A few years ago I was told by a middle manager to stop referring to the policy “…as the policy is not always right”. More recently I was in a procurement reform workshop and the statement was made that we should “…stop focusing on compliance and instead focus on outcome”. Back a few years I was chatting to a bio chemist who was traveling the world reviewing quality systems, he said “Australia has some of the best quality systems I’ve seen anywhere in the world…none of them work, but on paper they look great”. These are all symptoms of the same issue and often “reducing compliance” is seen as the answer, but what is really going on?