When we think about compliance we should also think about the goals we want to achieve. An important distinction we can make is between "terminal" and "instrumental" goals.
Terminal goals are the highest level objective that we want to reach. They define the "ends" of our compliance programs, for example: zero defects, zero fatalities, zero violations, zero releases, zero fines, and others.
Instrumental goals are intermediate outcomes or results that are critical or that must occur in order to achieve the higher-level outcome. These are often used to define measures of effectiveness (MoE) for compliance programs as they provide clear indication of progress towards terminal goals.
What goals have you set for your compliance programs?