Compliance Perspectives

By Adam Turteltaub Professors Todd Haugh (LinkedIn) and Suneal Bedi (LinkedIn) of the Institute for Corporate Governance & Ethics at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University recently published a paper: Retheorizing Corporate Compliance. In it they argued strongly that compliance needs to be seen not just as a defense against potential corporate legal liability. It also needs to be recognized as a proactive offensive tool for building market share and competitive advantage. On this podcast they explain that compliance creates numerous non-market strategies for helping the business. For example, organizations with stronger programs can demonstrate to regulators that they would be a good choice to acquire a troubled company. Leading compliance programs can also help to set the standard of practices for their industry, giving their organizations an advantage over those with lagging compliance practices. In sum, by thinking of how compliance can help the business, not just protect it, there are significant opportunities created to grow the business, and change the way people think about compliance. Listen now The Compliance Perspectives Podcast is sponsored by Athennian, a leading provider of entity management and governance software. Get started at www.athennian.com.

By Adam Turteltaub In November 2024, the Office of Inspector General at Health and Human Services  released its Nursing Facility: Industry Segment-Specific Compliance Program Guidance. The document is part of an effort to modernize how HHS OIG is communicating to industry and providing information about risks, how to mitigate them and best practices for compliance programs. Jillian Willis (LinkedIn/Firm Page) and Melissa Scott (LinkedIn/Firm Page) of Nelson Mullins explain that the new guidance contains four main sections: quality of care and quality of life, Medicare and Medicaid billing requirements, Federal anti-kickback statute and other risk areas such as physician self-referral, HIPAA and related-party transactions. It shares best practices. Notably, the guidance, complements other guidance out there, including the Department of Justice’s. And, in addition to focusing compliance efforts, it can be helpful for promoting operational efficiency. Listen in and then spend some time reading the Nursing Facility: Industry Segment-Specific Compliance Program Guidance. Listen now The Compliance Perspectives Podcast is sponsored by Athennian, a leading provider of entity management and governance software. Get started at www.athennian.com.

By Adam Turteltaub Professors Guido Palazzo and Ulrich Hoffrage are skeptical. When they hear that there was a bad apple at the core of a scandal, they are hesitant to accept that explanation. Instead, they argue in this podcast and in their new book, The Dark Pattern: The Hidden Dynamics of Corporate Scandals, that the problem is typically much deeper and wider. There are dark patterns, as they call them, that lead to bad behavior. Underlying the patterns are nine building blocks.  They explain: Rigid ideology is a shared belief system that narrows the view of decision-makers at the expense of other views, risking them losing sight of ethical dimensions. Toxic leadership can create fearful contexts when narcissistic, Machiavellian, or psychopathic leaders abuse their power and cause harm, be it through direct orders, leading by example, or a carrot- and- stick approach. Manipulative language restricts how things are perceived and evaluated, influencing people’s judgments, decisions, and behaviors in ways that contribute to evil. Corrupting goals and unrealistic targets divert people’s attention so that they lose the ability to see the bigger picture in which their decisions are embedded— and the ethical dimension of their behavior. Destructive incentives create a tunnel vision of reality and lead to unhealthy competition and fights. Ambiguous rules create a gray area where people at best are confused and at worst can morally disengage when they do something bad because, after all, they were just following the rules. Perceived unfairness can lead people to engage in illegal practices while feeling that they are restoring justice. Dangerous groups may force individuals to conform, encourage aggression against members of out- groups, or pressure those who are considering speaking up not to do so. Finally, people who are on a slippery slope may not realize how they are straying from the right path to the point of escalating their commitment to evil things without even realizing how they have changed. While there are ways to manage for these risk areas, the challenge is that they are too often missed. The solution they advocate for includes compliance teams educating themselves more in areas such as social psychology so that they are more attuned to the human factors. Within the office there is a need for companies to resist the need to move on from scandals and to instead engage in deeper soul searching to understand what went wrong and why. Finally, they are advocates for making ethics a much more important part of compliance programs. Listen in to better understand what dark patterns are and how to keep them from taking hold of your organization. Listen now Sponsored by Case IQ, a global provider of whistleblowing, case management, and compliance solutions.

By Adam Turteltaub So you’ve got a case of AI fever and want to put the technology to work for your compliance team. What should you do? Jordan Domash, Founder of Rersponsiv, urges you to first take a deep breath and think through the process starting with defining your goals. Interestingly, he shares, the goals can be affected by the solution you choose, whether you go with a solution that is homegrown or out of the box. Either way, once the goal is set, expect an iterative process and regular testing to ensure that the solution is delivering what you were looking for, free from hallucinations and other problems. To make that process work it’s essential to have an evaluation plan in place, which includes identifying all the potential failure points. Make a part of it conducting some manual tests to see if the AI is delivering the results it should. In sum, AI can be invaluable to your program, but only if you put in the work to ensure that it is well designed and truly performing as it should. Listen now  Sponsored by Case IQ, a global provider of whistleblowing, case management, and compliance solutions.

