The bulk of 2014 produced milestones in the compliance and ethics field, marking the demise of the failed “Compliance 1.0″ model (compliance as a captive arm of the legal function) and the rise of “Compliance 2.0″ (compliance freed from the legal department and positioned for success).

Some big developments — such as the now standard separation of compliance from legal in the health care industry, and similar momentum in big banks after a series of record-breaking settlements involving Libor rate fixing, mortgage fraud and money laundering — have led to some (now prophetic) news headlines. Several industry surveys have mirrored this momentum.

A careful observer will have noted three key events from 2014 that can be categorized as “nails in the coffin” for the decades-old, fatally flawed Compliance 1.0 model: