Strength and Sustainability: Collaborative Compliance Amidst Complexity

I simply do not have all of the answers. There, I have said it.

My simple statement sums up the collective admission of Compliance, Audit and Ethics professionals globally. The annual proliferation of domestic and international regulatory requirements continues to proceed at an ever increasing rate. When only a decade or two ago, a chief compliance officer might likely have understood the details of all regulatory responsibilities within his/her realm, many of us have now grown accustomed to reliance upon specialized colleagues to identify the details of specific branches within our own compliance universe. At least two easily recognizable trends have led to this reality: global commerce and systemic failure.

Global commerce has both driven and benefited from technological and economic advances throughout history. Progressing beyond the steamships that replaced clipper ships, the internet built upon the initial success of the transoceanic cables laid long ago. While local trade rules and customs remain, the international Law of the Sea has been joined by International Free Trade Agreements and transcontinental legal structures, most notably the European Union, where supranational legal structures both supplant and co-exist with domestic laws and regulations.

Systemic failures that have led to financial crises within nations as diverse as Greece, Ireland, Japan and the United States have resulted in the now-familiar remedies of International Monetary Fund austerity measures, the Third Basel Accord, and Dodd-Frank  Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, to name a few examples. Regulators have sought to eliminate pathways to fraud, largess and market manipulation widely blamed for the global crises by promulgating lengthy and complex regulatory solutions.

Compliance professionals who once may have laid claim to comprehending and administering compliance programs involving an entire continent or nation have succumbed to a level of regulatory complexity that makes such independent mastery incomprehensible. Even for those of us who oversee primarily domestic compliance programs, international influences are now omnipresent in Dodd-Frank, the Bank Secrecy Act, FCPA and the U.K. Bribery Act of 2010.

At the end of the day, Compliance, Audit and Ethics professionals are exactly that—professionals. We do not simply throw our hands up and decry the unfairness of increasingly complex regulatory requirements. True to our nature, we seek to understand as much as possible about our responsibilities to fulfill those compliance requirements in conjunction with our organization’s core mission and objectives. But our inquiries and information gathering must extend beyond our own individual knowledge and planning. Today’s increasingly complex regulatory environment requires us to collaborate with colleagues both within our organizations and beyond.

I would propose that now is the time to build stronger, more sustainable Compliance Programs through intelligent collaboration. It must not be viewed as a sign of ignorance or laziness when we humbly and actively partner with fellow Compliance, Audit and Ethics professionals to ascertain best practices. Likewise, we must continue to embrace the business line leaders within our own organizations to build collaborative compliance solutions that fulfill our regulatory responsibilities without unnecessarily impeding daily operations and long-term strategies.

Effective Regulatory Compliance…we may not each be able to do it alone, but we can certainly do it more constructively together.