First the good news. More than 8 out of 10 US companies have codes of ethics and 98 per cent agree that an ethics and compliance program is an important part of corporate governance.
But a new report from Deloitte, Business Ethics and Compliance in the Sarbanes-Oxley Era, points to a worrying gap between rhetoric and practice.
According to the report, only 75 per cent of the companies said they bothered checking to make sure everyone was complying with the code of ethics. Worse still, only 55 per cent had an ethics officer, full or part-time, and about 68 per cent bothered educating their employees on ethics.
Truth is most companies only seem to focus on ethics issues when there's a scandal.
Sure it's a good sign that more are adopting codes. But these documents can end up as meaningless without resources. CEOs and directors have to their money where their mouth is.
Otherwise, you could end up with something like Enron's code of ethics.
In my experience working at large corporations, official policy and reality are two different things. You may try your hardest to operate in an ethical manner, but when you look around and see who is being promoted, you will see it is the win-at-all-cost bullies who are rewarded. In business, the journey is not valued; only results. The only rule is: don’t get caught.