To those responsible for running businesses, the events of the past year and a half have been sobering−beginning with the implosion of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, continuing with the unprecedented global financial meltdown and culminating recently in the convictions of two of the most visible faces of this period−Bernard Madoff, guilty of a US$65 billion Ponzi scheme and sentenced to 150 years in jail, and Marc Dreier, guilty of a US$400 million fraud and sentenced to 20 years in jail.

After almost a decade since the collapse of Enron and rapid-fire succession of corporate scandals−Parmalat, WorldCom, Siemens, Satyam, and many others−one may have expected the concomitant rise and success of corporate integrity programs. The growth in corporate integrity and responsibility programs is reflected in the proliferation of related professional associations, third-party service providers, and expanded government enforcement activities. Despite what would seem lack of success given the scale of recent scandals, the reality is that businesses have been busier than ever implementing ethics, compliance, and corporate responsibility programs. Time is needed, however, for the seeds of these relatively young programs to develop into more permanent structures. Thus, despite the avalanche of bad news, it is possible to say that the task of building integrity into business proceeds apace.

While building business integrity structures will take time, there is an immediate, relatively simple, and highly effective internal step that chief executive officers (CEOs), and their boards can take now: create an executive role in charge of overseeing corporate compliance, ethics, governance and/or corporate responsibility (the “Business Integrity Executive” or “BIE”). By placing a qualified BIE into such a role, corporate executive teams and boards will begin to embed a practical business “conscience” into the inner workings or DNA of their business for the long haul.

This article - including five action items that CEOs and boards should take to elevate a qualified person to the important new role of BIE - is available at Corporate Compliance Insights.