Earlier this week I blogged on how chief financial officers were focused on the money from the next job.

One of the big reasons for that is Sarbanes-Oxley. Indeed, SOX is now the big money spinner for many kinds of jobs, from CFOs to IT professionals.

First, the CFOs. Their salaries are rising faster than for CEOs because of the key role that CFOs play in implementing Sarbanes Oxley, reports The Wall Street Journal.

According to one measure reported in the WSJ, median compensation for CFOs rose 17 per cent over the past three years, compared with 4 per cent for the CEOs.

The gap is closing even further with CFOs starting to get a slice of restricted stock and options grants that's getting bigger, while equity awards for CEOs either have hardly moved, or they're heading in the other direction.

What also helps CFOs is Economics 101: supply and demand. Turnover for CFOs is high, which means they will command higher salaries as time goes on.

The other ones cleaning up are the information-systems auditors, who evaluate company computer systems and safeguard data security. Because Sarbanes-Oxley makes corporate executives explicitly responsible for establishing, evaluating and monitoring the effectiveness of internal control over financial reporting, the role of information technology is turned into a make or break proposition.

IT auditors are now getting pay rises of up to 30 per cent, according to this report. Which puts them ahead of bosses in terms of growth in pay.

And with most small public companies required to be compliant by next January 2007, IT auditors can expect to pick up work right across the board. And because they'll be in demand, they will be raking it in. Economics 101 again.

And then there are the accountants who, thanks to Sarbanes-Oxley, have really been cleaning up.

Now, there's something really perverse about all this. Especially given the Enron-style accounting and financial management scandals that gave us this law in the first place.