Will Whistleblowers Still Come Forward? A new SEC rule interpretation threatens to weaken the incentive for external whistleblowers to come forward with details about potential corporate fraud. The clarification states that a whistleblower’s tip has to offer insight “beyond what would be reasonably apparent” to the agency from publicly available... Read more →

Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, Has Been Interviewed by Multi-Media Outlets For His Views on the Ethics of Politicians Who Say One Thing to the Public About Safe-distancing during the Pandemic But Don't Follow Their Own Advice. Steve Mintz was interviewed last week by KTVU FOX News in S.F. about... Read more →

Fraud: Behavioral Attributes and Detection No one can deny that fraud is increasing in organizations. Most recently, there have been multiple disclosures of fraud in the government's loan program that is designed to help small businesses navigate through the COVID-19 pandemic. Individuals who are engaged in occupational fraud schemes often... Read more →

The Ethical Costs of Deception in the Workplace Introduction Fraud can be defined as a deliberate misrepresentation to gain an advantage over another party. If you were to apply for a home mortgage loan and include a source of income as part of your earnings but it doesn’t exist, you... Read more →

Trust and Verify Artificial Intelligence systems can obscure the data in a way that creates biased information depending on the human values of those who enter the data from its source. For example, an algorithm developed from mortgage loan data might include a variable for the expectation of homeowners’ repayment... Read more →

Actions Constitute an Act Discreditable to the Profession On May 18, 2020, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced settled charges against three former KPMG LLP audit partners for improperly sharing answers to internal training exams. The exams were administered to determine whether its audit professionals understood certain accounting and... Read more →

Tone at the Top Defines Ethical Culture What would you do if you discovered that a superior was engaged in inappropriate conduct? Beyond matters that deal with sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination that should be reported to the Human Resources Department, employees sometimes uncover fraudulent financial practices and... Read more →

The Search For a Purpose-Driven Corporation Last week I blogged about the social responsibilities of corporations and what their purpose should be. Today, I look at those obligations from the point of view of millennials. But first, here’s a brief summary of last week’s blog. Social Responsibilities of Business The... Read more →

Should a Company (or person) Be Defined By Their Worst Act? Every time I walk into the local branch of Wells Fargo Bank I wonder whether I should change banks simply because of the massive fraud committed by Wells Fargo that was made public in 2016. I thought about last... Read more →

Product Safety Scandals Keep On Coming How can we explain the extent of recent corporate wrongdoing that raises the question: Where were the top officials? Just in the past few years we learned of fictitious accounts set up for customers at Wells Fargo and adding costs to the products sold... Read more →