Share these talks and lectures with your colleagues
Invite colleaguesPractice paper
Using hotline data to build better board reports
Journal of Financial Compliance,
3
(3),
225-232
(2020)
Abstract
This paper seeks to provide compliance and regulatory professionals, as well as board members, with the context, practices and essential questions necessary to utilise internal hotline data to create stronger, more informative and actionable board reports. In so doing, it will dispel common myths concerning the implications of higher internal report volumes, establish the measurable benefit of higher reporting rates and explore the impact this data can and should have on corporate governance. As the financial and reputational costs of compliance failures continue to rise, Boards of Directors have taken an increasing interest in risk management issues. Recent studies and analysis suggest that an organisation’s internal hotline reporting data can be a powerful indicator of a firm’s overall health and profitability, making it a valuable tool for boards in identifying and proactively managing risk. Board members face, however, several key challenges when trying to effectively interpret this data. Through presentation and training, compliance officers can help board members correctly analyse, contextualise and act on this information. This paper focuses primarily on US corporations; many of the challenges and practices outlined are also applicable to firms operating in non-US or multinational markets.
Keywords: whistleblower; hotline; board reporting; benchmarking; compliance programmes; corporate governance
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Carrie Penman is the Chief Risk and Compliance Officer for NAVEX Global, where she leads the company’s formal risk management processes and has overseen its internal ethics and compliance activities since 2003. One of the earliest ethics officers in the industry, Carrie previously served four years as deputy director of the Ethics and Compliance Officer Association (ECOA), now ECI. A scientist by training, she developed and directed the first corporate-wide global ethics programme at Westinghouse Electric Corporation from 1994 to 1999. Carrie has extensive client-facing risk and compliance consulting experience, including more than 15 years as an adviser to boards and executive teams, most recently as NAVEX Global’s SVP of Advisory Services. She has also served as a corporate monitor and independent consultant for companies with government settlement agreements. In 2017, Carrie received the ECI’s Carol R. Marshall Award for Innovation in Corporate Ethics for an extensive career contributing to the advancement of the ethics and compliance field worldwide.
Andrew Burt is an author and content developer for NAVEX Global. He works with risk and compliance practitioners to develop educational and informative thoughtleadership content that provides bestpractice instruction for the industry. Andrew has received the NIEA, American BookFest and Reader Views Literary awards for the biographical series Forty Gavels: The Life of Reuben Soderstrom and the Illinois AFL-CIO. He holds a master’s degree in Public Affairs from the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University.
