Marshaling Integrity - Richard Gruner

These excerpts are taken from our interview of Richard Gruner, a law professor and author in compliance.

I do a substantial amount of research and teaching in this area, particularly in the context of Continuing Education programs and scholarly research articles that I write about the standards governing compliance, as well as some discussion of techniques relevant to compliance programs…I do teach courses on white-collar and corporate crime in which I discuss the impact of compliance programs and the developing standards governing compliance techniques.

I view the compliance field as a chance to be positive, really at two different levels. One is that I really do believe that effective compliance programs prevent offenses, and thereby serve the public and serve the interests of the corporation involved. So in that sense a compliance-oriented practice can be a very positive, constructive practice, more so maybe than a lot of legal, where you’re just trying to clean up somebody else’s problem. The other is that the setting of corporate liabilities is a setting where corporations can distinguish themselves in a positive way. They can show that they are indeed responsible and forward looking and publicly oriented by taking an aggressive, preventative stance. So in that sense it’s part of a corporate-level ethics that is very positive and which has gained increasing interest and concern in the last few years. So those aspects of both public service and particularly, corporate ethics and positive corporate action, are very positive sides of the compliance field.

Richard Gruner's interview appears in both Working for Integrity and Building a Career in Compliance and Ethics.

(All interviewees spoke to us about their own personal experiences and opinions; interviewees were not acting as a spokesperson or otherwise representing their current or former employers.)