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By Adam Turteltaub
adam.turteltaub@corporatecompliance.org
Kasey Ingram, the General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer of ISK Americas, learned compliance and ethics from the bottom up, quite literally. He served for several years at the bottom of the ocean as an officer aboard a nuclear ballistic submarine.
While taking care of nuclear reactors and missiles may seem fairly removed from compliance, Kasey explains in the podcast that there is much in common, starting with the training.
During orientation at the U.S. Naval Academy a commander told him and the other new Midshipmen “Just because you’re a high performer doesn’t mean you have high character.” It was an admonition he never forgot that in many ways shaped his time at the Academy and his career since.
It was not the only lesson he learned. While at the Academy he served on the honor committee, where he had the opportunity to conduct investigations both from the accusation and defense side.
Later, as an officer on a submarine, he, like every other officer, was authorized to be an investigator. His job was not only to find out what went wrong, but to fix the problem. He also learned the value of communicating quickly and effectively with management – captains are very busy – a skill that would prove valuable in his compliance role.
Listen in as he shares his experiences, including the value the nuclear Navy puts on creating a speak-up culture.
There are many Situations and locations were a speak up Culture is not encouraged or appreciated, so the hard part is to know when and where and that only comes with Experience, the armed forces are not a good example because in their case it is life or death situations ,but in a Office Culture you have to watch the Ego’s of the ones concerned as you can end up with a reputation of being a know it all and then your warnings will be ignored, so timing is every thing and that is the hard part of any situation or Location, and there are other situations were you are the expert and the ones speaking are only Generalists but are Senior Management with large gaps in their knowledge so you have to rely on Diplomacy and timing.
Lessons should be learnt and are learned regularly during our operational activities as compliance officers or as professionals especially from our mistakes which often males us feel very remorseful after realization considering how that could impact our reputations and even have detrimental effects on our cherished working relationship s with our customers, partners, colleagues, supervisors etc, ,.But more often than not mistakes are always committed unintentionally and mostly due to factors relating to stress , fatigue , and the intense pressure to succeed at all cost which could sometimes make us misinterpret or misunderstand issues leading to the mistake or error, as such I have make it a point to always recall and go over all my daily activities at the close of day to analyze where I can improve and also to consult my intuition which always yield positive results,
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