Exploring the Psychology and Evolution of Effective Complaint-Reporting Processes

The tactics of hotlines are simple—provide professionals with a confidential manner to report complaints. Sarbanes-Oxley provided the impetus for organizations to take a closer look at their complaint-reporting process.
The effectiveness of hotlines can be varied depending on how they are managed and administered. In addition, management's attention and response to hotline calls is an important aspect of maintaining an effective and positive control environment.
The Audit Committee of public companies is responsible for ensuring a confidential and effective complaint reporting process and should fully understand processes as well as information that comes through the hotlines.
With the advent of new regulation that allows whistleblowers to go outside internal lines of defense to report misdoings, companies should be strategically aware of their programs and the effectiveness and perceptions of their programs.
Audit Committees, senior management, and all professionals should understand the important implications that hotlines provide.
Why Should You Attend:
Why do we teach history in our schools? We must understand the history and evolution of a process to learn from our successes and failures. Knowing where we have come from allows us to plot a solid course for the future.
In this webinar, we will stretch beyond the normal leading practice concepts and delve into psychological theories and evaluations. Evaluating and analyzing past incidents. Whenever human behavior is involved, peering into past scenarios can teach us a great deal about what concepts work and which don't.
Making the process better requires more than just following "leading practice steps." You must understand the “whys,” “hows,” and “whats.”

Lynn Fountain has over 45 years of experience spanning public accounting, corporate accounting and consulting. 24 years of her experience has been working in the areas of internal and external auditing. She is a subject matter expert in multiple fields including internal audit, ethics, fraud evaluations, Sarbanes-Oxley, enterprise risk management, governance, financial management and compliance. Ms. Fountain has held two Chief Audit Executive positions for international companies. In 2011, as the Chief Audit Executive for an international construction/ engineering firm, she was involved in the active investigation of a joint venture fraud. The investigation included work with the FBI and ultimately led to indictment of the perpetrators and recovery of $13M. Ms. Fountain is currently engaged in her own training and consulting business and is a regular trainer for the AICPA. Ms. Fountain is the author of three separate technical books. “Raise the Red Flag – The Internal Auditors Guide to Fraud Evaluations” was published by the Institute of Internal Auditors Research Foundation. -“Leading The Internal Audit Function” and -“Ethics and The Internal Auditor Political Dilemma” were published by Taylor & Francis In addition Ms. Fountain was a contributing author to the certification program exam for the National Association of Accountants. She also has certificate programs on various on-line platforms. Ms. Fountain has performed as an adjunct instructor for the School of Business for Grantham University and developed the first internal audit curriculum for the School of Business at the University of Kansas. Ms. Fountain obtained her BSBA from Pittsburg State University and her MBA from Washburn University in Kansas. She has her CGMA, CRMA credentials and CPA certificate (non-active).