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In a new Marist Poll commissioned by the Knights of Columbus, 76% of Americans and 58% of corporate executives graded corporate ethics a failing score of D or worse. It seems that Americans believe that personal financial gain and career advancement is more of a motivator for corporate decisions than concern for the public good or the welfare of employees, shareholders, and customers. No less than the Chairman of the Financial Services Authority (“FSA”) in the United Kingdom, Lord Turner allegedly accused Britain’s current Prime Minister, Gordon Brown of “political pressure” to apply a light touch to regulatory oversight leading to the collapse of that ...

No doubt, there will be many articles and commentary on the both the cause and the cure of the current financial crisis. These articles will explore the root cause from many angles and take the perspective of the author’s view based on their insights and participation in the solutions applied. The purpose of this article is to take a step back and look at the current financial problems as a physician would a patient to diagnose the events as symptoms that led to the eventual financial health failures. What did the patient present as possible leading indicators to the catastrophic event? First, the title, “Conflicts of Interests”, is a play on words. ...

If you spend any time eavesdropping on your CIO’s conversations these days,you’re likely to hear him or her talk about “virtualization.” As technology goes, virtualization is a nifty idea: software programs out on the Internet somewhere serving the same function as hardware typically housed in your company’s data center. It travels under multiple names—cloud computing, software-as-a-service, or utility computing, to name a few—but essentially the idea is to cut costs and improve data management by letting a vendor handle the maintenance. We can leave CIOs to separate the hype from the real value in cloud computing, and that will take some time. Compliance ...