By Adam Turteltaub On May 12, 2025 the head of the Criminal Division at the US Department of Justice issued a memo to all Criminal Division personnel with the subject: Focus, Fairness and Efficiency in the Fight Against White Collar Crime. To understand what the document means for compliance programs, we spoke with Amy Matsuo, leader for both Regulatory Insights and Compliance Transformation at KPMG. Overall, she sees the document as being good news for compliance programs.  It reiterates the importance and value of quickly finding and remediating violations. The DOJ also outlines some very favorable terms for organizations that self-disclose. These can include a declination with no requirement to enter into a criminal resolution, a non-prosecution agreement and a 75% reduction in potential fines. The Department of Justice will also be reviewing settlements that are already in place and may provide relief if the organization is found to have made substantial progress, has a reduced risk profile and self-reported. This review is a part of an effort to revisit monitorships and to ensure the cost to organizations is justified. The Department of Justice also shared where it will be focusing its efforts. Procurement and program fraud, trade violations, sanctions violations and support to foreign terrorist organizations will all be in the cross hairs. Listen in to learn more about what the DOJ’s expectations are and what you should be doing to ensure your organization meets them. Listen now Sponsored by Case IQ, a global provider of whistleblowing, case management, and compliance solutions.

Andres Cuevas, Compliance Director LATAM for EmergentCold, shares insights from Chile on navigating compliance in Latin America. He emphasizes the importance of understanding and adapting to each country's unique culture instead of viewing the region as a whole. Cuevas stresses the necessity of establishing strong baseline rules while allowing for local flexibility. He also highlights the complexity of legal requirements in the region, noting that companies can face liability for over 250 crimes in Chile alone. Tune in for expert strategies on compliance during mergers and acquisitions!

By Adam Turteltaub Mark Diamond wants you to stop thinking of records retention as a chore and start thinking of it as a driver of compliance. In this podcast the President & CEO of Contoural shares that retention schedules have grown in importance with increased requirements for privacy and safeguarding personal data. That, in turn, is having an enormous impact on the risks and costs of ediscovery. Proper retention schedules also have significant impact on employee productivity and collaboration, as well as using AI in less risky ways. Organizations are now increasingly treating records based on their business value and are developing retention schedules that reflect their worth. One of the greatest challenges they face, though, is the tendency of employees to want to hold onto everything just in case. While it’s understandable, it adversely affects efficiency, as employees are forced to wade their way through obsolete records. Part of the solution, he suggests, is to develop a “super schedule” for document retention. Rather than having multiple different policies which can cause confusion, having one overall policy vastly simplifies things for employees and allows for greater automation. Listen in to learn more, but don’t retain this podcast longer than you should. Listen now Sponsored by Case IQ, a global provider of whistleblowing, case management, and compliance solutions.

By Adam Turteltaub In a recent issue of Compliance & Ethics Professional ®, Nick Gallo, Chief Servant and Co-CEO of Ethico addressed the control paradox, a situation in which the controls designed to prevent misconduct, actually encourage it. Think of it like the person whose car has so many airbags that they no longer fear an accident and drive quicker. So what’s the solution? He argues it’s creating an environment where we have faith in controls, but not too much, and focus on helping those on the front line make the right decisions. That includes, he says, teaching not just what you should do but why. It also means encouraging ownership of ethical issues, not outsourcing it. Listen in to learn more about how to get better control on your controls. Listen now Sponsored by Case IQ, a global provider of whistleblowing, case management, and compliance solutions.

By Adam Turteltaub Recently, Gartner released very intriguing research into third party risk. Chris Audet, Vice President and Chief of Research in the Gartner Assurance Practice tell us that they found business has it’s spending all wrong. Too much is invested in due diligence, and not enough time and effort is spent on monitoring. There research found that the business unit knows the risks third parties pose and is seeing it firsthand. When relationship managers were surveyed, 84% had seen changes to the risk profile and 76% found a third party had provided materially inaccurate information.  In fact, 95% had seen something troubling in the past year. So why aren’t they reporting this information to the compliance team and what would get them to share more? There were three main answers, Chris reports: Creating more relationship ownership objectivity. Too many feel too strong a tie to the third party. Confidence in identifying red flags. Encouraging objectivity and providing reassurance that compliance won’t over-react. He also advises making it easy for third party relationship owners to contact compliance and to work compliance into the workflow. Listen in to learn more about the benefits of rebalancing the third party risk equation. Listen now Sponsored by Case IQ, a global provider of whistleblowing, case management, and compliance solutions.

By Adam Turteltaub Risk assessments are not new in healthcare, and in specific regulatory areas are required. But, that doesn’t mean things aren’t changing.  More and more organizations are embracing enterprise risk assessments (ERM) as a way to assess the range of risks that they face, including  legal and regulatory concerns. Getting the risk assessment right is particularly challenging for healthcare organizations, explains Robert Stratton, Executive Director – Enterprise Risk and Security; Corporate Compliance Official and Senior Counsel for Northwest Permanente. Robert is also the author of the chapter “Enterprise Risk Management in Healthcare” in the latest edition of the Complete Healthcare Compliance Manual. The mix of insurance, patient care professionals, large sums of money and complex structures makes the risk map challenging. On the positive side, electronic health records can provide a wealth of information to inform your ERM efforts, as can frontline employees who can provide insights into what is going on behind the numbers. Once the risks are mapped, there are four ways to manage them, he explains: transfer, accept, mitigate and avoid. It’s hard to do any of them cleanly, but it’s important to understand which approach or approaches are best for a given risk. All four approaches, he adds, need to be accompanied by a culture which is aware of the risks, understands the risk appetite of the organization and their department, and acts accordingly. Listen in to learn more about ERM and how compliance can play an effective role in identifying and managing risk. Listen now Sponsored by Case IQ, a global provider of whistleblowing, case management, and compliance solutions.