I saw a LinkedIn post. A collections industry veteran proudly introduced her new business and website, hanging out the shingle, available for consultation. Expertise in Compliance. And based on her accomplishments and the hefty endorsements from industry rock stars, no doubt she is an expert. And she will do well.

Then I thought. Wait. What exactly is a compliance expert? Is it a lawyer who understands the letter of the law? Someone who knows the boundary of what regulators will and will not allow?

Is it like the driver on the Turnpike going 80 mph in the posted 65 mph zone because it has become common knowledge that the police generally enforce only somewhere above 75 mph? The grizzled veterans know that.

Is the compliance expert the referee who knows the rulebook inside and out? Or the coach who also knows the rules but devises plays to bend and stretch the boundaries, to innovate right up against them in search of competitive advantage?

Is the expert a policeman, a referee, a lawyer, or a coach? What exactly is an expert in compliance?

We invent man-made rules and then study those rules carefully. We learn how to comply with them. Sometimes we learn how to work around them. More positively, perhaps, we work to comply with their spirit. But compliance isn’t really the end goal, is it?

The player’s goal is different. Get to the destination fastest. In collections, liquidate consumer debt faster and in greater volumes than your competition. That’s how to maximize returns.

Understand the rules of the game regulators have established for fair play. Then go for it within those rules. Make what you can. And perhaps, from the pinnacle of success, after a lifetime of riches playing the game, sell your advice to others who want those same riches. Write books. Become famous. Consult.

But then I return to the question.

You understand the rules exceptionally well. You innovate around and within those rules. You become an expert. But in what? Collecting consumer debt? Or in the rules regulating consumer debt collection?

I think back to Big Tony. Big Tony was clearly effective at collecting debt. He just followed no rules, neither man-made nor ethical. In a boundaryless game, maybe Big Tony was the best collector.  The richest, the guy aspiring players emulated. Until he crossed a line. Like Al Capone and the errant tax return that did him in. Eventually he broke a rule that stopped him. Could a compliance expert have prevented his demise? Maybe.

But then I think about the Turnpike again. Was Big Tony driving 100 mph? Or was he driving 80 in a 65, just like everybody else, and happened to be the guy who got pulled over?

Look, anyone driving 80 mph can be stopped regardless of how common it is. We all know the drill. You’re driving 80. Traffic suddenly slows. Some idiot in the left?  No. There’s the policeman a half mile ahead. Everybody brakes. Everybody passes at 66 mph. Half a mile later everybody accelerates back to 80 mph.

Is that something a compliance expert understands? Not merely what the rule says, but which rules are rigid, which seem pliable, where enforcement actually occurs, what everyone else is doing and how close to the boundary you can operate without getting pulled over?

Think about the alphabet soup of rules surrounding something as basic as contacting a consumer. FDCPA. Regulation F. TCPA. Send a letter and rules apply. Pick up the telephone and more rules come into play. Move from manually placed calls to automated technology and the analysis changes again. Then along came email and text. Now AI and artificial or prerecorded voices. Each innovation doesn’t necessarily escape the old rules. Quite the opposite. It can bring the old rules along while introducing another set of questions, definitions and boundaries. And every new boundary creates another opportunity for someone to figure out exactly where the line is.

When I first joined the industry, I found one example particularly comical. We had a department of workers called Clickers. What in the world is a Clicker? The industry was wrestling with restrictions surrounding automated telephone dialing. So technology evolved that could do much of the work of dialing but retained a human action in the process. A person clicked the button and the call went out. The distinction mattered. Whether a particular technology crossed the legal definition of an autodialer became exactly the kind of question lawyers, regulators and compliance experts could debate. But from an operating perspective, the innovation was obvious. If the boundary involved automation, keep a human in the loop. It was a breakthrough. The Clickers became the standard.

Systems like it spread. I found the whole thing fascinating. A rule, or perhaps more accurately, industry’s understanding of the rule, created a boundary. Technology evolved around the boundary. Someone figured out how to get much of the efficiency of automation while preserving that human action. Was that compliance? Innovation? A technical workaround? Compliance with the letter but not the spirit?  Whatever your view, it’s clear that somebody understood the boundary well enough to innovate right along its edge.

We love to say we comply with the spirit of the law. That’s ethical, right? But is it? Just one bite of that apple, Adam, should be OK, said the world’s first compliance expert. We’re not hurting anyone.

Or is that the measure? The Golden Rule? Get ahead as long as you honor that tenet? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Otherwise innovate as aggressively as you can?

Look, I’m a CPA. I’m not criticizing anyone. My own profession has an old joke. A businessman is interviewing accountants. He asks the first candidate: “What is 2 + 2?” The first answers, “Five.” Get lost. He asks the second. “Four.” Wait here, a possible hire. Then he asks the third candidate. “What is 2 + 2?” The accountant gets up, closes the door, lowers the blinds, sits back down and asks: “So what do you want it to be?” You’re hired.

The accountant as compliance expert. We know the rules too. And we know where judgment lives inside them. This isn’t peculiar to collections, or accounting. It’s common across fields and industries. It just carries more dire consequences in some than others. Think about the engineers at a nuclear power plant. Or the parts supplier for the space shuttle.

The fact that everybody bends that rule seems perfectly fine. Until somebody gets hurt. Maybe that’s the distinction. Maybe a great compliance expert isn’t simply the person who knows what the rule says. Or even the person who knows what regulators historically allow. Maybe the real expertise is knowing the difference between what is legal, what is commonly done, what is commonly enforced, what is defensible, what is ethical, and what is wise. Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Maybe the best compliance expert isn’t the policeman, referee, lawyer or coach. Maybe it’s someone standing somewhere among all four. Someone who can tell the coach yes, everybody is driving 80, and yes, the police usually let them, and yes, you can probably get there faster, but the sign still says 65. You can still get pulled over.

Then the coach has another decision to make. How fast do you want to go?