Properly disciplining employees when they engage in misconduct or violate a private fund manager’s policies, such as by not preclearing a personal trade or by using an unauthorized messaging platform, is a necessary and useful part of remediation. In fact, SEC staff may view a manager’s failure to discipline employees who commit infractions as evidence of the inadequacy of the manager’s compliance program. Conversely, robust disciplinary practices can shine a positive light on a manager’s compliance program during an SEC examination or investigation. When an employee does engage in misconduct or breach some element of a manager’s compliance program, the manager should proceed with care to ensure a just and defensible outcome. This checklist provides managers – and their CCOs – with questions to ask about both their policies and specific procedures to ensure that disciplinary processes are running as smoothly as possible. For more on employee discipline, see our three-part series: “Best Practices for Fund Managers to Develop an Employee Discipline Framework That Fosters Predictability in the Face of Inconsistent Laws” (Feb. 8, 2018); “Best Practices for Fund Managers When Investigating and Documenting Employee Discipline” (Feb. 15, 2018); and “Best Practices for Fund Managers to Ensure a Fair Process When Disciplining Employees” (Feb. 22, 2018).