Are you listening? Wisdom from Hui Chen

On March 25, 2026, Hui Chen challenged and also enchanted attendees at a conference staged by the Rutgers Law School’s Center for Corporate Law and Governance, at Camden, NJ. This was sponsored by the Jay Sigler fund for Corporate Compliance. Hui has the distinction of being the first compliance expert hired by the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice to upgrade their approach to compliance programs.  

Live presentations. During the course of her presentation Hui observed that she strongly prefers presentations with live audience. I understand why. She is a master presenter and conductor – you could see that she drew strength from the room and clearly drew the audience in. When Hui is speaking no one in the audience will be glancing at their phones for messages.

Listening. Early on Hui made an observation that startled me. She said that compliance and ethics (“C&E”) people don’t listen enough. Wow, I agree 100%. We need to be in the field talking with people and listening as much as possible.

I had identified Hui as very data focused. I like data, but have enormous skepticism about studies. I have seen too many studies where the goal was not truth, but either making a point or making a splash. The infamous behavioral study of car insurance certifications that turned out to be, to say it politely, “untrue,” serves as a stark reminder to me.[1]

In the rest of her presentation Hui explored areas that challenged the audience. Afterward a few of us shared dinner with Hui, so my comments here may also reflect some of that discussion.  

Measuring training. There was discussion of measuring the impact or effectiveness of compliance training. During the Q&A we compared our dislike for the California approach of dictating how much training companies had to do to address harassment (e.g., 2 hours every 2 years). These types of government mandates can drive companies even further toward check-box approaches, measuring only inputs without consideration of the results.

One question about measurement is determining the purpose of the training: I have before written about what I see as the 3 possible purposes of training: knowledge, motivation and/or skill. Training – Understanding the “Why” You need to determine the purpose before trying to measure the result. I also know that there is a hierarchy of measuring training results, with the ultimate goal (changing the behavior of an entire organization) being interesting in theory but, given the enormous number of variables to account for, close to impossible to measure. (I have in my library two entire books on how to measure training. Earlier in my career I co-founded a company that was one of the first to offer online compliance training. In those early Internet days when video was not yet transmissible by the telecommunications system, our training was story-based using audio.)

At dinner I shared with Hui a story that seemed novel to her, of a live training I once did that resulted in a company employee then reporting that she had recently engaged in the conduct I had described as being illegal. But I have seen this before, that if you are on prem and engage with people you will learn things (especially if, as Hui suggests, you are actually listening). Effective training should not be just one-way communications.

Field studies. She believes we should do more field studies. It is not enough just to send training out to the field and count how many were in the audience (even if they were asleep.) If you are going to do something be sure you are achieving a worthwhile result. This is certainly sound management.

In addition, I would offer a caution about studies. There are too many questionable studies today, such as those in academia aimed at winning tenure that no one afterward can replicate. It is also relatively easy to doctor results. We need to remember the hard lesson of the “car insurance certification” study I mentioned above. And we also need to consider how many other variables there may be that can have an impact on results. When I was an editor of ethikos we published a story by Ed Petry of a company survey that showed no one at all in a particular business unit feared retaliation. A deeper investigation revealed that the people in that unit were so afraid of retaliation that they were afraid to say so in their survey results. Books such as The tyranny of Metrics and How to Lie with Statistics shed more light on this area.  

However, Hui is spot on to remind everyone that measuring inputs is not enough. Yes, I believe inputs should be measured and monitored, to ensure this foundational step is being done. But you need to dig deeper. Consider what types of data my serve to indicate whether your actions get the types of results you are trying to achieve. But measurement should be deeper than collecting data. There is also the deeper need to remember Hui’s comment about listening. In my experience you can get a good indication of how the training is working by sitting through some sessions. You can also look at the audience. And you can talk with them afterward. It is not “scientific,” but it is deeper. This is one of the reasons Hui is so right about preferring live training. You can learn things from being with a group and doing training that you cannot learn from surveys, statistics or data analyses.

