There are exceedingly large numbers of studies that show a direct relationship between ethical governance, trust in the workplace and between the work place and all other stakeholders, and company/stock performance, both near-term and long-term. In fact, many investors and customers now view ethics and governance as significant issues when making investment or purchasing decisions.

There are also studies showing the direct relationship between lack of ethical and meaningful oversight and nearly inevitable organizational/financial meltdown. During the last five years, shareholders, vendors and employees have lost many billions of dollars as some U.S. companies with weaker corporate governance practices have enabled excess spending, inappropriate off-balance sheet financing, special purpose entities, illusionary oversight, deficient disclosure and sometimes outright fraud.

Our Corporate Governance practice provides very significant guidance to senior executives, boards of directors and audit committee members of public companies and companies desiring to become public in areas related to financial structuring and reporting, statutory regulations, leadership necessities, financial statement understanding, and business ethics.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act Of 2002 has received substantial attention in terms of the statutory requirements that it places on organizational leaders for ethical business practices. If you are an executive of a U.S. public organization you must be mindful of and your organization must operate in compliance with Titles II, III and IV of the act. Ease of organizational compliance with the act is in most cases directly proportional to the degree with which the organization has operated ethically and according to pure leadership motives in the past. It should be remembered that the act has been shown to be remarkably simple to comply with in nearly all cases because nearly all of its requirements are crystal clear. Because the need for those requirements is largely self-evident, our clients have found that responding to the act in terms of why its requirements exist is much more beneficial and less time consuming for your organization than responding to the act in terms of what its requirements are. For a copy of the act, Click here.

Many large law firms have chosen to establish elaborate practice areas devoted to analysis, explanation, compliance with the act, and pursuit of loopholes related to the act. The challenge that must actually be dealt with is related to the establishment of an organizational culture and broad executive philosophy within your company that complies not only with Sarbanes-Oxley but also with the rules of engagement established by your investors, customers, markets, competitors and employees. The act is complied with by reading it and responding properly to its clear mandates while understanding that more than 90% of Sarbanes-Oxley is complied with merely by running your company the right way. You have a choice of focusing on the act or focusing on your business and we suggest to our clients that the business is significantly more important than the act. Sarbanes-Oxley provides no competitive advantage whatsoever for your organization. It is how you run your organization that does so. In fact, compliance with the act should be the result of your activities rather than the cause of those activities.

This focused and dramatically less expensive approach displeases some attorneys, but it will keep your organization successful with much lower risk and at lower cost, on a much more timely basis. We have found that a very large percentage of those organizations that are concerned about the act or are having difficulty complying with the act, are those organizations that are attempting to create act workarounds in lieu of simplistically creating a reasonably compliant organization.

Our approach to this topic is based on pragmatism, simplicity and the peaceful elimination of the errors or mistakenly clouded visions that may be occurring or be at risk of occurring within your organization. We provide senior executives and board/audit committee members with easily actionable guidance and training that legitimately improves organizational performance while reducing or eliminating related risk and exposure for executives and the company. We help you ensure that the internal workings of your company reasonably reflect what those inside and outside of your company expect and in most cases, require.

We are not an accounting firm or a law firm, and we have no audit practice. As a result, you can rest assured that we will provide you and your organization with simple solutions that are completely free of conflicts, doublespeak, complications and extended discussions.

In addition to our consultative support in these areas, we provide very useful and practical half-day and two-day programs on these subjects at client locations for board members and executives of those organizations. We also provide full day public seminars on these subjects in major cities throughout the United States. Additionally, we produce specially tailored one and two day programs for individual companies based on their specific needs and challenges. Attorneys, professors, authors, executives, consultants and accountants with very significant experience and reputations in these areas have designed and actually facilitate our programs.

One hundred percent of what you need to know and do, in easily actionable form with no trail of destruction, is available through our Corporate Governance and Business Ethics practice. A very valuable article on this subject entitled "An Experiential Perspective On Business Ethics And Corporate Governance In The United States" is available for your review in the Proven Solutions section of this web site.

Contact us or call us at 480-467-0344 and we would be pleased to provide you with further information about these or other areas where you may need assistance.