Friday, December 13, 2019
Corporate Compliance Insights
  • Home
    • Home
  • About
    • About CCI
    • Writing for CCI
    • Advertise With Us
  • Articles
    • See All Articles
    • Compliance
    • Ethics
    • Risk
    • FCPA
    • Governance
    • Fraud
    • Audit
    • HR Compliance
    • Cybersecurity
    • Data Privacy
    • Financial Services
    • Leadership and Career
  • Industry News
  • Jobs
  • Events
    • Webinars & Events
    • Submit an Event
  • Downloads
    • eBooks
    • Whitepapers
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Subscribe
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
    • Home
  • About
    • About CCI
    • Writing for CCI
    • Advertise With Us
  • Articles
    • See All Articles
    • Compliance
    • Ethics
    • Risk
    • FCPA
    • Governance
    • Fraud
    • Audit
    • HR Compliance
    • Cybersecurity
    • Data Privacy
    • Financial Services
    • Leadership and Career
  • Industry News
  • Jobs
  • Events
    • Webinars & Events
    • Submit an Event
  • Downloads
    • eBooks
    • Whitepapers
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Subscribe
No Result
View All Result
Corporate Compliance Insights
Home Compliance

Working in the Compliance Field – The Need for Practical Solutions

by Michael Volkov
November 24, 2014
in Compliance
Working in the Compliance Field – The Need for Practical Solutions

This article was republished with permission from Michael Volkov’s blog, Corruption, Crime & Compliance.

With the rise of the compliance professional, there is a real need for strong support as they design and implement new and innovative compliance programs.

Compliance professionals are stretched thin – they have a mountain of responsibilities but only an anthill of resources to commit to the job. They are constantly putting out fires, prioritizing tasks and allocating scarce resources or urging other parts of the company to promote or assist the compliance function.

Professional associations, lawyers, consultants, vendors/suppliers and other support persons have a duty to the compliance professional. They need to take a different approach – one that is more focused on real-life solutions to real-life problems.

I have to start with another one of my life lessons – the ability to empathize and see issues from another person’s perspective. Compliance practitioners do not need theoretical solutions or long-winded explanations of why this approach works or another does not work.

Instead, compliance professionals need support with practical solutions to real problems. In some cases, compliance support professionals can help to define a strategy to solve a problem. Sometimes the same strategy or a similar one worked for another compliance professional in another company.

Compliance professionals also do not need lengthy recitations on the history of a particular law, unless that history is immediately relevant to the current situation. All too often, lawyers who support compliance professionals fill their emails and telephone calls with long-winded legal explanations that have little to no relevance to the compliance professional who is trying to solve a problem.

In many cases, compliance professionals need a bottom line on what needs to be done and an adequate discussion of why the action needs to be taken. A Big Lebowski solution focusing on the “ins and outs” of an issue can be inefficient and a waste of time for a compliance professional.

Benchmarking among compliance professionals is an important source of information and assistance for problem solving. No two companies are exactly alike, but there are lessons to be learned from benchmarking similarly sized companies or regulated companies.

Compliance professionals are very collegial and willing to help each other out. They often share information, drafts and policies/procedures among themselves. They also consult with each other on occasion.

CCOs work by themselves or with small groups. They often have a small staff. They have fewer opportunities to develop solutions through staff discussions. Often, they arrive at solutions by working closely with legal staff and their clients – the business managers.

In the end, compliance professionals need less theoretical mumbo jumbo and more practical, real-world solutions. As a theoretical matter, it may be great to conduct due diligence of all suppliers/vendors who have annual revenues exceeding $50,000, but a compliance professional may not have the resources to conduct such a review and may be left with a strategy that focuses on the top 10 or top 20 vendors/suppliers based on geographic areas of operation.

The compliance industry should start to focus more on these kinds of issues. It is time to give compliance professionals the support they need and the support they deserve.


Previous Post

Fortified for Success: Building Your Company’s Risk, Controls and Compliance Ecosystem, for the IPO and Beyond

Next Post

EY FIDS Launches New Technology Tool to Enhance Third-Party Risk Management

Michael Volkov

Michael-Volkov-leclairryan

Michael Volkov is the CEO of The Volkov Law Group LLC, where he provides compliance, internal investigation and white collar defense services.  He can be reached at [email protected].

Michael has extensive experience representing clients on matters involving the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the UK Bribery Act, money laundering, Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), export controls, sanctions and International Traffic in Arms, False Claims Act, Congressional investigations, online gambling and regulatory enforcement issues. Michael served for more than 17 years as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia; for five years as the Chief Crime and Terrorism Counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Chief Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security Counsel for the Senate and House Judiciary Committees; and as a Trial Attorney in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Michael also maintains a well-known blog: Corruption Crime & Compliance, which is frequently cited by anti-corruption professionals and professionals in the compliance industry.

Related Posts

change is coming text on city background at sunset

Future-Proofing the Compliance Professional

December 13, 2019
new york city skyline at sunset

The Early Days: The Birth of the Independent Monitoring Concept

December 11, 2019
job candidates awaiting inerview

An Unconventional Interview Question: “Do You Have an HR Department?”

December 5, 2019
closeup of magnifying glass on gray background

DiCianni’s Idea: How It All Got Started

December 4, 2019
Next Post
EY FIDS Launches New Technology Tool to Enhance Third-Party Risk Management

EY FIDS Launches New Technology Tool to Enhance Third-Party Risk Management

Free Downloads

OFAC whitepaper cover
Compliance Job Interview Q&A
Reputation Risk Management Research

RSS SEC Litigation News

  • John Special, Defendant, and Michael Murphy, Relief Defendant, John Kenneth Davidson December 12, 2019
    SEC Obtains $3 Million Settlement in Insider Trading Action
  • Palm Beach Atlantic Financial Group, LLC and William A. Smith December 11, 2019
    SEC Charges Florida Resident and His Corporate Entity for Fraudulent Securities Offerings
  • Nanotech Engineering, Inc., Michael James Sweaney (also known as Michael Hatton), David Sweaney, and Jeffery Gange December 11, 2019
    SEC Obtains Asset Freeze to Halt Alleged Offering Fraud

Jump to a Topic:

anti-corruption anti-money laundering/AML Artificial Intelligence/A.I. automation banks Big Data blockchain board of directors board risk oversight bribery CCPA/California Consumer Privacy Act Cloud Compliance communications management corporate culture corporate governance culture of ethics cyber risk data analytics data breach data governance decision-making Dodd-Frank DOJ due diligence fcpa enforcement actions GDPR GRC HIPAA information security internal audit internet of things (IoT) KYC/know your customer machine learning monitoring regtech reputation risk risk assessment Sanctions SEC social media risk technology third party risk management tone at the top training whistleblowing
No Result
View All Result

Privacy Policy

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS Feed

Category

  • Audit
  • Compliance
  • Compliance Podcasts
  • Cybersecurity
  • Data Privacy
  • eBooks
  • Ethics
  • FCPA
  • Featured
  • Financial Services
  • Fraud
  • Governance
  • HR Compliance
  • Leadership and Career
  • News
  • Opinion
  • Resource Library
  • Risk
  • Uncategorized
  • Videos
  • Webinars
  • Whitepapers

© 2019 Corporate Compliance Insights

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • About
  • Articles
  • News
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Whitepapers
  • eBooks
  • Events
  • Jobs
  • Subscribe

© 2019 Corporate Compliance Insights