This is the perfect time of year to evaluate your compliance programs and make adjustments so that you achieve your objectives. However, to make that assessment you need to know where you are heading and then you can consider what paths will help and which ones to avoid.
To help with your assessment here is a list of characteristics of what an Ideal Compliance Program might or even should look like.
An Ideal Compliance Program will:
Focus on outcomes
Define comprehensive, clear and concise obligations
Specify unambiguous goals and objectives
Utilize standards to ensure normative behaviors
Embed compliance to always keep you out of danger
Be friction-less (doesn't add drag to your work processes)
Effectively meet all required and voluntary obligations
Consistently perform to your higher standards
Easily adapt to meet new compliance obligations
Implement systems that always keep you in compliance
Be ethical, transparent, and have a high-degree of integrity
Always improve
Compliance is not just what you do at the end of everything else. It is instead, a competency that you improve over time to ensure that you achieve your business outcomes.