Ep.17: From Elves to Ethics
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About this episode. What do Icelandic elves, Chilean political ads, and Uruguayan tea rituals have to do with ethics and compliance? More than you’d think. In this episode of The Better Way?, Zach and Hui take you on a global journey—literally—sharing travel stories that spark fresh insights into culture, data, and the human side of corporate integrity.
From folklore that reveals workplace truths to a cruise ship complaint that becomes a case study in speaking up, this episode is packed with unexpected connections, sharp observations, and a whole lot of curiosity. Whether you're a compliance pro or just love a good travel tale, this one might make you rethink how we measure, motivate, and manage culture and compliance.
Who? Zach Coseglia + Hui Chen, CDE Advisors
Full Transcript:
ZACH: Welcome back to The Better Way? Podcast brought to you by CDE advisors. Culture. Data. Ethics. This is a curiosity podcast for those who ask, “There has to be a better way, right? There just has to be.” I'm Zach Coseglia, and I am joined as always by the one and only Hui Chen. Hi, Hui.
HUI: Hi, Zach. Hello everyone. Welcome back.
ZACH: Welcome back, indeed. So it's just us today and we have what I think is a really fun topic. In full disclosure, I know that…this was a topic I wanted to do, in part, because I've been doing a lot of traveling this year. And so, our topic for today is inspiration relating to culture, data, ethics from travel.
HUI: Yes, I must say that Zach is very inspiring when it comes to finding these out-of-the-box, out of the echo chamber inspirations from everyday life. It's been a little challenging for me. I travel a ton. I love travels, but finding that connection doesn't come as naturally to me, so we'll see how I do today.
ZACH: I honestly find you inspiring because I wish that I could turn it off, so that I wasn't sitting on a bus somewhere on a wonderful journey and thinking about how whatever I heard about this exotic, wonderful place that I'm visiting somehow related to the world of ethics and compliance. But that is sadly my truth. You also inspire me because you have been far more places than I have been. I am playing catch up and in fact I was just looking at the stats, the data if you will. And this year I've been to 16 different countries this year. Many of them for the first time. So there has been all kinds of inspiration. I'll start though with my first example of inspiration.
HUI: Please.
ZACH: And it comes from a trip that I did just this year, in fact, just a couple of months ago, earlier this summer. I was on a trip to Iceland. I spent a couple of weeks in Iceland, kind of going all over the country. And as I said, I'm on a bus doing a tour, visiting some very exotic places, and the tour guide is telling us a story about the myths, the folklore around elves in Iceland.
HUI: Interesting.
ZACH: There's apparently lots of stories to be told about elves, but what we were hearing about was how protective they are of their homes and the lengths that they will go to stop or cause harm to those who may disrupt their homes. They are protectors of the land and of nature, and if you've been to Iceland, you know that…that is it's number one export. I guess. It's beauty. It's landscape.
HUI: Yes, indeed.
ZACH: So, we were driving on this very narrow road, and they were talking about recent construction that had happened there, and in some other places—and telling us these stories about how the elves have to be minded when they're doing these large road construction projects. That they've been known to cause damage to mechanical equipment or to make it impossible for the construction crews to do their work. So much so that there are examples apparently of projects being fundamentally changed in response to the elves response to the construction.
Now, you know, I think it's fair to say that this is folklore—that most Icelanders don't actually believe in elves, or maybe just think that it's a little true. Maybe these are stories that are shared with children and that have been passed on and ultimately become part of the folklore of the country and things that folks like to tell. But it got me thinking about the stories that we tell—and that really was the connection to the work that we do.
The folklore in Iceland, the folklore in our places of work, the folklore in our communities and how that plays such an important role in helping us ultimately understand what is important to a culture, what is important to people, and the experience that people have within whatever community we're talking about. It could be a country, it could be a town, and it could be a place of employment. And you know, it was particularly top of mind in the context of some of the culture work that we do. We talk all the time about how your traditional surveys aren't really going to get you the rich information that you need to truly understand what's going on. To truly do a health check. To really have your finger on the pulse of culture. But these stories do.
These stories give us such rich information—and that's why we seek them out when we do culture work. We want to hear about the stories, the folklore that exists within the company. And also recognize that, much like the elves in Iceland, truth is not always as important as perception.
HUI: Indeed.
