Tag Archives: Jonny Frank

From Art to Science: Unveiling the Transformative Power of AI in Surveys and Interviews

by Madison Leonard, Michael Costa, and Jonny Frank

Left to right: Madison Leonard, Michael Costa and Jonny Frank. (Photos courtesy of StoneTurn)

Far from mere tools, employee surveys and interviews serve as key indicators of an organization’s overall health and success. They play a pivotal role in assessing corporate culture, gauging satisfaction, gathering feedback, improving retention, and measuring diversity. Surveys can quantify sentiment—often over multiple periods and population segments. Interviews supplement surveys by offering nuance, context, the opportunity to follow up and even multiple perspectives on a single topic. These qualitative responses are essential for identifying subtle concerns, uncovering issues not explicitly covered by standard questions, and understanding employee sentiment. Without these insights, assessments risk missing critical information about how employees feel about governance, compliance and other key topics.

Despite their importance, surveys and interviews come with their own set of challenges. They are resource-intensive and susceptible to human error. The process of choosing survey topics and questions is a delicate one. While quantitative survey results are clear-cut, the qualitative feedback from interviews and focus groups, often in the form of lengthy, nuanced responses, demands significant mental effort to categorize and interpret. The larger the dataset, the higher the risk of confirmation bias, where reviewers may focus on responses that align with their expectations or miss critical patterns in the data. This bias, coupled with the sheer volume of information to be processed, makes it difficult to conduct thorough and objective assessments, especially under time and budget constraints.

Artificial Intelligence (AI), specifically Large Language Models (LLMS), presents a compelling solution to these challenges. By automating both quantitative and qualitative data analysis, AI models can swiftly sift through large datasets, identifying patterns, contradictions, and sentiment across thousands of responses in a fraction of the time it would take a human reviewer. This time-saving aspect of AI is particularly beneficial in today’s fast-paced business environment, where efficiency and productivity are paramount.

In addition to speed, AI helps mitigate the risk of human error and bias. It allows professionals to review qualitative data thoroughly and impartially. Unlike the human eye, a well-trained AI model can efficiently process voluminous and complex text, uncovering insights without overlooking critical information.

But, as powerful as AI may be, human judgment and experience remain critical. Human input is necessary to refine, train and ultimately verify the accuracy of an AI model.

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Where’s the Beef? Demonstrating “Timely & Appropriate” Remediation

by Jonny Frank, Michele Edwards, and Christopher Hoyle

photos of the authors

Left to right: Jonny Frank, Michele Edwards and Christopher Hoyle. Photos courtesy of StoneTurn Group, LLP.

This article is part 4 in a series on remediation. Read part 1 on Root Cause Analysis here, part 2 on Read Across and Remediation here, and part 3 on Corrective Action Plans here.

Organizations seeking credit for “timely and appropriate” remediation under the DOJ’s Corporate Enforcement Policy (“CEP”) must show they conducted a comprehensive root cause analysis, addressed the root cause findings, and implemented an effective compliance program.[1] Additional guidance on DOJ expectations appears in Criminal Division memos on the evaluation of compliance programs,[2] and the selection of corporate compliance monitors.[3] The SEC has similar expectations.[4]

Building on our discussion of Root Cause Analysis (“RCA”), Similar Misconduct, and Timely and Effective Corrective Action Plans, this article suggests key steps to demonstrate the remediation and compliance program effectiveness to the board, prosecutors, regulators and other stakeholders.   

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Sweeping Skeletons Out of the Corporate Closet: “Read Across” and Remediation

by Jonny Frank, Michele Edwards, and Chris Hoyle

photos of the speakers

Left to right: Jonny Frank, Michele Edwards, and Chris Hoyle (photos courtesy of StoneTurn, LLP)

It is tempting for organizations to downplay compliance violations as an isolated event attributable to a few bad apples. However, experience teaches that misconduct is often worse than initially thought. Wrongdoers who confess rarely admit to their complete wrongdoing. And it is common for the same or similar misconduct to occur across business lines and geographies.   

Because wrongdoing is often much more extensive than originally believed, organizations cannot afford to assume that an incident is an isolated event. Imagine the legal implications—and embarrassment—if the government, public or other stakeholders discover that an organization’s internal investigation failed to detect the full extent of the perpetrators’ wrongdoing or similar schemes committed by others in the organization. There may also be more extensive financial losses to recover that the organization needs to be aware of.

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Meeting (and Not Breaching) DOJ And SEC Corporate Settlement Agreements

by Jonny Frank, Laura Greenman, Chris Hoyle, Michele Edwards, and Ksenia Ioffe 

From left to right: Jonny Frank, Laura Greenman, Chris Hoyle, Michele Edwards, and Ksenia Ioffe. (Photos provided by the authors).

No Longer Just a Matter of Paying the Fine and Moving On

Corporate settlement agreements used to be straightforward—pay the penalty and move on.

Now, these resolutions rival complex business transactions, including months of negotiations and multi-year post-resolution obligations. Satisfying post-settlement commitments is a business imperative, not just a legal obligation. Meeting, if not exceeding obligations, helps restore brand value and improves employee and investor stakeholder confidence.

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Are Voluntary Monitors the Key to Mitigating COVID-19-Related Misconduct Risks?

by Jonny Frank and Kaitlyn Cecala

In the wake of serious misconduct, companies self-appoint “Voluntary Monitors” to avoid one imposed and selected by the government, reduce sanctions, escape prosecution, repair brand value and restore trust. In late July, for example, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), noting Whitford Worldwide’s retention of monitors, reduced an initially proposed $20 million penalty to $824,000.[1] And, on August 10th, the CFTC, SEC and FINRA announced settlements with Interactive Brokers, noting the company’s retention of an independent consultant to make recommendations to enhance its compliance program and a separate independent consultant to assess its implementation of an initial consultant’s recommendations.[2]

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Five Steps Lenders Can Take to Mitigate Legal and Reputational Risks Related to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)

by Jonny Frank and Ryan LaRue

The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) inadvertently—but inevitably—puts PPP lenders between a rock and a hard place. At PPP’s inception, the government pushed lenders to make loans to stimulate the COVID-19 rocked economy. Equally inevitable and with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, regulators, prosecutors and congressional oversight committees will ask why lenders extended loans to fraudsters. Here, we provide five practical steps lenders can take to mitigate the legal and reputational risks of extending PPP loans to borrowers who obtained loans under false pretenses or inappropriately used the funds earmarked by the government to protect jobs.

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