In-house counsel and other compliance professionals often lament the difficulty they have in securing the headcount and resources they need to maintain effective compliance programs. Too many CFOs, they say, still see compliance as just another law department cost center.
The cautionary tale can only take them so far. No matter how many companies are publicly humiliated by high-profile investigations, financial penalties and individual prison terms, criminal liability can remain an abstraction to business executives until it happens to them. Horror stories may get their attention, but don’t really speak their language: numbers. To really get the business side on board and actively engaged, counsel must demonstrate the impact of compliance and fraud detection on the bottom line.
