Over the last few years the compliance community has had to adjust to success waves of changes in priorities as “new” compliance issues are identified. With each new issue that arises compliance teams are forced to scramble to put in place programs to manage this new, suddenly hot risk area. Training must be developed, broad communication plans are put in place, systems are examined, controls are implemented and tested. Yet, each of these responses are reactive, which means there is a gap between the controls in place and the risks that exist.

To help change the dynamic the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics conducted a series of interactive workshops in 2009 to:

1. Identify what the next big issue is likely to be
2. Determine how to appropriately respond to the issue when it arises

There was also a third, and perhaps more important purpose for these sessions: to find the common elements of the solutions developed to create a framework that compliance professionals could use to meet virtually any new challenge. Put another way, the goal was to answer the question: how can I be prepared no matter what new risk comes my way?