Is your compliance program working?

Is your compliance program working???Measurement is one of the challenges everyone in our field faces. In the monthly interview article in SCCE’s Compliance & Ethics Professional magazine, Adam Turteltaub interviews Joe Turner of Sony Corp in an article, “Context is Key” (Sept. 2022; p. 8).??Joe heads up Sony’s global compliance monitoring function.

It is first interesting to see that Sony has a separate unit to do compliance monitoring and auditing.??As Joe explains it, their function is to “ensure Sony’s ethics and compliance program is fully implemented at all entities and remains effective.”???This short reference reveals some interesting points.??It explains what the unit is about.??But it also hits what could be called 2 of the 3 elements of compliance measurement.??As correctly noted in the DOJ Criminal Division’s evaluation questions, there are 3 general points to measure:??

1. Is your program well designed?

2.??Is it being implemented? and

3.??Is it effective – does it work???

Probably the biggest mistake made in this area is only measuring item 2, and omitting both 1 and 3.??For example, if a company does not cover incentives, it has failed the first step.??If it only counts how many people it has trained it has failed item 3. You first need to know that your program includes all the steps it should have.??Then you need to see that everything you planned is actually happening in every part of the company.??Then you need to do the hardest step:??test to see if it is actually working.??

Of course, the trend now is to use data analysis in the measurement process, and this definitely makes sense. But one reference in Joe’s discussion hits a critical point that is easy to overlook in the interview.??He says “I have found it extremely rewarding and motivating to visit employees at entities globally.” He then takes this input to work with the global compliance leaders to address the employees’ needs.??

There is a great risk that compliance will go from ignoring the valuable data and not analyzing it, to going overboard and focusing only on numbers.??Numbers can be valuable, but can never replace simply listening to employees throughout the company.??This saying may now be trite, but it is still true:??“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”??If you do as Joe suggests, and visit with employees around your company, you will gain an important insight into what is really happening in your company, and how well the compliance program is actually working.???????