A Trend Toward Transparency

Since the implosion of such corporate giants as Enron and WorldCom, corporate accountability has been in the crosshairs of scrutiny. Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 to enforce standards of operation for all publicly held companies, and to increase the responsibility of executive boards. Phrases like "everybody does it that way" or "we’ve been doing it like this forever" don’t pass for policy.

David Steckler, a healthcare compliance/defense lawyer in New York, saw that the post-Enron wind was blowing toward his specialty, compliance. Its goal: "[to] monitor the ethics and legality of ongoing financial and operational activities," he says.

Steckler, 62, moved to Naples in 2005, and has directed his no-nonsense, Big Apple chutzpah to fast-track Florida Gulf Coast University’s new compliance specialist graduate certificate program.

"We’re training entry-level compliance people in a market that needs them and responding to a clear public need, not just in Florida but around the country," says Steckler, who continues to practice law in New York, and teach law and ethics at FGCU.

Before Enron, compliance programs were applied primarily in hospitals, defense-contracting firms, transportation agencies, universities and other highly regulated industries. Now, says Steckler, all businesses that insure their officers and directors, and that have risk-management programs and bank loans should have compliance programs.

A 2005 Christian & Timbers (known now as CTPartners) Hot Jobs list, which bumped Chief Compliance Officer to No. 3 from No. 9 the year before, and recent articles in The Wall Street Journal and on www­.smartmoney.com, confirm the demand for compliance professionals who "find and fix problems," says Roy Snell, CEO of the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics. The profession has seen "ravenous hiring" in the past few years, he says.