The compliance role in any firm is critical and you need to ensure you have the correct person.
As a business if you’re hiring a compliance officer or just assessing your current one, you need to ask the right questions.
The following questions have been designed for those who need guidance in evaluating the knowledge, courage, integrity and resourcefulness of the professionals looking after compliance……………….
The questions
- What are the compliance and ethics issues you frequently face in your current job?
Designed to uncover how sophisticated the compliance program is the professional is currently in and the individuals direct involvement in the compliance program
- How can our (your present) company’s compliance program be improved?
Every program can be improved so you are evaluating the professionals baseline knowledge of compliance and ability to make it more robust
- If you are to leave your present compliance role what would people say was your greatest contribution to the compliance department?
Designed to test what value the individual brought to the program…..if a professional cannot identify their value proposition move on to someone who will
- Describe a time when you were directly or indirectly asked to do something in violation of either company policy/ethics or your own moral code?
The individual can respond to a work or non-work related incident but we have all had our character tested
- What do you believe are the greatest compliance risks facing our industry? Our organization?
You are evaluating the professional for his/her knowledge of the industry in general and has the professional taken time to research your company
- Describe a situation in which you were trying to shape and influence a senior executive on a compliance matter and encountered resistance……how did you overcome it and what did you learn from it?
Designed to evaluate the professionals resilience, creativity, collaboration and influencing skills
- How do you stay current on government regulation? On industry code?
Self-explanatory as this is just part of the Compliance Officer’s job
- Describe a task you were asked to complete but had inadequate human resources….how did you get the job done?
Compliance departments are not adequately staffed so you want to see how creative and resourceful the individual is
- How do you manage your stress?
This job is high stress and the professional needs a systematic way of dealing with it your he/she will implode
- What is the most difficult problem you ever faced in the workplace? How did you resolve it?
Like question # 6 this is designed to evaluate resilience, creativity, collaboration and influencing skills