The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has released a bland progress report on the panel it set up on 28 August last year to conduct a prudential inquiry into the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Anyone hoping for a snap insight into CBA's readiness to be rehabilitated, ahead of its interim profit announcement next week - will be disappointed. APRA's intent in establishing this prudential inquiry was to examine governance, culture and accountability within the CBA group, "in light of a number of incidents which damaged the reputation and public standing of CBA". The regulator made no secret of its intent to establish a "circuit-breaker" to give CBA, and the banking sector generally, some relief from the inexorable drip feed of bad bank stories.This week's progress report noted that: "the [three core themes] of governance, culture and accountability in a large financial institution are complex and interwoven, and the panel does not consider it appropriate to draw conclusions, even preliminary ones, before this work is completed and all relevant evidence collected and carefully evaluated."Meanwhile, the panel is adopting a dual approach to each core theme: evidence-based analysis of quantitative and qualitative information; and case study analysis to gain insights into how CBA's decision-making processes and behaviours have operated in practice. The panel has run 60 interviews covering the top end of the C-suite, executive team and board members, with 20 more planned in coming weeks; along with focus groups involving 100 senior managers and surveys of up to 10,000 staff.Rather than risk any misunderstanding from reporting an incomplete investigation the panel said it would reserve its substantive findings and recommendations for inclusion in the final report, which will be provided to APRA by 30 April 2018."Interviews with current and former CBA directors and staff are continuing, the CBA staff survey needs to be completed and analysed, and the review of the extensive documentation provided by CBA is ongoing," the report noted.Current APRA chairman Wayne Byres welcomed the update provided.And then there was a final sting: the panel said its attention was drawn to "some particular issues that have emerged from the work to date", including:•    Board (including Board Audit and Risk Committees) and senior executive responsiveness to emerging risk issues and diligence in overseeing the resolution of these issues;•    the influence on CBA's culture of the Board and senior executives;•    the complexity of policies and decision-making processes within CBA;•    the prioritisation and execution of investment in risk systems;•    capabilities and accountabilities for risk management in the organisation, particularly for operational, compliance and reputational risk;•    the stature, maturity and resourcing of the compliance function; and•    the responsiveness of remuneration to risk outcomes, adverse or positive.If the final report covers all of the above - as promised - it is already shaping up as a good read. In doing so, Laker will need to tread carefully past the chapter on what the regulators were doing while the CBA was losing its moral compass - notably from the start of the GFC until 2014, when Laker