ZACH: That's something that we talk with our clients about a lot. Is that just because someone says something, you may look at it and say that is definitively false, but the fact that it's their perception means it still needs to be managed nonetheless. So anyway, this was just like that instant sort of bit of inspiration in a very unexpected place for me.
HUI: See, that ability to be able to go from elf stories to cultural storytelling in an organization? That is something I lack. But I think on that theme of storytelling, I will share something from one of my…I think it was my very first trip to Chile. So you and I, as many of you out there know, recently had our one-year anniversary Partners retreat in a vineyard in Chile. This was my third trip to Chile. And I love that country. It's just a beautiful place. It has really dramatic landscapes, really throughout. It's a very long country if you look on your map. So, my first trip to Chile, my host Rodrigo, who has become a dear friend since that time he invited me to Chile for an engagement, I think it was 2018. We got into conversations about Chile and of course a little bit about Chile's history. And as you know, I love history.
So Chile in the in the 80s was ruled by a dictator, Augusto Pinochet. And so we talked about the Pinochet rule and its impact on Chile's identity today. And Rodrigo told me, you have to go watch this movie called “No.” And I said, “Well, that's a very interesting sounding movie.” He said, “You should go watch it.” It's about this 1988 plebiscite where the people of Chile were to vote on whether to give Pinochet eight more years in power. So this was a plebiscite that happened in 1988. So, sounded interesting. I was curious enough. So I went home and found this movie. Actually, believe it or not, on a DVD from my local library. So . . .
ZACH: I think most of our listeners still know what DVD's are, at least for now.
HUI: Yeah, at least for now. But I'm sure you can probably find it on some kind of streaming service now, right?
ZACH: Yeah, for sure.
HUI: So it was truly a fascinating movie. So, this movie was made in 2012 and it was about this 1988 plebiscite. The issue here is people are to go vote yes to give Pinochet eight more years or no not to give him eight more years. And the campaign was done in such a way that for 27 consecutive days both sides had 15 minutes of airtime. Now remember, this was before the Internet, so, TV really mostly was people's way of getting entertainment and information. So that was really the only public media that mattered. So, each side had 15 minutes to present their perspective, do campaign, whatever. And the “no” side was gearing up for its campaign.
Now, during Pinochet's rule, many people had been imprisoned, tortured, died as a result of the regime. And these are understandably very, very motivated, very, very angry people who want to make sure the “no” vote wins. So they want to come out with stories of their missing family members, their tortured, you know, experiences. And the No Campaign hired a creative advertising director who advised them to go the other way. His message was you can only get people out to vote by giving them hope. Not by giving them gloom and doom of all the traumas of the past, but get them to look to the future, get them to have hope.
So in the movie, you'd see the scene where all of these people who have suffered traumas from the past were very, very angry with this proposal. They thought this was really dismissive of the experience of their pain, which is again understandable. But somehow, miraculously, despite all of this opposition, the director's approach won out. And you would see in the movie some of these really hilariously funny commercials that he made. And you would not think for such a heavy subject you can make such sort of funny, hopeful kind of commercials for this kind of topic.
But he did. And 27 days later, when the plebiscite was held, the “no” vote had a decisive victory. And the movie ended with, the historic documentary footage of Pinochet handing over power to the new president. And that to me was a clear lesson in messaging. See, for me, the connection has to be much more clear. So it was a clear message in messaging. And I think one of the things I always talk about in our space is that compliance professionals have, I think in the last 20-30 years, relied on a fear-driven message. The fear-driven message is if you don't do this, if you do that, the big bad DOJ will come and get you. That's been the messaging.
ZACH: Yeah.
HUI: We want to stop and think, really, is that the best way to motivate people? Isn't the better way to motivate, better way to motivate people to give them inspiration, to empower them, to make them believe that they can do something that's meaningful? And that's consistent with their values. That's something that they're proud of. If we do more of that kind of messaging, can we transform our approach to ethics and compliance? Can we drive more towards ethics and less towards just complying with whatever orders are out there?
ZACH: Yeah.
HUI: And I think this is particularly important because the big, big bad DOJ really isn't what it used to be, right?
ZACH: Right.
HUI: So even if you do want to continue to rely on that messaging, that really doesn't ring very true today. So out of necessity, but I would hope just out of a sense of giving people something that would really motivate them, we should think about how we tell our story in a way that is much more reliant on hope and inspiration than on fear.