Measuring results on society. Does anticorruption compliance work? Hui pointed to indications that corruption has increased, questioning whether what we are doing is really working. It is always good to keep challenging oneself, and looking for opportunities to learn. You can depend on Hui to challenge you and make sure you do not walk away comfortable and too self-assured. This is a good thing. But again I believe there are many important variables in calculating whether anticorruption compliance efforts “work.” Here, for example, is just one element that is a substantial variable in this measurement. There are major international players that are not part of the OECD anti-corruption convention and who have no real commitment to fighting corruption. (There are also OECD members who talk a better game than they play.) You may have stopped your own players from cheating, or more realistically reduced such cheating, but has the gap been picked up by other countries?  It is also key not to make the perfect the enemy of the good. If you resist one act of corruption and help one vulnerable community in an underdeveloped country, does that not have value?

Measuring C&E program results. Hui wisely counsels us to look for results from our compliance work; merely taking steps does not mean you are getting results. I have seen that this can be very difficult for people in our field. For many C&E areas involving corporate crime and misconduct it is quite challenging to measure results, or even agree on what the result should be. But because we tend to work narrowly in specific compliance risk areas we may overlook other possible surrogate areas where results can be measured, and where we can test out hypotheses.

Early on, when working on the first compliance book I wrote with Jay Sigler, I came across the work of a brilliant Australian scholar, John Briaithwaite. He had been a strong consumer advocate and was interested in corporate crime and misconduct. John examined workplace safety, starting with a thesis, that increased safety budgets meant safer workplaces. He disproved his own thesis (if only more academics did this!) and instead established that the clout of the safety people was connected to better workplace safety results. (His study was in mining, literally at the coal face). This is one reason I am so strong on empowerment of compliance professionals. We can look to compliance related areas, such as safety and environmental compliance as surrogates for other areas of corporate misconduct where results are more hidden, to test out some of our ideas.

What is our objective? On the interesting question of what is your objective as a C&E professional, which would be the standard for measuring your “success,” I don’t find that a difficult question. It is to reduce organizational crime and wrongdoing – to protect the potential victims of organizational wrongdoing – workers, customers, investors and the public. Will I prevent all organizational crime and misconduct? No. But if I help protect even one person today I have accomplished something worthwhile.  

Policies & detail. I fully agree with looking at results from C&E activities, as Hui advocates. But in recent years I have become increasingly interested in how the emerging field of neurodiversity, and how differences in the way people process information affect what we do. In C&E our goal is not just to affect the behavior of many or even most people in a company. It is not enough to address how “most” people process information. Our objective is to do our best to prevent misconduct, whatever that may involve. For example, every commentator seems to enjoy taking pot shots at policies. It is a universally favorite punching bag. But this ignores the existence of type A people (like me) who would actually read the policies. That only a few people read them may seem like failure, but these people are a separate group that may use them. They may be the ones who spot a weakness in a proposed project. (Just as one example of how few people actually read sources and written materials, I am often stunned by how many experts have “read” the Sentencing Guidelines’ very simple and succinct standards for compliance programs, and ignored entire, key points. For example, even very sophisticated participants in the C&E field still advise us that C&E ignores the field of incentives, even though the actual language of the Guidelines specifically references incentives).  Should policies be your first focus or absorb much of your energy? Absolutely not. Will they simply prevent violations by themselves? Never. But should you conclude they serve no purpose? That may be too easy a route to take. For type A introverts like me, who will read the details, we may have a role to play that could add some value.

Selling management on C&E. There was a discussion of how you convince management to adopt and support a C&E program. In Compliance and Ethics: Ideas & Answers I wrote a three-part analysis on this: I would not rely just on the business case, nor would I rely only on the legal case. But you cannot afford to omit either. There is also a moral case that we lawyers tend to overlook completely, but that matters to many.

