What the two candidates who stood out in a Chief Risk and Compliance Officer search did that the rest didn't, and why the firm that ran it accepts only three searches a month.
The search was for a Chief Risk and Compliance Officer, a sizeable role at an organisation going through change and adopting AI. Everyone on the shortlist could do the job. Two stood out, and not because their answers were better. They asked the interviewers questions of their own: the challenges they’d faced in role and how they’d resolved them, whether the board genuinely wanted change, how risk and compliance was viewed inside the firm, and who the new appointee would need to win over.
It was a competitive field. A niche role at that level now draws three hundred applicants or more, and the search firm running the process has written that this is not normal, especially at C-level. The wider figures bear that out: the KPMG and REC Report on Jobs for September 2026 recorded overall demand for staff falling for the thirty-fourth month in a row, while redundancies pushed candidate supply up at its fastest rate in three months.
The firm is GRAYFIELDS Executive Partnerships, and the person who ran the search is Chris Fields, its Managing Director. He started GRAYFIELDS in January 2026 to place senior risk, compliance, financial crime and data protection leaders in regulated firms, from FTSE companies to start-ups and scale-ups, and he’s been running senior risk and regulatory searches since 2012. Every search GRAYFIELDS has accepted has, to date, been appointed. Of the two candidates who asked the questions, he wrote: “Great way to say ‘I’m invested’ without actually saying it. Much more powerful.”
What the two candidates did differently
“Candidates that stand out, usually do something to stand out in the first place,” Chris says. They might show more energy, be better researched, or relate to the challenges the hiring firm has in a way the interviewers themselves can relate to. “Usually short story telling lands well, real life work-based experiences that show battle scars with positive outcomes.”
In his reading the questions did two things. They showed the candidates were “truly thinking about the reality of the role, environment and the task ahead,” rather than giving the answers that would position them for an offer. And they showed how the candidates think. “Managing Risk and helping firms understand Regulation is not black and white; it depends on individual situations,” he says. Has there been a complaint, a breach, an audit finding, a pending regulatory investigation, a new product launch, a challenging board, a weak risk culture? Understanding that reality, and the people they’d be working with, lets a credible candidate judge whether they’re right for the role and whether they can make a difference, or whether the role is too high a risk for them personally. The interviewers, in turn, get a better grasp of the candidate’s thinking, approach and ability, “and ultimately their investment to the process.”
The feedback on some of the other candidates showed the opposite. “The interview was more of a Q&A. Interviewer asks a question. Candidate answers the question. No additional prompting at time or at the end.” Talking too high level, and not evidencing technical or hands-on leadership experience, worked against them too, once other candidates had set the bar by going into the detail. His example is the Enterprise Risk Management Framework, a task most senior risk roles carry and, as he puts it, “a high-level term and a broad remit.” If you say you’ve built ERMFs but don’t get into the inputs, or the difficult situations that came good along the way, “you are doing yourself a disservice, not bringing the interviewer on the journey.”
“Although their answers were good, the standout candidates went further and ultimately built better rapport and gained more confidence from the interviewers,” he says. What he listens for at the final stage is narrower still.
What a final interview is for
“By the time you reach a final interview, you are deemed as being able to do the role. The competency-based questions have typically finished and there is good cultural fit. Now it’s about how you will work together.”
Chris Fields, Managing Director, GRAYFIELDS Executive Partnerships
Three things, then: collaboration, cultural fit and shared vision. Are you on board with the strategy, do you buy into each other’s vision, will you make an impact. He’d want a candidate to bring what they learned in the earlier rounds into the room. His own example is a candidate who was told by the COO in a previous interview that her team had little understanding of, or time with, the risk function, and who comes to the final saying, “I am a big believer in visibility and having an open-door policy,” then proposes spending time with that team so that it’s safe to ask questions and to report incidents before the risk team finds them, and asks whether that would be well received and which other teams might benefit.
That’s the candidate’s side of the table. On his own side, the promise is shorter.
Assess, commit, deliver
GRAYFIELDS has capacity for three searches a month. “Our promise to our clients is that we will commit to them and guarantee we will appoint their person,” Chris says. Before accepting a search, the firm promises three things. Assess whether it is best placed to help. Commit, on both sides, working exclusively together, which gives the time to run a thorough search and interview every candidate. Deliver a shortlist that has the successful candidate in it.
“We do not agree to search projects we cannot deliver,” he says. “It is a waste of the client’s time as well as our own, and reputationally, the risk or damage means more to us.”
The example he gives of how the record has held up is from the start of this year. GRAYFIELDS was introduced to an international financial services firm, a significant payments provider, with three critical group leadership hires to make. It was a new relationship, the two had never crossed paths, and GRAYFIELDS pitched against two other search firms the company already knew. “We explained our approach, ethos and once assessed that we could help, only then did we formally include ourselves in the tender.” GRAYFIELDS placed all three roles.
The record has also meant advising a client against a candidate. Chris describes offering a role to someone who then, from a position of strength, wanted to negotiate a higher package. It became clear the person wanted to use the offer to get a pay rise from their current employer. GRAYFIELDS presented the counter-offer to the client but advised them not to agree to it, and to offer one of the other shortlisted candidates instead. The client did, and now has the right person in the role. “This strengthened the relationship between us and the client,” he says.
The firm doesn’t advertise its roles. As he wrote after the Chief Risk and Compliance Officer search, “you’ll hear from us when we have something suitable.”
