Compliance Stuff

  Behind every corporate chorus of “My door is always open” and “We want to hear from you” lurks an uncomfortable truth: Saying it doesn’t make it so. Roxanne Petraeus, a former Army officer and co-founder of compliance training provider Ethena, talks about h ow superficial speak-up policies actually silence the voices companies claim they want to hear. In what feels like a lifetime ago, I served in the U.S. Army, including in Afghanistan during the 2010 surge. Later, I helped train foreign militaries in Cambodia and Mongolia as a part of Special Operations. I eventually left military service in 2016 and went on to co-found Ethena.  It’s admittedly a circuitous (difficult) route to  compliance , but I remain incredibly proud of my time in service and find that occasionally lessons from the Army inform both the way I build Ethena’s  company culture  as CEO and how I approach serving the clients we support today. One observation that’s stayed with me is the dang...

  In the DOJ’s 2024 update to the Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs (2024 ECCP) , compliance professionals face new expectations that could reshape how we approach compliance programs. In this latest update, the DOJ strongly emphasizes data-driven insights, focusing on compliance culture, employee engagement, and organizational trust. This means that compliance programs must now focus on policies and procedures and prove that these practices are embedded into the company culture and yield measurable outcomes. The implications of these new standards extend across every aspect of compliance, from audits to employee training and risk assessments. In this post, we’ll explore the key areas of the 2024 ECCP, discussing why the DOJ’s new focus on data and culture is significant and how compliance professionals can adjust their strategies to align with these expectations. A New Focus on Data: The Backbone of Modern Compliance One of the most critical shifts in the 2024 ECCP is t...