If checklists can help reduce deaths and complications in hospitals and avoid aircraft accidents they should be able to help in managing legal compliance.

In The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande, a doctor who developed a surgery checklist for operations throughout the world for the World Health Organisation, convincingly argues that “checklists seem able to defend anyone, even the experienced, against failure in many more tasks than we realised…They catch mental flaws inherent in all of us – flaws of memory and attention and thoroughness.”

He argues that the discipline of checklists and increased communication amongst team members can help all professions no matter how complex and complicated the work they do.

The subtitle is “How to get things right”. This is an entertaining, easy to read book and I recommend it to everyone involved in compliance.

How would you develp a checklist for financial services compliance? Here’s a checklist for developing a checklist.

Watch an interview with the author.