Jkaplan


Effective Discipline According to the DOJ.

My latest column in Compliance & Ethics Professional.  I hope you find it interesting.

Do compliance officers have an inherent conflict of interest?

In Agency, Authority, and Compliance, Sean J. Griffith of the  Fordham University School of Law argues: Compliance can and often does serve as a conduit through which regulators and enforcement authorities enlarge their authority beyond statutory bounds. The potential to do so is a function of the symbiotic relationship between compliance […]

Behavioral ethics and compliance to the rescue?

A colleague once voiced the view that the C&E field was “out of energy and out of ideas.”  I have often been of the same mind but am cheered by the advent in recent years  of “behavioral ethics and compliance” The need for new C&E ideas was recently articulated in […]

Is a weak compliance program worse than no program?

Many years ago I was asked by a prospective client if I could design a “C minus” (i.e., just barely passing) compliance program for them. I responded that, for various reasons, by aiming for a C minus they were likely to end up with an “F.” I did not get […]

How to assess the efficacy of codes of conduct

Here is a post from the Compliance Program Assessment Blog on assessing codes of conduct. Rebecca Walker and I hope you find it useful.

Lessons learned from lessons learned

Rebecca Walker and I recently authored this post for our program assurance column in Corporate Compliance Insights. We hope you find it useful.

“To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”

So said Oscar Wilde. And while he clearly didn’t have compliance programs in mind, his immortal words provide a humorous introduction in these distinctly unfunny times to the topic of how the Department of Justice’s recently revised Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs (“the Evaluation”)  has impacted how the Department evaluates […]

Insider trading and “inner controls”

Here is my latest column in Compliance & Ethics Professional – which looks at insider trading from a behavioral compliance perspective. I hope you find it interesting.

Conflicts of interest in a post-Trump era

In a classic Watergate-era Doonesbury, Mark asks rhetorically whether it is fair to judge the ethicality of the White House based solely on the various cases and allegations that had surfaced during that scandal. No it isn’t, he replied: those are only the ones we know about. The latest Trump […]

Answers to tough questions on conflicts of interest

Recently our friends at NAVEX Global invited Rebecca Walker and me to teach a master class on conflicts of interest. Part of the session involved our receiving and responding to key questions about COIs. We thought you might like to see this Q & A.