ZACH: When you talk about the messaging of fear, I think that that is happening primarily in the way in which people are communicating to people in boardrooms, whether it's to their board or to their executive leadership team, and it probably is also driven by the way that the board and the people on the executive leadership team are viewing these things.
I don't know if it's as much how compliance is directly communicating things to the broader employee population. But for whatever reason, oftentimes the broader employee population still has that sort of enforcement driven mindset that I think compliance officers want to overcome. They don't want to be the police to their employees. And yet, when they're talking to boards and executives, they often take that enforcement approach with them.
HUI: I think I've mentioned that we've talked to people who want us to do that type of messaging.
ZACH: Right. Yeah. And that is not the way we do things.
HUI: Yeah, and when we . . . but one time I really was kind of disheartened when someone approached us and said, you know, we want you to do sort of this enforcement update. And I not entirely jokingly said that really wouldn't take too much time today. I said that would take about 30 seconds. And the person had quite a horrified look on her face and said please don't say that. Then what are we going to talk about? And that really concerned me.
ZACH: Yeah, I don't think she ever called you back.
HUI: No, she never did. She never did. I did give her a whole list of things that we can talk about and should talk about today, which is, how do we motivate our stakeholders and employees on their values? How do we deal with a very conflicted society in the workplace? There are lots of things that we could talk about, but I guess they weren't ready for that conversation.
ZACH: Yeah. The other thing that I take away from it, and maybe I'm being super simplistic here, but at the end of your story, there was an election. Now we're not going to have elections, I don't think. But what . . .
HUI: In the companies that is.
ZACH: In the companies, well, we'll see.
HUI: Hopefully, we'll still have elections in the country.
ZACH: But in the companies we're not going to have elections. But what we need to have and we talk about this all the time. So maybe we sound like a broken record, but that election is a measurement, that election is the way in which the outcome is determined.
HUI: Absolutely.
ZACH: And so in some ways, I fully agree with you that we shouldn't be taking an enforcement focused approach. I mean, it's at the foundation of our sort of approach to ethics and compliance that enforcement, regulations, laws are there, of course, but we got to go beyond that. We got to focus on the human, we got to focus on the context, we got to focus on the culture, and we got to be more data-driven. But the only caveat that I will make to that is we've also got to measure the outcomes of what we do—and if what we found was that an enforcement focus approach is the way to accomplish our end goal, we might give it more value. I think what we have seen though is time and time again that approach has failed and that's why we're on the search for better ways and constantly encouraging folks to not just look for better ways, but actually measure them and prove them to be better ways.
HUI: Let me add to that something also we always say, which is that measurement was predetermined by a very clearly articulated goal, which is to win this plebiscite, right?
ZACH: Yes.
HUI: It wasn't the quest to be air quote, “effective” end of quote, at something that's unarticulated to be effective in this campaign is to win that plebiscite. It was a very clear goal from the beginning—even though our goals may not be something as clear-cut as winning an election or a plebiscite, but we still need to clearly articulate what is it that we're trying to accomplish in order to then figure out how to measure that.
ZACH: All right. Should I share my second one?
HUI: Go for it.
ZACH: Okay, so we actually just talked about this topic on a recent episode. The topic is benchmarking. And what I thought was very interesting about it is, so I was on a trip recently. I was traveling around Europe, but I was around a lot of people who were from the US, a lot of fellow Americans. And I was constantly hearing people say, well, we don't do it that way or in where I come from, we do it this way. And there's something to be said for sort of like being proud of where you're from. But I thought it was really interesting because I feel like we do something very opposite of that in the ethics and compliance space.
It's less pride around what we're doing and more what are the other people doing? What is everyone else doing? You know, what are they doing over there that I could potentially learn from or how am I going to be judged based on what they're doing? And so in both scenarios there is this sort of like kind of human instinctual desire to compare. But what I was seeing in my travels was a strength and a pridefulness around what you do. And which we could also judge as distinguished from the curiosity that we seem to have so much in the ethics and compliance space about what everyone else is doing.
HUI: That's very interesting. So we really did not pre-plan this, but I think our stories are matching at least so far one for one. My second story has to do with the specifics of culture in a way as well. So I was in Uruguay after our trip to Chile and . . .
ZACH: Just a couple weeks ago.
HUI: Yes, just a couple weeks ago. Like you, I love to travel, and I am particularly interested now and keep adding to my country count. So this year I haven't counted how . . . I don't think I've been to 16, but I know this year so far I've been to six new countries, which is bringing my total to 82 and Uruguay is the latest on my new country experience list.
