Technology is advancing faster and further than our ability to keep up with the ethical implications. This applies also to the systems using them that: govern, manage, and operate the businesses we work for and this includes compliance.
The speed of technological change poses significant challenges for compliance and its function to regulate activities of an organization to stay within (or meet) all its regulatory requirements and voluntary obligations. Whether you consider compliance in terms of safety, quality, or professional conduct, these are all closely intertwined with ethics which are rooted in values, moral attitudes, uncertainty and ultimately decisions between what is right and wrong.
"It is impossible to design a system so perfect that no one needs to be good." – T.S. Eliot
In this article I explore what makes a compliance system good (or effective) and secondly, and more importantly, can it be made to be ethical assuming that's what you want for your organization.
To answer these questions, we will dive into the topic of cybernetics and specifically the works of Roger C. Conant and W. Ross Ashby along with the more recent works by Mick Ashby.