Is it a Personnel Issue? Recently, a reporter from the Wall Street Journal, Mark Maurer, asked to interview me about the question: “Are companies picking a new finance chief after detecting a material weakness in their financial reporting controls, at least in part due to a shortage of skilled accounting... Read more →

Protecting Yourself Against Elder Fraud Abuse I recently read several articles posted online about the rise in elder fraud and how federal government agencies are dealing with them. One stands out by Laurie Archbald-Pannone is an associate professor of medicine and geriatrics from the University of Virginia that was originally... Read more →

The following is the program for the 28th Annual Ethics Symposium sponsored by the Public Interest Section of the American Accounting Association to be held on August 11, 2024, in Washington, D.C. You can register for the Symposium on the website of the American Accounting Association (https://aaahq.org/Meetings/2024/Annual-Meeting). Continuing Professional Education... Read more →

Do What We Say, Not What We Do No, it is not about washing your clothes in a responsible way. Ethics Washing refers to the practice of ethical window dressing. It is where an organization gives lip service to ethics to make it seem as though it acts responsibly but... Read more →

Ignoring Quality Controls to Maximize Profits The case of Boeing and its manufacturing deficiencies and production flaws is a tale of what can happen when a company puts profitability over safety. Most readers will be aware of the Boeing airplane crashes between 2018 and 2024 that threatened the very existence... Read more →

How Corporate Culture Drove Decision-Making The story of Boeing is it placed profits ahead of safety and the result has been a series of crashes/mechanical problems that have led to inspections by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and litigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In this blog... Read more →

The Value of Soft Skills I recently read an interesting article on Forbes Advisor online that addresses the importance of soft skills in the workplace. According to the article, “Soft skills—also known as “people skills” or “interpersonal skills”—are a set of personal attributes and abilities that allow individuals to effectively... Read more →

What Do Respondents Say? The 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer is a score that measures the average percentage of trust in institutions like NGOs, business, government, and media. It is essentially a global measurement of trust around the world. Trust is indicated by positive sentiment expressed over time regarding a brand's... Read more →

Internet and Digital Fraud on the Rise Recently, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission disclosed that consumers reported losing more than $10 billion from fraud in 2023, This is an astonishing number and reflects the decline of ethics in society over an extended period of time. Consumers alone reported losing more... Read more →

Is Whistleblowing a Moral Act? Whistleblowers can be seen as heroes, disloyal, or even selfish if, in the latter case, the motivation for blowing the whistle is to gain a financial award, as is available under the Commodities Future Trading Commission (CFTC), Federal False Claims Act, IRS, SEC and the... Read more →