The frequency of my blogging has dropped dramatically in the last week due to the launch of my book. It turns out you have a few weeks of fame when everyone pays attention to you and then you become old news. So, I have been making hay while the sunshines and have done six radio interviews, one phone talk, one TV interview, and a few email interviews.

Emeraldinsight.com, in their email interview, asked me a most interesting question:

The 2000 Enron annual report seemed to indicate that everything was going well. To quote some examples: “we work with customers and prospects openly, honestly and sincerely…” and “we are satisfied with nothing less than the very best in everything we do…” From an ethical perspective, do such improprieties suggest that more regulation should be in place with regard to annual reports and investor relations information?

This gets into the area of what part of your ethical code are you willing to impose on others by force. Here was my response:

Although Enron was a particularly egregious example of poor ethics, we are not fans of more regulation. Too often regulation creates unintended consequences, making the cure worse than the disease. Regulation takes the focus off doing what’s right and puts the focus on doing what is legal. Clever, aggressive executives can hide behind regulation, substituting compliance for ethics.

I believe a better solution would be an increased sensitivity in boards, investors, executives, employees, spouses, etc. to the importance of ethics. We have hope that with increasing transparency and access to information, ethical lapses will become more known and more shunned. Business leaders with integrity, who create open honest relationships with investors and customers, will more and more win in the game of business. As these feedback loops become stronger, ethics will become a more effective and authentic shaper of behavior than regulation ever could. 

Tags: Enron, ethics, Clint Korver, ethics for the real world

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.