Searches since 2012
Chris has been managing leadership and senior risk and regulatory search projects since 2012. His roles before GRAYFIELDS include Head of Senior Appointments at Broadgate Search, Principal at River Partnership and Associate Director at Morson Edge (InterQuest Group). The completed searches listed on his profile run from Chief Compliance Officer at a bank and European Chief Risk Officer at a global asset manager to Chief Risk Officer at a bank, Risk Director at a life and pensions firm, Director of Financial Crime Operations at a bank and Group Data Protection Officer at a payments firm.
Alongside the searches, he’s spent time on the profession itself. Between 2017 and 2021 he was a partner to the International Compliance Association, speaking at its careers days and conferences to people thinking about a move into compliance, and writing the Careers Corner column for inCompliance magazine. A talk he gave in March 2017 on the evolution of the compliance officer was published in the magazine’s following edition. From 2022 to 2023 he founded and hosted the Route To CEO podcast, on which CEOs and entrepreneurs talked about their career paths, companies and plans for anyone considering a move into business leadership or setting up their own firm.
Starting his own firm, he says, has changed little about placing candidates. What it changed is the targets.
“Larger organisations expect targets as a prerequisite. Winning projects, meetings, CVs sent, interviews arranged etc. This leads to a target driven approach rather than a client and candidate approach.”
Chris, Managing Director, GRAYFIELDS Executive Partnerships
You’re still expected to build, manage and maintain the best possible service, he says, but the levels he set himself were harder to reach with other targets to be mindful of. Under GRAYFIELDS, client and candidate experience is the top priority, together with delivering exactly what was promised. The aim is to be a trusted partner and build relationships that last. One piece of advice from earlier in his career shaped how he holds that line.
Delivering is more powerful than being liked
“A former CEO I worked with told me that delivering is more powerful than being liked,” Chris says. “Essentially, they were saying, kindness can get mistaken for weakness. It took me a while to adopt this, but they were right.” He adds: “You can still be liked but most of the time, a client will partner with someone who can solve their problem. That has always stuck with me.”
The habit a colleague would call very him sits on the candidate side of that. Every Friday afternoon he sets aside an hour to update the candidates in process. Where it’s appropriate, he shares constructive feedback that, in his words, “although is not always the easiest to deliver, it is intended to help them improve for their future interviews.”
One candidate from earlier in his career has said publicly what that looks like from the other side. Susie Goessen, a senior financial crime professional he interviewed for a Group MLRO role in 2018 or 2019, wrote on LinkedIn this year that Chris is “one of the first people I turn to when I need career, recruitment or market advice.” His own account of that appointment is shorter: “She was impressive, knew her stuff and an all round good fit for what we were looking for. So, unsurprisingly, she secured the role.”
Where Chris Is Now
The market he works in is changing what it asks of the people he places. “The life of a risk professional is rarely standstill,” he wrote in a recent post. “From AI governance to preparing businesses for an agentic future, the skills that differentiate you are changing.” The regulators’ own survey says how far that has gone: the Bank of England and the FCA found in 2024 that 75 per cent of UK financial services firms were already using AI, and that 46 per cent of firms had only a partial understanding of the AI they use. GRAYFIELDS has published two recent pieces on it, “As AI Adoption Accelerates, Is Your CV Keeping Pace?” and “Chief Risk Officer 2030.”
Demand, from where he sits, is across most areas of risk, compliance and financial crime, and especially evident at firms moving into new regulatory environments or operating under increased supervision. He’s written that regulatory liaison roles remain in the spotlight at leadership and team level. GRAYFIELDS works with boards and executives on executive search, senior team building, interim and contract appointments, board effectiveness and market mapping, under the line “Strengthening Leadership through Partnership.” On what comes next, he keeps it to one sentence: “We want to grow GRAYFIELDS with people that want to be part of our journey, working closely in a truly trusted partnership way.”
Outside work, the thing he’d put in the piece is the same instinct with the search taken out of it. “I am always connecting people,” he says. “Introducing friends to other friends, recommending businesses or promoting my friend’s businesses.”
The Chris Fields Playbook: Three searches a month
Assess before you accept. Work out whether you are best placed to help, and only then put yourself in the tender.
Commit on both sides. Work exclusively, so there is time to search thoroughly and interview every candidate.
Deliver the shortlist with the person in it. If you cannot, do not take the project. It wastes the client's time and your own.
Keep an hour every Friday for candidates. Update everyone in process, including the feedback that is not easy to deliver.
Advise against the offer if something doesn't feel right. When a candidate is negotiating with your offer in hand, tell the client, and go back to the shortlist.
From the Diary of Chris Fields
Chris Fields is a UK-based executive search specialist and the Managing Director of GRAYFIELDS Executive Partnerships.
| Role | Managing Director, GRAYFIELDS Executive Partnerships |
| Based in | Sussex, England |
| Previously with | Morson Edge (InterQuest Group), 2023 to 2025River Partnership, 2021 to 2023 |
| Also with | Route To CEO podcast, Founder and Host |
“Tell me you’re invested, without telling me.”
Editor’s note
Chris Fields runs a search firm that accepts three projects a month and has appointed every one it has taken on. What convinced the editors is the detail he gives about how a senior hire is actually decided: the questions that separated two candidates from a shortlist, the ERMF answer that goes nowhere, the hour he keeps on Fridays for feedback. He describes his own record at the level it stands, and the time he advised a client against a candidate he had offered. That is why the feature runs.
Executives Diary, Editorial