HUI: And I find it so interesting that very few people actually have been to Uruguay, at least people who are not from the South American region. People in the region probably have been there more likely. But in the circle of sort of well-traveled people, I asked before I went and very few people had actually gone there. So I was very fascinated to go and I really did also enjoy my trip to Uruguay.
It's just another lovely country. And so the first full day I was there was a Sunday and in fact, ChatGPT told me about a Sunday market that I should go to, which was fantastic. It was a huge miles long street market and I love going to street markets in places where I travel and even at home. So when I was wandering through the street market, I saw on several stands these things that look like drug paraphernalia to me, and I was very intrigued.
ZACH: Hmm, yes.
HUI: So it looked like, I don't know how to describe it. It's kind of like a cup that's oftentimes curved, so it's like a cup bowl kind of shape and comes with a thing that looks like a spoon, but the spoon part of the spoon is like a filter. It's like a thick spoon with holes in it, so it's like a spoon like filter straw. Very strange combination. It's just not something I had ever seen.
ZACH: It looked like a bong. We can just say it.
HUI: Okay. Thank you very much. It looks like a bong. And it comes in different materials. Some are in wood, some are in like stainless steel and you know, whatever. So I was like, wow, I guess they really do pot here pretty openly. Yeah, I was really curious. I was thinking about like, what is this? And I'm usually also looking for just a small, unbreakable, lightweight souvenir that I can bring home, right? And this looked unique and interesting, but I wasn't going to bring home a bong. So I was like, okay whatever. Then I go to sort of the Old Town area and I walk by established shops and I see the same thing in these shops. And I'm like, what is this thing? Like, either they're really into pot smoking and everybody's doing it or this is something else.
So of course I go ask my friend ChatGPT and ChatGPT tells me, and I later verified it with actual Uruguayan people, that this is not a bong. This is a thing that they call a mate set, and that's spelled M-A-T-E. It's basically a kind of herbal tea. And what you do is you put a lot of these very loose tea leaves. You pack it into that cup. And you pour hot water, not boiling water, hot water into it, and then you sip it through your filtered straw. And it actually is very prevalent in Uruguay. It supposedly is also shared culture in this respect with Argentina, which is just across a gigantic river. And in Argent…I spent just the day transit out on my way home in Buenos Aires. I did not see as many shops or people using it, but in Uruguay I was, I mean, it was everywhere, not just in the shops.
Once I understood what it was, I started noticing it everywhere. Like shopkeepers had this mate set like right next to their chair and they have a thermos of hot water next to it and they would be pouring water and drinking it. At the beach, people would be carrying these mate sets with them. It just made me think that when we're not familiar with the culture, we're looking at something and we have our own interpretation based on our own culture and understanding. And when it's completely not the case in fact, in the local culture.
And how many times does that happen in compliance where we work cross culturally with our international partners and employees and distributors and whatever, and we either force them to see things the way we do. Or we misinterpret what they're doing in a way that is entirely inconsistent with the local culture, and I'll give a concrete example to that. So when I worked at Standard Charter Bank, many of their corporate compliance money laundering experts are in London and one of their biggest sort of revenue generating market was Hong Kong.
So someone told me that there would be London money laundering analysts who look at the patterns of transaction in Hong Kong and say, well, this is suspicious. We have this group of people, these accounts with account holders just not being active. The account is really not accessed throughout the year. But then around every year, around like end of January, beginning of February, there will be a lot of cash withdrawals out of this account. Very suspicious. And their Hong Kong colleague would tell them: it's overseas Chinese coming back for Chinese New Year. There's nothing suspicious about that. These account holders don't live in Hong Kong. They live overseas. They have this account here when they come home for Chinese New Year.
ZACH: Yeah.
HUI: This is customary that you would give these little red pockets as they call it, with cash in them, especially from the elders to the younger generation. And this is a very common cultural practice. If you didn't have that cultural knowledge you are misinterpreting, this pattern of transactions is suspicious. You and I had done investigations in China and many times without that culture understanding, we're seeing people who are investigating this fact patterns, not understanding how to interpret certain behaviors, certain forms, what's written on the forms. That culture understanding is so critical, but it's oftentimes just completely ignored.
ZACH: Yeah. So the first thing I took away from it before you sort of got to your connection was just the very simple there are many artifacts of a culture. It's not just the words that we kind of plaster on the walls. It's not just your code of conduct. There are so many artifacts of a culture.
