What can CFOs do provide good ethical leadership?
We’ve found that employees very often view CFOs as the guardians of the company’s integrity. Even if there’s an ethics officer, CFOs have traditionally held that role because of the power and influence they wield, and because of the system of control that emanates from them. So the advice I would give CFOs is to seize every opportunity to send that dual message: The numbers are important, but how we make the numbers is equally important. CFOs give a lot of presentations to employees in their organization. CFOs should spend a minute of every presentation referring to the company’s ethics code. That constant reminder makes a difference. The other advice I would give is don’t shoot the messenger. Be readily available to hear honest, bad news. Look at the news this week, the controller at WorldCom tried to shoot down the honest concerns of a lower-level finance employee. Well, that message spreads really fast [around the organization]. Q: There’s a renewed vigor in exercising ethical due d
