Dispatches From SCCE 2024
The Society of Corporate Compliance & Ethics held its 2024 conference this week in Dallas, bringing together more than 1,200 compliance professionals to schmooze, hear news, and attend a battalion of informative sessions on how to address all the compliance headaches that corporations face. As always, Radical Compliance was on the scene to capture the highlights.
The premier event happened right at the start on Monday. That’s when Nicole Argentieri, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, dropped a surprise news bomb that the department had revamped its guidelines for effective corporate compliance programs to address new concerns around artificial intelligence, whistleblower protection, and compliance officers’ access to data. Nobody was expecting Argentieri to say so much, and attendees were suitably abuzz.
After that came the usual series of smaller presentations on a host of topics: transforming compliance culture, building effective internal controls, taming the risks of AI, understanding trade compliance challenges, and much more.
One example was Keith Read, widely known as the nicest compliance professional in London. He gave a talk about how to strengthen whistleblower protection and anti-retaliation efforts.
Another about implementing risk assessments on a limited budget, which describes pretty much every compliance officer I’ve ever encountered.
Then came the party scene on Monday night! High point of the general reception was an interloper who ran into the exhibit hall dressed as a dinosaur, twerked, and ran out. Leading theory is that this was a precursor to a session about how to be sure you don’t have a dinosaur of a compliance program.
Big thanks to sponsors such as BDO, EthixBase, Ethico, and others who hosted cocktail parties later in the evening, since compliance officers don’t have the budget for nice meals on their own.
How packed were the main sessions, you ask? See below.
And on Tuesday morning SCCE had an outstanding discussion of human trafficking and what we can do to fight it.
You can find many more posts about the conference on LinkedIn and Facebook under the hashtags #SCCECei or #SCCE2024. Congratulations to SCCE for another successful event, and mark your calendars — the 2025 conference will be Sept. 14-15 in Nashville.