• Why should you have a compliance program? The Business Case 
• Why should you have a compliance program? The Legal Case
• Why should you have a compliance program? The Moral Case & Conclusions

Convincing government. In her work for DOJ, Hui referred to company people coming in with binders and expecting her to read reams of paper that they themselves did not read. This is an important reminder that a C&E program worth any consideration cannot be just a pile of papers. But her story raises an important policy question: should DOJ or any agency only sit back and wait for the corporate dog and pony show about their compliance program?

I believe there is a better approach, but only one Division in DOJ has seen this. Sadly their approach appears to have gone unnoticed. We reported on this in Compliance and Ethics: Ideas & Answers: “How do you evaluate compliance programs? One government agency has the answer, but no one has noticed!” How do you evaluate compliance programs? One government agency has the answer, but no one has noticed!

In its internal guidance addressing its approach to compliance programs, the Antitrust Division has directed its prosecutors

“. . . to obtain information necessary to evaluate compliance programs throughout the course of their investigation, including asking relevant compliance-related questions of witnesses. Accordingly, prosecutors should not wait for companies to offer a compliance presentation before beginning their evaluation of a program.”

U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division, Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs in Criminal Antitrust Investigations 2 (Nov. 2024) https://www.justice.gov/atr/media/1376686/dl

If other agencies and enforcers are, in fact, doing this, they should make it known so fewer lawyers indulge the fantasy that a mere pile of papers will accomplish anything in dealing with government. If your employees appear before a grand jury and remember nothing about your C&E program, then the truth is you simply did not have any such program.  

Has compliance “failed”? There is also running beneath the surface the issue of looking at C&E in isolation and concluding it has “failed” because we still have corporate violations. I wrote about this recently in Compliance and Ethics: Ideas & Answers, Why do compliance programs fail? It appears to me that today, in cases of corporate scandals, instead of asking Judge Stanley Sporkin’s sentient question from the past, “where were the lawyers,” we lawyers are easily deflecting tough inquiries by saying, “compliance failed.” But we also need to look at our role as lawyers and honestly assess whether we are actively promoting C&E, or flexing our institutional muscles to curb this intrusive newcomer and thereby weaken its impact (in the life of the legal profession, a mere 30-40 years is still “new.”). I have heard and read too many examples where the legal department posed an obstacle to effective C&E. Where are the articles and presentations challenging the legal profession to step up and help prevent corporate misconduct?

The need to improve C&E. I am certain Hui and I would see eye to eye on the need to improve C&E. I suspect we could play a real game of “can you top this” on stories of key steps not taken in C&E. There is much room to improve. And if you believe your group has fallen into complacency a live presentation by Hui will absolutely shake you out of any comfort you may have been feeling.

What is Hui Chen’s purpose? You may have noticed by now that this report is not a simple recounting of Hui’s words. I don’t think that is what she intends for her listeners. What she is seeking is much more challenging: To get people to think. So what I have reported here are some of her words and what thoughts they brought to mind for me. Early in my career I worked for a venerable legal department executive who had in his office a little sign saying: “There are no limits to the ends a person will go to avoid the difficult work of thinking.” If, indeed, you want to avoid having to think, then never attend a program with Hui. But if you like to be challenged then prepare to spend a lot of time thinking.

And you should consider following the Center for Corporate Law and Governance at Rutgers Law School, at the Camden Campus. In the March 25 program, retired Law School Dean Ray Solomon, and current Law School Dean, Joanna Bond, nicely explained the purpose of the Jay Sigler fund in sponsoring these conferences and the role my mentor, Jay A. Sigler, played in the development of the field of C&E. Very few people know how important a role the Camden campus quietly played in the development of C&E. It is very fitting that it should now receive this attention.

[1] See Gideon Lewis-Kraus , “They Studied Dishonesty. Was Their Work a Lie?” The New Yorker (Sept. 30, 2023), https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/09/they-studied-dishonesty-was-their-work-a-lie