message.

From the brand will come a pitch, or your department’s elevator speech. It should introduce yourself, present your why or purpose, explain what it is that the organization is facing as a challenge and introduce the solution you are providing, and include a call to action.

Some other pieces of advice they offer are:

Define who your target audiences are, including an assessment of where they are when it comes to compliance, what you expect from them and what the gaps are.

To gain leadership support, help them understand the broader compliance context in which the organization operates.

Don’t assume leadership understands its role within a compliance program. Show them and then thank them when they help.

Seek out as many touchpoints with the workforce as possible.

Remember that who sends the message can be just as important as the message itself.

Listen in to learn more about strategic and innovative ways to sell your compliance program internally.

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By Adam Turteltaub

With the explosion of sanctions regimes globally, and particularly in the US, most any company that exports just about anything now has to have a trade compliance effort. To understand what that entails we spoke with Julia Komarovskaya, Export Compliance Manager at MathWorks.

It’s a complex challenge, she explains, with the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), and Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) all having a say, and often with overlapping jurisdictions. Organizations need to watch what goods they export, to where and to whom. Knowing your customer has never been more important.

To navigate this minefield, she recommends first recognizing that the rules don’t apply only to goods. Services can be covered as well. Also recognize that exporting something as innocuous as a pencil could be prohibited, if sent to the wrong person.

Developing an export control program right takes understanding what you are exporting now, working closely with the business team as early in the process as possible, and planning for the long term since regulations are guaranteed to grow more complicated over time.

Listen in to learn more about the basics of the complex world of trade compliance.

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