Companies and governments are asking us to trust them when we hand over confidential information about ourselves.

So it's hardly reassuring when we have a study conducted by Unisys in partnership with the Ponemon Institute which found that one-third of senior executives don't trust their own companies to handle this kind of information.

Worse still, a similar number said their business partners didn't regard them as trustworthy.

The survey looked at 1700 senior level corporate and technology people in the US and Britain, so the findings are significant.

In the US, the least trusted sectors were insurance, telecommunications and entertainment and media. In Britain, the entertainment and media, healthcare and retailing were on the nose.

All up, the study shows there's a serious problem with trust at work. And we need more than all this focus on the financials to fix it.