Art Weiss (art_weiss@tamko.com) is Chief Compliance and Ethics Officer at TAMKO Building Products in Joplin, MO.
This morning I saw a post shared by a Facebook friend that I keep coming back to. It said “Explain what you do in 5 words or less. No more than 5!!” How many of us can do that? I find myself constantly answering friends’ and colleagues’ questions about what I do. Just what is it that compliance officers do? What is compliance? I’ve answered, or tried to answer, that question literally a hundred times. Being our company’s first chief compliance officer, and the creator of our first compliance and ethics program, I was asked questions like these almost daily. The frequency of such questions has dropped off markedly over the years. I’d like to think that it’s because I did such a great job answering those questions. More likely, I so confused people that they quit asking.