It may be fitting to keep officers and directors on a tight leash, and yank on that leash if they fail to be forthcoming about corporate improprieties.
Whether it is accounting fraud, excessive trading risks, a Ponzi scheme or making loans to those who can't pay, many are hurt by corporate improprieties.
But with new accusations of accounting impropriety and corporate misconduct, as well as a continued tumble in stock prices, Republican leaders quickly came up with their own legislation.
"None of this has looked good for Martha Stewart as a person, in an environment where people are very sensitive to any appearance of impropriety by corporate leaders," said Laura Richardson, an analyst for Adams, Harkness & Hill in Boston, who follows the stock.
Such training will become more important as lawyers cope with new rules from the Securities and Exchange Commission on how they must respond to potential improprieties at corporate clients.
In law and corporate governance, the "appearance of impropriety" is a standard measure for ethical breaches.
Corporate corruption cases involving accounting improprieties are particularly labor intensive.
Indeed, in recent years, the announcement of a "corporate internal investigation" into alleged improprieties has become a favorite corporate PR tactic when confronting a high-profile legal mess.
The former minister for communications and information technology, too, is in jail facing charges of financial impropriety, as are five top corporate executives, an influential sports administrator and a few bureaucrats.
These same law enforcement sources investigating insider trading among Wall Street fat cats and other corporate titans are also looking at the alleged improprieties of a major journalist who covers stocks.
