CRO Circle Dinner Zurich | Beyond Frameworks: Human Behaviour as a Driver of Operational Risk

Summary

Operational Risk and Operational Resilience are firmly anchored in the regulatory landscape, with clearly defined frameworks, expectations, and supervisory requirements—yet whether they are equally embedded in day-to-day risk thinking and decision-making remains a question each risk owner can answer individually.

Chief Risk Officers work with sophisticated methodologies, stress tests, scenarios, and control environments. In practice, however, attention is often distributed across multiple competing priorities. Operational risk, and in particular operational resilience, may therefore receive varying degrees of focus, depending on context and situation. At the same time, operational incidents continue to occur. The relevant question is not if operational risks materialise, but when they evolve into situations that challenge an organisation’s ability to act.

This keynote focuses on a frequently underestimated dimension of operational risk and resilience: human behaviour under pressure. While human factors are referenced in regulatory frameworks, their actual impact on risk outcomes is often insufficiently recognised and consciously addressed.

Drawing on insights from executive sparring engagements, internal and external investigations, and experiences from remediation phases following crises, Sonja Stirnimann highlights recurring human risk patterns that systematically influence operational risk management. The focus is not on individual misconduct, but on predictable behavioural dynamics in complex organisations, especially when pressure increases.

The keynote connects operational risk, operational resilience, and human behaviour, and introduces selected perspectives from neuroscience to illustrate why decision-making changes under stress. Participants are invited to reflect on common cognitive biases, behavioural blind spots, and implicit assumptions that shape risk outcomes before, during, and after critical situations.

Keynote

• Sonja Stirnimann, Founder & Managing Partner at STRUCTUUL LTD and Member of the Board of Directors at Basler Kantonalbank
  Sonja Stirnimann is an Economist, Swiss Certified Public Accountant, and Certified Fraud Examiner with an international Executive MBA in Financial Services and Insurance, a Board of Directors Diploma from IMD Lausanne, and advanced executive education in Cyber Management from MIT. She brings over 25 years of experience in Corporate Governance, Audit, Risk, and Compliance, focusing on the prevention, detection, and investigation of non-compliance, economic, and cybercrime across global industrial companies, financial institutions, and audit firms. Sonja advises boards, senior executives, and risk leaders on corporate integrity and decision-making under pressure. She is CEO of Structuul AG, serves on boards of listed and private companies—often chairing audit committees—and is the author of Der Mensch als Risikofaktor bei Wirtschaftskriminalität. Handlungsfähig bei Non-Compliance und Cyberkriminalität.

Agenda

18:30  Welcome cocktail
19:15  Take seat at dinner table
19:30  Welcome speech (5 min) by Bruno Meyer
19:40  Appetizers
20:00  Keynote speech (30-40 min)
20:40  Main Course and Dessert
21:30  End of event

About CRO circle

The CRO Circle institutionalizes the need to debate thoughts and ideas with your C- and Board level colleagues informally. It helps you to identify risk topics that you didn’t think of yet. It provides you with very exclusive networking opportunities and surely new friendships. The “CRO Circle” targets the most senior risk managers, the leaders who are responsible to identify and manage the risk for a company comprehensively. A CRO Circle seat is available as a part of our Corporate Packages.