The Fine Line Between Oversight and Overreach

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The Fine Line Between Oversight and Overreach

Attendees of the session led by Gerry Zack, CFE, CCEP, CIA, at the 36th Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference received a lesson in mitigating risk by identifying and responding to privacy issues when performing fraud investigations. From racist social media posts to messy divorces and document retention policies, Zack walked members of the workshop through a variety of scenarios to brainstorm how to handle difficult privacy situations in the workplace. 

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I’m Not Biased. Right? 

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I’m Not Biased. Right? 

When approaching any fraud investigation, it is crucial for anti-fraud professionals to remain open, to leave no stone unturned. We are taught to seek out the truth, but how do we remain unbiased? In his session, Bret Hood, CFE, shared with attendees of the 36th Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference the importance of not allowing your biases to cloud your judgement. 

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Strategies for Preventing Bias and Improving Investigations

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Strategies for Preventing Bias and Improving Investigations

Investigators are called to uphold standards of integrity and honor. However, as Natalie Lewis, CFE, CPA/CFF, stated during her morning session titled “Recognizing the Impact of Bias and Emotional Intelligence in Investigations” on the final day of the 35th Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference, “Bias can harm our judgment and skew our objectivity.” Lewis then walked conference attendees through different types of biases that affect investigations and discussed strategies for preventing bias and building emotional intelligence and social skills to improve investigations. 

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Recognizing Cognitive Biases Improves Investigations

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Recognizing Cognitive Biases Improves Investigations

Everyone is affected by cognitive biases. As Beth Mohr, CFE, explained during her early morning session on the second day of the 35th Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference, our brains are always thinking, and we are limited in what we can take in. We create mental shortcuts, called heuristics, but sometimes this can lead to systemic errors in thinking, or biases. 

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A New Vision for Ethics and Compliance

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A New Vision for Ethics and Compliance

Ethics and compliance programs are becoming increasingly significant in the business world as more consumers and corporations turn their attentions to the importance of environmental, social and governance (ESG) business initiatives. As a result, the business environment needs to think about ethics and compliance in newer ways.  

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Asking the Tough Questions: Ethics Investigations 

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Asking the Tough Questions: Ethics Investigations 

“The bank robber expects to be arrested, it's an occupational hazard. The bank teller who embezzled does not; they think they are smarter than everyone else.” Wendy Evans, CFE, ACFE Regent and senior manager of ethics core programs and services at Lockheed Martin opened her session at the 34th ACFE Global Fraud Conference explaining that she originally had hesitancy when she first began investigating fraud, thinking it would just consist of boring cases, but as evidenced by her quote, she quickly realized that white-collar crime was vastly different from her experience with typical police work. In her session “Ethics and the Investigative Process, From Intake to Outcome,” Wendy walked attendees through internal ethics investigations, best practices when conducting them and common mistakes made.  

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Professional Ethics: Improving Psychological Safety in the Workplace

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Professional Ethics: Improving Psychological Safety in the Workplace

As a keynote speaker at the 2021 ACFE Fraud Conference Canada, Garth Sheriff, CPA ,CA, CIA, and founder of Sheriff Consulting, turned the audience’s attention to the topic of psychological safety. Acknowledging that many audience members may not have heard that term before, Sheriff chose to define it through a number of examples that painted clear images of how psychological safety impacts a workplace.

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