Managing Fraud Risk: A Practical Guide for Directors and Managers

Business Ethics in Action

The importance of business ethics and corporate culture came up at various times during the interviews that I carried out for this book. There were some very interesting observations made by the interviewees, a selection of which is set out below.

First, consider Charles' response to one of the questions that I asked him. Charles has wide-ranging business experience, working in the UK, the US and also in Continental Europe at various stages of his career. He spent many years working for a large, privately owned US business and I asked him specifically whether there was an ethics programme in place in that organisation when he was part of the senior management team there. This is what he had to say:

Not a programme as such, no. But there was a two-page statement on ethics and what was expected from managers within the business and I think it was good sense, it was well written. In addition to that, our business had, like so many companies do, a list of values that we called principles but they included principles on how we should deal with one another. Unlike most businesses I think that ours really genuinely lived those principles. So there were those in place. Anything more than this I think would have been a little bit contrary to the spirit of the business at the time.

The people in our business used these principles day-to-day. Often I now go into businesses and there are statements of values which are fairly irrelevant and the actual behaviour ...