"In general, I would agree that credit unions want to do the right thing, get into compliance and then go back to helping their members," Conner explained.

Conner's staff of nine oversaw 41 credit unions with assets of about $35 billion, a large number because the $30.5 billion State Employees' Credit Union is headquartered in Raleigh.

If, as it sometimes happens, a North Carolina credit union gets written up for something, the credit union has a set amount of time to fix it and the division follows up to make sure the problem gets corrected, she added.

Conner also recounted that sometimes, especially with smaller sized credit unions, examiners find the credit union may not understand how to comply with the regulation or rule. In that circumstance, the division might recommend an approach or refer the credit union to another for assistance.

"That's definitely not our job," Connner said. "But sometimes we find that credit unions aren't aware of the tools they could access to help them better understand and comply with regulations and we can sometimes help them do that," she said, adding, "but that's definitely not our responsibility."

Jerel Wright, administrator of the Kansas Department of Credit Unions and a staff of 11, said he oversees 70 credit unions worth roughly $4 billion in assets.

Wright also agreed that most credit unions in Kansas wanted to comply with rules and regulations and he stressed that the department usually adopted a formal approach to compliance questions.

"If something has been found in violation of the law or regulation, the law defines how we have to approach it," Wright said.

Generally, the department will issue a compliance letter or document that will require the credit union to fix the problem within a set time period, usually in 30-90 days, Wright explained. Once the credit union has solved the problem, it has to notify the department, which will schedule a follow up exam to make sure the problem has been solved, he added.

If it looks like a credit union will not be able to correct the problem within the time frame, Wright added that it can apply for an extension of time, usually 30 days, but the credit union must have at least begun fixing the problem, Wright said.

In the very rare instances where a credit union has still not corrected a violation, Wright said, the department can approach the Kansas Attorney General to draft an order to force the credit union to do it.

Read more: The Texas Credit Union Department has handled low-level violations …

Wright characterized the overall relationship between the department and its credit unions as civil, with a great deal of respect for their mutual roles.

"They understand that we are the regulators and they are the regulated," Wright said.

Stacey McLarty, general counsel for the Texas Credit Union Department, reported that the department's staff of 26 employees oversaw 186 credit unions with $32.3 billion in assets.

Speaking broadly, McLarty characterized the relationship between credit unions and the department as being sound, and reported the department handled a percentage of low-level violations that it found during exams informally, though she said she lacked the data to say what percentage of violations that represented.

"It's certainly true that having a violation problem reach the level where I might get involved is extremely rare," she said.

The department addressed problems more formally through a series of corrective measures that had a wide variety of time frames, McLarty said, adding that credit unions generally wanted to comply and usually did so.

Geoff Bacino, former NCUA Board Member and founder of Bacino and Associates, a Wash., D.C.-based consultancy, agreed that most credit unions wanted to comply with regulation and added that, overall, the state regulatory system worked well.

"Whenever something doesn't work," Bacino said, "the first and often the most incorrect thing to do is to conclude that, 'Oh the regulator must have missed something' or 'Oh, the regulator should have caught something sooner.' But in reality the situation is usually more complicated than that."

Bacino pointed out that many people said the regulators failed leading up to the housing crisis, but the reality there was that while regulators missed things, so did everyone else.

Bacino added that working with the Association of Credit Union Internal Auditors had emphasized how important the credit union's role was in maintaining compliance with regulations. Referring to the ACUIA, Bacino noted that sometimes someone at a credit union deliberately hides compliance problems.

"Sometimes when people say the regulators should have caught something, those [ACUIA] guys will say 'maybe they didn't find anything because someone was trying to conceal it,'" Bacino said. "The innocent mistakes, even the incorrect procedures, those are the easiest to find and fix."

The trick is for the both the regulator and the credit union to find a good working relationship, Bacino said.

The goal of the regulator is not to find something wrong every time they go in for an exam, Bacino said, just as it's not the doctor's goal to find something wrong with your health every time you go for a checkup.

The exam is a way to make sure that everything is going the way it should and, if it is not, to get it back on track in the most efficient way, he added.