CEO-CFO Ethics

This set of survey results arrives from Business Finance Magazine and leaves you wondering what is really being accomplished by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. While the Act is meant to alleviate the problems experienced prior to the act, we are left with more than half of CFO's reporting that they feel at least as much or more pressure to do acts that they feel are unethical. Only 12% report that they feel that they have not ever been asked to do something unethical. Thankfully, I count myself in that 12%.

The rest of this little blurb goes as follows:

In early 2004, Business Finance polled subscribers about the impacts of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on the finance function and the CFO-CEO relationship. A couple of the results were shocking: Asked whether finance executives faced more or less pressure (from the CEO and the board) to commit unethical actions since the new law's passage, only 30 percent of respondents answered "less." Fifty-seven percent of respondents said they faced the same -- or more! -- pressure to commit unethical actions in the post-Sarbanes era; a mere 12 percent indicated that they did not, and never had, experience such pressure. That uncomfortable environment makes Rushworth Kidder's new book, "Moral Courage: Taking Action When Your Values Are Put to the Test" (Morrow, 2005), required reading. Kidder is interviewed in this Across http://nls.bfmag.com/t?ctl=AAC9:10B033> the Board article. "You can negotiate your way to the top by doing whatever you feel you ought to do, but the question is: Will you be able to live with yourself knowing you compromised your principles?" he notes. "I'd say yes, many executives could -- and likely do -- live with themselves knowing that. Don't they need a stronger argument?" If you do, read this Q&A...