This month’s column is devoted to the idea of “testing out” of compliance training, a topic I addressed in my opening comments at the Compliance & Ethics Institute in October, but in a clumsy manner. I think I came across as suggesting that testing out is never a good idea, which was not my intent. Thanks to a couple of you who pointed this out to me.

The idea of testing out of training—so people with a solid understanding of the concepts are spared the time required to sit through a lengthy training—is quite practical. But I also like to look at things through the lens of government enforcement. And explaining in the aftermath of a compliance failure that we didn’t make people attend training because they already knew the material is not something anyone should look forward to.