True North 2026 brought ethics and compliance leaders together around a shared question:
How do we design programs that shape decisions before pressure, speed, and rationalization take over?
Across keynotes and panels—from Todd Haugh’s behavioral science lens to Sherron Watkins’ reflection on ethical courage—the conversation kept circling back to design. In other words:
Are our systems shaping behavior or simply documenting it?
Throughout the day, a clear shift emerged. The most forward-thinking teams are moving from measuring activity to designing for behavior.
Not more content. Not more controls. Better signals.
Organizations are decision factories
Todd Haugh described companies as decision-making factories. Every day, employees make thousands of choices—most of them quickly and automatically.
Behavioral science tells us much of this happens in what Daniel Kahneman called System 1 thinking: intuitive, fast, low-effort. Under pressure, when time is short or incentives are misaligned, rationalizations can form before anyone consciously decides to do the wrong thing.
That reframes the role of ethics and compliance.
Instead of focusing primarily on bad actors, the work becomes designing environments that interrupt rationalizations, create space for deliberation, and make ethical decisions easier to recognize in real time.
Rather than fighting human nature, we design within it.
Culture lives in the informal system
If decisions are shaped by context, then we have to look beyond policies and training. The environment surrounding a decision—especially the informal culture—often determines the outcome.
Erica Salmon Byrne reminded us that employees don’t separate ethics from everyday work. They either use their voice or they don’t.
That choice is rarely driven by the existence of a policy. It’s driven by whether the system around them feels credible. Formal systems matter: policies, surveys, hotlines. But informal systems determine whether those tools are trusted.
Managers sit at the center of that informal system. Employees are far more likely to raise concerns with a manager than through a reporting channel. If managers aren’t equipped to recognize signals, respond constructively, and escalate appropriately, the formal architecture cannot compensate.
As Erica put it, we’re not oversurveying—we’re under-actioning.
The question isn’t whether data exists. It’s whether employees see visible, credible action when they speak up.
Alignment reduces friction
In the Compliance–Legal–HR Triangle session, Kasey Ingram, Beth Colling, and Jay Sharp emphasized a practical reality: culture is collective, but accountability must be explicit.
Shared ownership without clarity creates friction. Tools like RACI matrices were discussed not as bureaucratic exercises, but as mechanisms for building trust and reducing confusion about who does what.
Friction often arises when partners are brought in late. Early alignment reduces risk before it escalates. Strategic alignment—not reactive handoffs—keeps systems credible.
Designing for behavior requires not only insight, but coordination.
Data should inform decisions—not fill slides
In the boardroom conversation with Andrew McBride, Selece Beasley, and Jisha Dymond, a consistent theme surfaced: metrics only matter if they inform a decision.
The panel emphasized context—knowing your audience, understanding what the board actually needs, and leading with insight rather than volume. As Jisha Dymond put it, the question isn’t how much data you have. It’s, “What’s the one thing I need them to hear?”
Benchmarks provide context. Trends provide direction. But numbers without narrative—and without consequence—don’t move anything forward.
Across sessions, leaders spoke less about reporting activity and more about surfacing meaningful signals: hesitation, confusion, silence, pressure.
The goal is not to display risk. It is to illuminate it.
Systems must allow bad news to travel
Sherron Watkins’ reflection on Enron offered a powerful reminder: systems can appear strong while weaknesses quietly grow underneath.
Controls existed. Reporting lines existed. Hotlines existed.
Yet optimism, intimidation, and rationalization created an environment where smart people stopped asking questions. Bad news struggled to reach the top.
The lesson wasn’t about the absence of structure. It was about the fragility of trust.
When employees doubt that speaking up will lead to fair action—or believe that loyalty outweighs transparency—formal safeguards become ornamental.
Trust is not declared. It is reinforced through consistent response.
Technology accelerates but judgment anchors
In a focused session on AI, the conversation moved from hype to design.
AI can help teams begin hard drafting work, identify patterns in feedback, and iterate more efficiently. But the quality of the output depends entirely on the thinking behind it.
As Courtney Sander noted during the session, “The prompt is the control. The output reflects the thinking.”
AI amplifies whatever intent, clarity, and risk-awareness you bring to it.
Taylor Epley reinforced the same point from a different angle: these tools are powerful partners but they do not replace expertise. The quality of the input matters. Interaction matters. Human oversight matters.
The real question isn’t whether AI can write a policy. It’s whether the policy helps an employee make a better decision.
Bottom line? Technology can accelerate iteration but it cannot replace expertise, context, or human-centered design.
The future requires fluency
In “Building Tomorrow’s Compliance Team,” Jennifer May and Laura Sauber focused on capability rather than tools.
The seven elements still matter. Regulators still expect them. But the leaders who thrive are those who become fluent across functions—technology and policy, risk and operations, ethics and execution.
Compliance leaders must be able to identify the right humans in the right loop, translate risk into operational language, and communicate clearly across disciplines.
AI may amplify what’s possible. But it heightens—not reduces—the need for human-centered governance.
The future of compliance is not just technical. It is relational.
What this shift requires
Taken together, these conversations point to a broader evolution in the field:
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From publishing policies to shaping environments
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From measuring activity to interpreting signals
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From shared responsibility to explicit accountability
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From reactive escalation to early alignment
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From speed to intentional design
This isn’t a new framework. It’s a reframing.
Ethics and compliance leaders already sit in a unique position: close enough to risk to see patterns, and cross-functional enough to influence systems. The opportunity is not simply to report on what happened, but to design against what could happen.
Designing for the moments that matter
Policies matter. Culture matters. Training matters.
But none of them work unless they shape decisions in the moments that count.
Illuminating the future of ethics and compliance isn’t about prediction.
It’s about attention—to behavior, to culture, to hesitation, to silence. When we see those signals clearly, we can design differently.
And that’s where real impact begins.
Carly Chasin, Director of Compliance Insights & Strategy, helps customers build and evolve their compliance training strategy.
With a background in education and compliance, her focus is delivering effective, pedagogically sound training that engages learners and aligns with organizational program needs.
