In this episode, I ask DiCianni to reflect on where AMI has been, where it may be going and what he is most proud of on the occasion of the 15^th anniversary of the founding of AMI. DiCianni identified a couple of themes. One has been the independence and integrity of AMI throughout its history. DiCianni stated, this has  “been something that has been very conscious on our part, to maintain our independence. We are not a law firm so we don’t compete with other law firms. We’re not investigators, so we’re not doing the legwork part of the investigation. We are not expert witnesses. We have stayed in, I’ll call it, our swim lanes.” This has allowed AMI to focus on one thing and one thing only, which is to provide “great independent monitoring services and to providing proactive assessments that use the skills that we’ve learned as monitors, to meet regulatory requirements.” This  “professionalism, integrity, independence, which is in our bloodstream has helped us greatly.” The second has been  the evolution in the thinking of the regulators around the role of an independent monitor. When the role began in the past decade it was very much about regulatory compliance. This evolved to legal compliance, eventually moving to ethics-based compliance. Now with the Benczkowski Memo, it is proactive compliance.
We concluded by me asking DiCianni what he was most proud of from the creation of AMI in 2004 up through the 15th anniversary. He said there were three things. The first is that he was able to take an idea, the need for an independent monitor, and germinate it into an ongoing, successful and viable business concern. The second was through the work of AMI, DiCianni has helped not only companies become more robust around ethics and compliance but AMI has helped them become better run organizations. He said, “the fact that we really have helped a lot of companies. We’ve just wrapped up a few matters, and we get these unsolicited comments by our clients and when they say you’ve made, we didn’t want to have a monitor, but you made us a better company. That makes you feel great. And when you do that, that’s been very fulfilling.” The final thing that DiCianni mentioned was the people of AMI. He said, “The last thing that I’m proud of is that I have a remarkable team of people. I have a great team of people dedicated and passionate about the work that we do. So that makes me very proud. We never know what the next day is going to bring. And so there’s a level of uncertainty, which is a good thing because you never know what the next case could be. So again, Tom, it’s been a great 15 years and I’m really looking forward to more of this.”