The Compliance Life details the journey to and in the role of a Chief Compliance Officer. How does one come to sit in the CCO chair? What are some of the skills a CCO needs to success navigate the compliance waters in any company? What are some of the top challenges CCOs have faced and how did they meet them? These questions and many others will be explored in this new podcast series. This month, I visit with Ellen Hunt, Senior Vice President – Audit, Ethics & Compliance Officer. Ellen is a lawyer, ethics & compliance professional, and chief audit executive. She has extensive management experience in designing, implementing and operating ethics and compliance programs including board governance and reporting, designing ethics education, creating policy management frameworks, managing enterprise and compliance risk processes as well as handling investigations and regulatory inquiries. Utilizing AARP’s enterprise risk management profile, she re-designed how AARP conducts its annual audit planning process to identify audits that relate to the organization’s must significant risks and incorporated the use of data analytics into audit execution.
Ellen like many who are in compliance, came to it by (1) being drafted and (2) from the legal function. When she began, compliance was legalistic, rules-based; largely seen as an insurance policy in case there was a compliance failure. It has changed to a business process and every CCO needs to understand the business of their organization. We explore what skills you need to develop to grow in the compliance profession.