Do you have a process in place to measure your institutional compliance program’s quality and effectiveness? Higher education institutions are continually facing financial, reputational, and legal risks. Compliance and ethics programs are tasked with working with subject-matter experts across the institution to ensure that compliance requirements are met.
In this article, you will learn about:
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Compliance program stages and the importance of fostering a culture of ethics
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Compliance assessments and the resources used for evaluation and review
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Measuring compliance program quality and effectiveness
Stage of your program
As compliance professionals and industry leaders, we are tasked with developing and/or implementing, maintaining, and sustaining a compliance program. While fostering a culture of integrity, most professionals start by working to ensure that the institutional compliance program is in accordance with all applicable requirements and regulations. Once implemented, it is paramount to continue evaluating the program.
A Capability Maturity Model (CMM) tool identifies the stage of a program based on how well an institution follows and formalizes repeatable internal control processes, establishes a means to assess the program, and identifies a method for next steps.[1] Often, the stages of a CMM are noted as Ad Hoc, Fragmented, Defined, Mature, and Optimized.[2] These stages can be compared to the maturity stages in life (see Figure 1). It is important to note that the number of years may not indicate programmatic maturity but rather the consistency of the program’s established development, implementation, and sustainability maturity.
