ENABLE, SENSE, RESPOND: A NEW OPERATING SYSTEM FOR COMPLIANCE IN THE AI ERA
For decades, compliance programmes have been anchored in a familiar framework: prevent what you can, detect what you cannot and correct what goes wrong. These foundations remain essential. But as decisions are made closer to the customer, as business cycles compress and as complexity accelerates, this model is showing its limits. It is too slow to influence real-time decisions, too reactive to emerging patterns, and too dependent on manual processes that cannot scale.
Artificial intelligence (AI) changes the equation. Not because it automates what people already do, but because it makes possible an entirely different operating model; one that shifts value upstream, senses risk earlier and learns faster than risk evolves. It is time to evolve from prevent-detect-correct to enable-sense-respond.
In most organisations, compliance resources are concentrated downstream, detecting what has already happened and managing it after the fact. Of course, we have policies, processes and controls designed to prevent issues, and these remain essential. But the imbalance creates unnecessary friction, late discoveries and lost opportunities to influence behaviour before risk materialises. AI now makes it possible to move more of that capability upstream, embedding guidance and guardrails directly into the flow of work so that the right choice becomes the easiest choice.
Enable: build the right choice into the work
Enablement is about shaping conditions so that doing the right thing is the natural and efficient path. In practice, this means moving from reliance on human memory and manual interpretation to a system in which AI is present in the workflow itself.
AI prompts flag risky language during drafting, suggest reviewer and approved alternatives, and request missing documentation in real time. Low-risk programmes proceed with minimal intervention, while high-risk items escalate instantly to human review. Feedback from each case is used to update templates and prompts weekly, so the system gets smarter over time.
Oct-Dec 2025 Issue
Brett Hudson