On the face of it, it's good news. But look closer, and you have to start wondering.

Just about every company board is now more involved in the company's ethics and compliance program, according to a Conference Board report. Documented board involvement in ethics and compliance programs has gone from 21 percent in 1987 to 96 percent in 2005.

You read this, and you say "duh". What else do you expect when you make a comparison with 1987? The HNG/InterNorth entity had changed its name to Enron only a year before. WorldCom was trading under the name LDDS, and it wasn't a public company. And of course, there was no Sarbanes-Oxley.

The picture would look very different if you start asking how many companies have turned ethics into a formal board responsibility. How many have developed an ethics strategy and appointed a director to make sure it is implemented? How many have turned ethics into a core competency?

I have set out how companies can turn ethics into a core competency in this blog entry.

It's done through a number of steps, from communicating a zero tolerance policy on all issues relating to unethical practices and incorporating ethics policies into new employee orientation and training programs to making ethics part of the remuneration process. Put simply, if you tied managers' salaries to ethics and made it part of the remuneration process, you would see the difference very quickly.

But then, how many companies do that?

Add to that signs that business schools might be contributing to the problem with new reports that their students are more likely to cheat than their peers.

The Conference Board survey is not really telling the full story.