Please feel free to contact me anytime to share your thoughts: +1 612.357.1544 (cell), +1 952.567.6215 (direct), gerry.zack@corporatecompliance.org.
Until recently, I had no idea how explosive the word “independent” could be. In talking with some internal auditors about independence, I was informed that only internal audit can be independent—that compliance inherently cannot be independent. Rather than debating the form-over-substance aspect of what we were discussing, we moved on to reporting relationships and what independence really means. Independence from whom or what?