When there is a problem, another anonymous source points out, someone in the organization usually knows about it but may not feel safe enough to bring up the issue in a large, supportive forum. Retrospectives provide not only an open door, but group consensus as well. Someone can raise an issue and get support. That's hard to turn a blind eye to.

After the retrospective, your team may come up with a list of risks and issues such as those (theoretically) identified in the Knight Capital case. If so, consider these four techniques to reduce risk.

Knight Capital may never be transparent enough for us to conduct an assessment of what went wrong, or to even see a retrospective report. That shouldn't stop your organization. This could be an opportunity to examine your systems and how they interoperate while determining the value of investing time and energy in risk management.

It's hard work, and it's not eye-popping, but good risk management is likely to keep your company off the CNN, or . That just might turn out to be a most excellent thing.