I read an interesting blog post this morning, and I wanted to share and see if our blog readers had any thoughts to add.  Eric Krell at the Big Fat Finance Blog (a personal favorite information source of mine), suggested in his latest blog post that compliance really should be a matter of checking boxes.  I would bet that many gut reactions to that were similar to mine.  “Yikes!”

But he caught my attention – and in the end, I agree with his assessment, albeit not with the way that he stated it.  If an organization has built a culture of appropriate risk assessment, governance, ethical conduct and solid business practices, “compliance” is simply a matter of checking off the boxes on the various regulatory reporting that is necessary.

Mr. Krell also alludes to the fact that the actual effectiveness and implementation of the current regulatory environment is arguably flawed, and so it’s not always quite so simple, but the primary point is still valid.  If it is difficult for organizations to respond to regulations, perhaps they should examine their business to discover why.