Communicating Compliance with Clarity
2. It is paramount, not only at the beginning of a regulatory writer’s career, but often with variations of cases tackled and the interests of different stakeholders, to consider the nature, expanse, inclusivity—and what is infinitely most misconstrued—the stricture of regulation proposed for enactment. In essence, regulation is neither similar to rigidity nor a binary interpretation of the outcome of assessments and/or inspections as acceptable versus irredeemable failures in quality or performance.
The Quality Assurance Writer, Technical Writer, or Regulatory Specialist is often tasked with the onerous and unenviable task of decoding (read translating) these broadly defined and sometimes equivocal statements
Regulatory Compliance can be a convoluted exercise in decoding and abiding by regulatory requirements as set forth by governing agencies which are tasked to enforce these edicts.
4. Regulatory compliance is incontrovertibly and chiefly necessary. At the very least, it aims to serve public interest, and does an undeniably elegant and effective job at this. While anyone would consider it a stretch currently to name anyone on opposite sides of the isle guilty, there appears, as a professional tasked with interpreting the dictates of compliance, a disconnect or perhaps more accurately a misconstruing of interpreting what were christened broad-reaching rules to certain situations in different industries, trades, and even organizational operations. Some of these organizations may feel heavily inclined to restrict aspects of their operations in impractical ways that would not have been penalized had they known otherwise. And yet I would not be quick to blame regulatory bodies in such instances. The issue always seems to be time—speed-to-adoption, convenience, fast-tracked correction and remediation—which is sometimes more preemptive than not. Indeed, sometimes compliance finds in favor of tolerance rather than stricture, allowing for more utility or distribution to expanded segments of the populace. As argued for: not always strictly binary. Sometimes optimization works despite constraints to other factors. But the maximization and the constraint, at least in this event, ought to be linearly congruous—accessible and understandable to all stakeholders, and for the regulatory writer who will be given to translate the compliance dictates to context-specific guidelines for their firm’s operations to shepherd their undertaking as had been envisioned.
3. The problem is two-tiered and linearly incongruous: the broad far-reaching regulatory rules that could be interpreted in a myriad of ways whose mark of compliance appears to rest largely on the inspector (whom to their credit are skilled at navigating these uncertain waters), and the contextually ambiguous situations different organizations find their business operations steering themselves towards. Especially when incompatible nuances see to it that the average regulatory writer will find the task an exercise in kneading technicality and verbal diction into coherent utility. Predictions for success become a reflection of the very contextual and decidedly sporadic situations they find themselves in—fluid, difficult to predict: a non-standard deviation.
5. Compliance overseers would perhaps do very well before meting out their expected standards of performance and qualities of care to make known to other stakeholders—the organizations that standards of expectation will fall upon and impact—a not only pro forma tabling of the regulations-that-be, but an inclusion of other accessible forms and media that communicate context and nuance clearly without equivocation. Even more paramount is the need for compliance regulators to demonstrate the regulations’ applicability to different trades and industries. There are middlemen—institutional groups certified by said regulatory agencies—that perform an admirable job of relaying this information, albeit for extra charges or perhaps annual dues. I would argue that it would be politic, preferable, pragmatic, and perspicuous if these educational initiatives came clear straight from the source.
6. Clarity—limpid, lucid, cogent, convenience-causing clarity. How crucially compliance would be amply convenienced if regulatory bodies took up this initiative. Wheel. Fulcrum. Pulley. Conveyor belt. Imagine the impact.