Traditional assessment approaches often do not address the unique characteristics of the risks a company faces. While using a common analytical framework to evaluate risks with different characteristics may make the assessment process easier to execute, it also may not be as effective as approaches that could provide more insight into how to respond to assessed risks.

An enterprise risk management process does not envision that all risks be subject to the same assessment methodology. In this issue, we suggest that robust approaches applied to different risk categories according to the underlying characteristics of risks are needed to identify the top risks of those categories. We also suggest four reasons why companies find it challenging to move beyond a risk assessment to actionable steps that could be incorporated into a business plan.