Let’s take a very basic example. The job description might state as a primary job duty: “Developing educational programs for all employees, agents, contractors, or others working with the organization.”

Does this mean the compliance department must perform all the compliance education and personally track all compliance education? It says, “developing educational programs.” Isn’t the person responsible for the annual electronic education upload, assignment, tracking, etc., accountable for education being uploaded and done according to the education policy and procedures? Doesn’t the compliance officer just provide the content of the educational programs and request the tracking results to show 100% complete each year? I think this is true for annual compliance education. The job description may expand this responsibility to include “presenting” for in-person, new hire orientation. Once again, though, the compliance department is not responsible or accountable for scheduling, running, etc., new employee orientation. They just fit into the operational process to conduct their responsibility for an effective compliance program.

When you sit back and think about it, in many cases, the compliance department is put in the position to expect accountability in others to perform their operational duties in compliance with the laws and regulations and the compliance program. The compliance department cannot be expected to do this for them. All too often, the reporting, investigation, identification, and corrective action plans of compliance issues may be viewed as the responsibility of the compliance officer when, in fact, it is the monitoring of the corrective action plan in operations and accountability of others that is the key. It is a difficult balance when these expectations may expose or highlight human resources issues, such as job performance concerns due to lack of accountability, that impact an effective compliance program.