There are rubber duck races, a rubber duck raft adrift in the oceans and rubber ducks in use as serious tools.
The practice of "rubber ducking" has its origin in software engineering.
It comes from the book 'The Pragmatic Programmer,' in which a programmer would carry around a rubber duck and debug their code by forcing him or herself to explain it, line by line, to the duck.
Sounds silly, but it's insanely effective. The rules are simple:
• Be methodical;
• Explain each and every step;
• Use layperson's terms- it's a child's toy after all!
Although it's used to identify "bugs" in code, this powerful technique is of great use for the practical compliance officer as well.
Here's 3 examples 👇
1️⃣ Risk Appetite Checks
When configuring transaction monitoring logic, whether for money laundering or for fraud scenarios, the tendency is to become absorbed in maths.
Data components like dollar thresholds, velocity of transactions, historical calculation of averages, standard deviations - it's all in play.
But if you just see it as maths, you risk missing the wood for the trees.
Try walking through a transaction monitoring rule's logic and explaining it in lay person's terms, including finding the scenarios that would or would not trigger it.
Then, when you've found the most amount of laundering or fraud that can be committed (and how) without triggering it, you can much more easily identify whether this is within risk appetite parameters and communicate it to other stakeholders.
2️⃣ Process & Policy Review
Again, walk through a process or a policy step my step and explain what, who, when, how, and importantly why.
This allows you to identify not only risks that may slip through the gaps, but also how processes will affect the customer experience. Just like some risks are acceptable, some frictions are too, but this is a great way to find when the friction may be too high.
Remember: good compliance is not opposed to good customer experience!
3️⃣ Comms to non-experts
You can even use rubber ducking to identify where your comms might have gaps in understanding for those who aren't necessarily experts in your area.
Explaining simply and easily forces you to avoid bad practices like assuming the reader knows what you know, to clearly explain 'why' and to abandon the terrible habit of using industry-specific terminology or acronyms without ensuring their meaning is clear.
🛁 Rubber ducking is a brilliant practice; what other uses can you think of?
