Managing Fraud Risk: A Practical Guide for Directors and Managers

Avoid the Tick-Box Attitude

Before moving on to look at strategic risk management, there is one word of warning for all directors and managers in terms of putting in place comprehensive, detailed risk management systems, with policies, registers, regular reports etc. These are necessary but they will not enable business improvements to take place or value to be added to the business unless they are accompanied by intelligent review and analysis of what the detailed information is actually saying about the business and its risk profile. Sometimes I work with organisations that have become obsessed with the detail of the risk management process, where the focus is meeting deadlines in order to tick a box.

Adrian emphasised this point during my interview with him for this book. Adrian has a wealth of experience in compliance working for a large international bank and he has come across precisely this issue in the past. This is what he told me during our interview:

I think the problem is that because of this tick-box attitude which most organisations have, I really have yet to see an organisation in my experience that really analyses and puts into practice the information that comes up from having such controls in place. I think that most organisations are just following the “rigmarole”, following the policy requirement and there's a complete lack of understanding or appreciation to use that management information effectively to improve the organisation. So, no, I think I take the ...