Joe Murphy (jemurphy5730@gmail.com) is a Senior Advisor at Compliance Strategists, SCCE’s Director of Public Policy, and Editor-in-Chief of CEP Magazine.

Recently an online post suggested that France has jumped ahead of other countries in the fight against corruption by mandating compliance programs. For companies covered by the law, there is no choice: They must have a compliance program.

But is this progress? There are a number of concerns about mandatory programs, but let’s just consider one: What happens when you mandate a minimum? Does that inspire people to be creative, to experiment and test out new approaches? Is there a reason to constantly improve? Or is the normal reaction for companies to focus on the specifics of the law and meet that minimum?