HUI: So true.
ZACH: Whether it's a company or whether it's a country or any other community. And so this is a wonderful sort of example of a very specific type of artifact that tells you something about the people. And there are lots of artifacts like that within a company that sometimes we don't think as much about when we're doing traditional culture work that you and I think a lot about.
So, the artifacts piece was what stood out to me immediately. But then beyond that, just to put a finer point on what you shared, I think what you described was like the very most basic better ways that help us do this work better. The first was, you were curious. You were walking around, you were experiencing another place and you were curious about what you were seeing. And that to me is at the foundation of sort of like our point of view. I think it's at the foundation of how to do ethics and compliance and culture work better. It's also at the very foundation of travel, it's all about curiosity.
HUI: I was going to say curiosity is why I travel. That's why I want to go to new countries, because I have never been there. That's the attraction. I don't know it. There's always that little bit of anxiety that accompanies the journey, especially into new territories. But that's the excitement. That's what makes it fun for me.
ZACH: Absolutely. But you took it a step further. It wasn't just that you were curious. You then asked a question.
HUI: I investigated.
ZACH: You investigated, you saw this thing, you wondered what it was, and you asked. And when we talk about kind of cross-cultural investigations or cross-cultural work, whether it's ethics work or just broader culture work, that's what it's all about. It's about being curious but not being satisfied with curiosity alone, but following it up with a question. Getting more information, understanding that this is a topic we're going to do a whole episode about in short order, understanding the context.
HUI: You know, what is interesting is I also appreciate the fact that we now have this tool, ChatGPT, that allows me to ask the question in a safe environment. So my first question was to ChatGPT, not to an actual Uruguayan person, because I didn't want to ask a question like, do you guys all smoke pot or what, right? So, I was so uninformed about it, I felt like I needed a safe space to ask that question in case it turns out to be a super stupid question. And now we have that tool that allows me to sort of exercise my curiosity safely.
ZACH: Absolutely. You actually don't even know it, but you just set me up for a wonderful segue because safe spaces is very much at the core of the next topic that I want to talk about, and that is speaking up. So I was on a . . . we've actually talked about this previously that I have like found cruise ships and I like swore them off for like the first several decades of my life. But I've re-found them recently and really enjoyed the opportunity that's given me to travel to a lot of different places that I wouldn't normally go.
To do so for me, for those who are curious, someone who has like pretty severe flight anxiety to be able to do it without constantly being on an airplane. And I was on a cruise earlier this year. This is back in like January, February. It was a bucket list item for me, wanting to go through the Panama Canal. And so I went from New York to San Francisco. Highly recommend. It was very cool. So I'm on this cruise and I find myself confused because no matter where I go, whether it's a restaurant, a bar, a lounge, the food hall as they call it, I can't get anyone to offer me a drink. I'm thirsty and I can't get anyone to offer me a drink. And so I'm concerned that, like, there's some sort of, like, cultural norm that I don't understand. Some sort of like insider cultural secret that I am not privy to.
So that was the first sort of immediate connection to our work is just acknowledging that whatever community you're in, whatever culture you find yourself a part of, there sometimes are like little secrets that you just need to know. I think the most obvious that we sometimes talk about is like tipping culture when you travel. This for me was how do I get a drink and do so in a way that doesn't make me seem as though I'm like an outsider in this culture. You know, I don't want to do it the wrong way. It turns out that I think it was just bad service, not some sort of like deep social norm that I wasn't aware of. And so, I decided to do a little bit of an experiment because we've been doing a lot of work at this time with a client around their speak up mechanisms.
And I tend to not be someone for all of the sort of, you know, sometimes confidence that I show the world…I would just rather be quiet, especially on something like this. I've worked in the service industry. I was a waiter at TGI Fridays, which I think was ground we covered in the first episode of the Better Way? Podcast. It was a horrible experience and I would just rather keep my mouth shut and just let everyone be happy and maybe be a little thirsty. But I decided to run a little bit of an experiment to like experience the process of speaking up. So I reached out online first because I didn't want to do it on the phone. I didn't want to do it in person because I wasn't feeling super confident about it. And so I just reached out online first. And you know, the response I got was by phone, which made me a little uncomfortable because like, I reached out one way and then the response came in a different way.
