Over the last few years it has grown increasingly difficult for businesses, especially those who are a part of a global supply chain, to not have a compliance program. Their larger partners increasingly demand it.

Why the growth? Prosecutions under the United States’ Foreign Corrupt Practices Act have led to enormous fines. Other anticorruption laws, from Britain to Brazil, threaten further prosecutions. Meantime, enforcement actions in China and Germany are forcing companies, both large and small, to redouble their compliance efforts.

The reasons are simple. First, a welldesigned compliance program can help prevent the bribe from being paid in the first place. Second, businesses can potentially see a reduction in fines and penalties if they have an effective compliance and ethics program in place.

This has created tremendous demand for skilled compliance professionals. In January 2014 the Wall Street Journal reported that there was even a hiring “spree” for compliance officers.

Finding compliance people is a challenge, but giving them the skills they need can be just as challenging, especially with compliance officers spread around the globe.

One very popular solution to this challenge is an Academy from the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics (SCCE), a US-based membership association of over 4,700 compliance and ethics professionals globally. The SCCE offered 14 Academies in 2014 across the US, as well as in Belgium, China, Brazil and Dubai.

The Academies provides three and a half days of intensive, classroom-style training in the fundamentals of managing a compliance and ethics program. The faculty is made up of experienced practitioners and generally stays constant from Academy to Academy, thereby ensuring both the quality of the program and that a student in Sydney (a new Academy site in 2015) gets the same training as a student in San Francisco. One measure of the demand for the training is that the Academies draw not just from the region in which they are held but from elsewhere in the globe. The Dubai Academy, for example, had attendees registered from as far away as Thailand and Indonesia.

Many use the Academy to prepare for the Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional-International examination, which is offered at the conclusion of the Academy. This designation enables compliance professionals, like their peers in other professions, to demonstrate their expertise.

More information about SCCE Academies, as well as being a Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional, can be found at the SCCE website www.corporatecompliance.org.