In the wake of the far-reaching financial and societal effects of the dramatic corporate ethical collapses at Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Tyco, Arthur Andersen, Waste Management, and others, ethical business conduct has never received so much attention. Because of these and other much publicized corporate ethical meltdowns, Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and our national stock exchanges now require that all publicly traded companies adopt and implement a corporate code of conduct. Prior laws, such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines of 1991 either require or make it legally beneficial for companies to adopt a corporate code of ethical conduct. Of course, companies in various government regulated industries, such as banks, broker dealers, healthcare firms, investment advisors, and investment companies, and those that do business with the federal or state governments, have long been legally required to implement corporate codes of ethical conduct.

Effective adoption and implementation of your company's corporate code of conduct is critical to positively affecting the day to day legal and ethical behavior of your company's employees. Unfortunately, many companies adopt a written code of corporate conduct that only collects dust on their human resource manager's bookshelf. In these instances, more often than not, the company's code seems to be taken from the shelf, dusted off, and read only when the company is trying to react to an employee's inevitable lapse of legal or ethical conduct. Obviously, this is not an effective way to have a positive impact on the behavior of your company's employees and prevent legal and ethical violations from occurring in the first place.

Your company's code of ethical conduct will provide little, if any, tangible business benefits or effective legal protection to your company if it is not aggressively and consistently enforced and reinforced. Look no further than to Enron for an example. Enron had a wonderful written code of conduct (see Appendix). Obviously, however, it was neither followed nor enforced by Enron's senior management (Sherron Watkins excluded). If your company does not live your code, it won't be effective.

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Click on bar to show or hide details For Arizona State Bar Course No: ETH-08-0002 Credits: 1.50 Method:  Self Study Categories:  Ethics For Colorado Supreme Court Course No: CLECLU-CODE Credits: 2.00 Method:  Self Study Course Expiration:  10/30/2011  NOTE: The course must be completed by the expiration date to receive credit Categories:  Ethics General For New York State Court Course No: ETH-08-0002 Credits: 1.50 Approval Code:  Approved Jurisdiction Method:  Nontraditional Format (Online) Categories:  Ethics For Florida Bar Course No: 9777 9 Credits: 2.00 Method:  Interactive Online Course Expiration:  6/1/2011  NOTE: The course must be completed by the expiration date to receive credit Categories:  General For Oregon State Bar Course No: 4751*15 Credits: 1.50 Method:  Interactive Online Course Expiration:  11/15/2012  NOTE: The course must be completed by the expiration date to receive credit Categories:  General For Texas State Bar Course No: 901190321 Credits: 1.50 Method:  Participatory Course Expiration:  10/31/2010  NOTE: The course must be completed by the expiration date to receive credit Categories:  Ethics (1.5 credits) For Indiana State Bar Association Course No: 0128162 Credits: 1.50 Method:  Participatory Course Expiration:  12/31/2010  NOTE: The course must be completed by the expiration date to receive credit Categories:  Ethics General

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