On June 1, 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”), Criminal Division, updated its guidance on the “Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs” (“the 2020 Update”) to provide increased clarity on several of the key questions prosecutors might ask in assessing…
Author: Kaplan Walker
The New Antitrust Compliance Program Evaluation Criteria
For more than a quarter of a century the Antitrust Division of the US Justice Department (the “DOJ”) was an outlier among the components of the DOJ with respect to crediting compliance programs in enforcement matters. That changed on July…
Conducting Program Assessments Using the Department of Justice’s New Evaluation Standards
The modern era of corporate compliance began on November 1, 1991, when the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Organizations (the “FSGO”) – the first set of general standards for assessing the efficacy of what were then called “program[s] to prevent and…
Using behavioral ethics in compliance program assessments
Behavioral economics is a school of social science that teaches that we are not as rational as we think. The application of that learning to the realm of ethics is sometimes called “behavioral ethics,” which is a social science that…
Culture assessment – the why and the how
Research conducted over the past twenty years has provided an evidentiary basis for what has – for just as long – been accepted wisdom in the E&C community: that an ethical organizational culture is even more effective than a strong…
Legal Guidance related to Program Assessment
Legal guidance in the area of C&E program assessments accords with professional wisdom in this area, emphasizing the importance of periodic assessments to an effective program. In this post, we review a few of the relevant legal standards from U.S.…
Assessments and Confidentiality
A threshold issue which often arises in conducting C&E program assessments is to what extent the process and report should be treated as confidential. There are two components to this question, the first of which concerns the use of the…
Certification as a form of program evaluation
By Joe Murphy, CCEP A newly evolving approach to program evaluation is certification, particularly to meet an ISO standard. Mostly notably, ISO 37001 provides for certification of anti-corruption compliance programs. There is a great deal of controversy about this certification.…
PLI One-Hour Briefing on Compliance & Ethics Program Assessment
On September 28 at 1:00 Eastern Rebecca and Jeff will be leading a One-Hour Briefing for the Practising Law Institute on C&E program assessment. The program will cover: Official requirements for conducting C&E program assessments and business-related reasons to do…
Assessing compliance incentives
There are two types of incentives that typically should be reviewed in a C&E program assessment. The first concerns the extent to which a company’s general incentive structure has the effect (presumably unintentional) of promoting non-compliance. The second concerns incentive…