So I took note of that. It also came at a time that maybe didn't make a whole lot of sense, you know, as though they were calling, hoping that I wouldn't be there to pick up. But more importantly, what I experienced was I just never felt heard in this conversation. And we're not talking about like big stakes stuff. We're just talking about getting a drink in the dining room, right?
HUI: Which is kind of important when you're thirsty.
ZACH: And I mean, it is, it can be. It just felt like I'm trying so hard to just be like the model complainer, you know? And yet I still felt like I was just a task in their way, something that they had to do so that they could move on to whatever the next thing on their list was. That sometimes resulted in a little bit of defensive responses from them about what I was experiencing. The last thing that I just thought was kind of funny was what they offered me something in return, which I thought was very generous, but what they offered in return was a free drink ticket.
HUI: That's ironic.
ZACH: And the problem was, I couldn't get some…I couldn't get someone to actually get me a drink. So the drink ticket just seemed ironic and a little bit funny. But immediately I went into this little experiment having already made the connection to our world and our work, but at the end of it, it just further cemented for me the…how delicate that process is, especially when someone is bringing something forward that's far more important than what I did. Just how delicate that process can be, how human that experience is, how important empathy is in all directions, and how this thing that is probably . . . it's such a basic part of the program, and I know that people put a lot of focus on it, but it just further cemented for me how important it is for us not to overlook it or to take it for granted simply because it is such a sort of established element of a program and of our discipline. But yeah, that was my thirsty experience on the cruise ship.
HUI: Wow, from not being able to get a drink to speak up. That is a link I never would have made. I must say.
ZACH: Well, what is one to do if they can't get a drink other than speak up?
HUI: So again, we have to somehow work this out that your story sets up for mine and mine sets up for yours. I don't know how this works.
ZACH: I really don't know. I really don't. I really want to be clear. We really don't plan these things.
HUI: No idea. And even in the order that I had thought about saying it, it's in the exact order. I didn't even have to adjust the order to match your stories. So it's kind of scary so.
ZACH: We're just mind meld at this point.
HUI: This is about the inability to do root cause analysis. I so strongly believe in root cause analysis because I don't want something that went wrong to happen again. And to me, the only way to prevent that is to understand exactly how it happened this time.
So on my final leg of my journey this last trip home, I was in San Francisco and I had woken up in the morning to a text message saying that my flight had been delayed. My prescheduled flight had been delayed. So no problem, I changed to an earlier flight and I immediately checked in for an earlier flight and when I got to the airport I activated the boarding pass on the app and I noticed it didn't say TSA pre on it.
Which I thought was strange. I've been, you know, Global Entry for over a decade and always had TSA Pre, so it's always on my boarding pass when I'm doing it in the United States. So I thought . . . Maybe I'll just go to the counter and have them printed. Now because of the amount of travel I've done, I'm very fortunate to be in the premier travel group with a dedicated reception area that if you go through it, you get to the front of the line at the TSA. And there's not many people in there. So I go in, there are two agents. I'm the only passenger. I go in and I said, you know, for some reason TSA Pre is not on the thing. I show her my Global Entry card and I said, can you just see if you can print one with it? She tries to print. It doesn't come out.
Make a Long story short turns out my date of birth is wrong in their system, at least as associated with this particular boarding pass. I hope. See, this is the problem because I'm not in their system. I can't even see.
ZACH: We'll find out in a couple weeks.
HUI: Exactly. I can't even see what the problem is. She did turn around her screen for me to see. And it certainly shows the wrong date. It's basically the day before my actual birthday. So she says okay, she fixed it. She looked at my ID to confirm what my real birth date of birth was. She prints, still wouldn't print. She keeps doing this now for like 6-7 times. And I said, you know what, if you just can't get a print, it's no big deal. I'm still thinking it was . . . I was really disturbed by the fact that somehow my birthday could have been wrong in there. Like how did that happen? I couldn't understand. Is that in wrong in my profile altogether or is it just with this particular boarding pass? And so I said I'm just going to go to the TSA agent and show her my global entry card and she'll let me into the TSA Pre line.
ZACH: Yeah.
HUI: And I go to the . . . so they open this sliding door. I go to the head of the line and I show the thing and she has me stand in front of the camera, take the picture. She checks my ID and she's like, no, something is wrong with your boarding pass. I can't let you through. So now this is no longer a TSA Pre problem.
