Internal Control Test

The time has come for me to prepare my team to work on obtaining their professional payroll certifications.  I've considered a pop quiz style FPC mock exam to get things rolling.  My intuition tells me that the majority of the group will not do well.  I have a team of very smart and dedicated employees.  With that stated, they, like many others, view payroll as just a job, not a profession.  I want to change that.

I want to focus this group on internal controls and compliance.  I feel that this will open their eyes to why this profession is so critical to the success of an organization.  So what's the best way to do that?  At a prior organization, a senior analyst asked permission to conduct an experiment.  She submitted a fake garnishment.  She and another employee, along with our director, doctored up a garnishment and mailed it to our office to see if our internal controls would recognize the garnishment as a fake.  Not only did our team not ID the garnishment as a fake, but they set it up for processing, which would have deducted about $1000 from this willing employee's pay check.

This experiment was conducted without my knowledge.  Initially I was embarrassed and even a little mad when I learned about it.  How could the team not spot some signs of this fake garnishment?  No mailing address, sloppy looking letterhead.  Even some of the words were misspelled!

I don't want my quiz or any tests of our controls to embarrass anyone.  But I want to illustrate the need for strong controls as well as a sharp eye for details.

How do you emphasize controls and compliance with your teams?  I'd love to know so please share!