Compliance officers feel they have made many professional inroads and the alignment between their company's behavior and professed values continues to improve. Nevertheless, according to a new survey, they remain concerned about resources, their influence on third parties, and whether or not middle management affords them the same respect they increasingly get from top executives and directors.

Those assessments come from latest edition of the 2014 Compliance Trends Survey, released this week at Compliance Week 2014 in Washington D.C. A joint effort between auditing firm Deloitte and Compliance Week, the report aims to assess the current state of corporate compliance and answer a fundamental question: How do compliance professionals effectively manage increasing demands and position themselves for future success?

This year's survey includes 209 participants from a cross-section of industries. Their companies have a median annual revenue of $2.5 billion and more than 7,000 employees.

The good news is that 50 percent of participants say their companies now have a standalone chief compliance officer, up from 37 percent last year. Far more saw compliance budget increases than decreases (by a ratio of 3-to-1) driven foremost by salary increases and more staff. CCOs are also meeting frequently with their boards, with a majority saying that they do so at least quarterly. CCOs, it appears, “are getting more of the independence, visibility, and organizational support they need to succeed,” the report says. Compliance chiefs are also stepping into their growing responsibilities with greater experience. Nearly one-third of respondents say they have been in their current role 3-5 years, and another 22 percent have done their job 6-10 years.

Those positive inroads, however, still come up against budget and staffing constraints. Forty percent of respondents say their compliance budgets are $1 million or less; 45 percent have five or fewer employees. “In light of the increasing regulatory scrutiny and heightened reputational risks, the continued underinvestment in this space is surprising, and for some organizations potentially short-sighted,” says Maureen Mohlenkamp, a principal and deputy ethics officer for Deloitte.

Nearly half of those with the top compliance job at their company do not have a seat on the executive management committee, which may undermine their authority. Only one-third believe they are perceived as business partners throughout the whole enterprise. Middle management is the slice of the organization where CCOs fear the biggest gap between culture and values.

These constraints come as CCOs increasingly grapple with third-party risk and step up monitoring and due diligence. Despite concerns, the most common form of managing third-party risks is to only provide those parties a copy of the Code of Conduct. More active forms of oversight are less common; less than one-third of respondents said they perform extensive background checks on third parties; 17 percent said they hardly ever do.

With more on their collective plate, compliance professionals say they are seeking out better ways to measure program effectiveness. The most common metrics are internally focused: internal audits, analysis of hotline calls, and completion rates for training programs. Metrics that incorporate external information, such as reviews from regulators or benchmarks against peer groups, remain less common. Only half of respondents had a high degree of confidence in the metrics they do track. The report draws the conclusion that compliance executives are aware of the need to measure effectiveness, but still mostly doing what they can, rather than what they ideally should.

Despite the challenges, however, a solid majority described the alignment between their organization's behavior and professed values as above average or better. Another promising sign is that early half of respondents expect budget increases in 2015 and beyond, roughly the same expect no change, and virtually none expect budget cuts.