This is I can't even get through to the boarding gate. Well now I am a little panicking and I said well how do we fix this? Like what is wrong exactly. So she said something is wrong with your boarding pass. Well what is wrong? She's like, “I don't know, it could be your birth date or it could be like the way your name is spelled.” So she can't even tell me what exactly is wrong. So, I said, “What do I do?” And she said, “Well, you have to go back to the airline that issued it.” So which is just 10 feet behind me. So, I point to the door and I said it's them.
ZACH: Yes.
HUI: They corrected that, they had corrected my date of birth. And so I go back and they go into the system again. Lo and behold, what they had corrected is now uncorrected. So my date of birth is again the wrong date and they keep doing this. So they go into the system, they correct it and they try to print it wouldn't come out. And then they go back in and it's reverted back to the wrong information. So now 20 minutes have gone by. Thank God I would decide to go to the airport early.
And at this point, I don't even care about TSA Pre. I just want to go home.
So finally, again, because I was just so lucky that at least for this year, I have this status with this service. I was able to work with agents who have that physical proximity as well as working relationship with TSA. So they went explained to the TSA agent what was happening, what they have tried to do and they got a TSA agent to wave me through to the regular, not the TSA Pre-line, which I'm very grateful. I just want to get through the gate so I can go home. And this bothers me, as you signaled to this day, because I don't know if this is going to happen again.
I come home, I check my airline profile, all the correct information is in there. And I don't know what else to do because I am not able to do, not even a root cause analysis, a surface cost analysis I couldn't do. And we can of course go from this to many, many things that we all think can be better with the whole airline experience.
ZACH: Yeah.
HUI: None of this makes anyone sort of happy to travel. Because no wonder you're an anxious traveler. I think everybody's a little anxious with all the stuff that that happens that's associated with air travel these days.
ZACH: Indeed.
HUI: But something like this, I don't even know how to correct this. I don't know what happened and therefore there is no way I can prevent it because I don't know what happened. I can only sit here, cross my fingers and hope my best guess is that it was a human error on the part of the agent who rescheduled my flight. And that caused the record in that particular point. It looked like the kind of error that could happen when you scroll something just the wrong way. But I don't know. And this is obviously not a small matter for me and I do not wish to have this experience ever again.
ZACH: Sure.
HUI: But think about greater situations for the organization. Do you want to have something bad happen and the only thing you can do is cross your fingers and hope it doesn't happen again. That's not a place where we want to be. And to the extent I understand, I think sometimes it is outside of our power, just like what I'm experiencing.
ZACH: Yeah.
HUI: But when it is within your power to dig into those systems to understand what happened, that is the only way you can begin to prevent this from happening again. And I don't want any organization to be sitting there in the wake of anything that shouldn't have happened. And say, let's hope it doesn't happen again.
ZACH: Absolutely. We should do a whole discussion on root cause analysis. I think it warrants it. The other take away though from that experience that I'm happy for you is they didn't let process get in the way of the obvious outcome, which was you getting to the other side of that line and getting to your gate.
HUI: Yes, that human aspect.
ZACH: The best compliance officers obviously do what the TSA and the airline did for you, which is to look at the situation and ultimately say, okay, our process is getting in the way here. This is the person on the ticket. There is clearly a technological issue or a small issue that is preventing us from doing. So let's move it on and that is great for you. It's also a good lesson for us as compliance practitioners is to make sure that our process isn't getting in the way of the right outcome.
HUI: Absolutely. I was so grateful for that human intervention that the human beings that recognized the situation for what it was and did what they had to do to fix a technological problem.
ZACH: That's right. And look, if an airline and the TSA can offer that, then I think certainly we can as compliance professionals. This was fun. I'm glad we tackled this topic.
HUI: I'm glad you made me stretch my mind.
ZACH: Yeah, it was good. Well, thanks, Hui. Always fun to have these discussions and thanks to all of you for listening and we'll be back in a couple of weeks.
HUI: Yes and share with us your travel stories.
ZACH: Please do. And thank you all for tuning in to The Better Way? Podcast. For more information about this or anything else that’s happening with CDE Advisors, visit our website at www.CDEAdvisors.com, where you can also check out the Better Way blog. And please like and subscribe to this series on Apply or Spotify. And, finally, if you have thoughts about what we talked about today, the work we do here at CDE, or just have ideas for Better Ways we should explore, please don’t hesitate to reach out—we’d love to hear from you. Thanks again for listening.