Walter E. Johnson (walter.johnson@inova.org,) is Assistant Privacy Officer at Inova in Falls Church, Virginia, and an Adjunct Professor of Business Ethics at University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC).

At some point in a compliance and ethics professional’s career, they will be faced with The Big One. To the veterans of our profession, many of these encounters feel similar to subtle nuances. For the novice, there may be uncertainty of where to begin. In The Accidental Compliance Professional, Roy Snell compares this situation to that of The Big One of NASCAR—a crash involving multiple cars during a race.^[1] Several factors, such as driver experience, team guidance, and timing determine whether the car advances “out of the other side a bit dented up, but OK.”