It has an almost medieval feel to it; the witch-hunt is truly on. Who will be next to fall as the arc light of integrity is shone across the landscape of many companies' results reporting during the bull market of the last few years. Fingers are pointing in many directions, primarily towards certain CEO's and their teams, who off the back of remarkable works of fiction have themselves become gazzilionaires. The SEC et al are working to guard against future abuses but it appears that little is being done to address the nature of decisions on an individual level that has created the recent debacles.

To be sure there existed for many of these executives a powerful 'cocktail of compromise' that may have shaped the nature of the decisions they took. What turns normally decent people into leaders who will apparently lie about results and then destroy the pensions of thousands for the sake of personal gain? Let's consider a few possibilities.

There is the pressure of time. The average tenure of a current CEO is about 3 years and so time is limited for the individual to deliver the increased shareholder value that is expected. Under such time pressure the temptation to cut corners and hide the financial reality must be great. For many, their 'options package' was a one shot, short-term deal with a very clear message that they must deliver or miss this one-off windfall opportunity.

There is the pressure of personal sustainability. This manifests in two ways. First there are the ridiculous hours worked by some of these executives that left them permanently fatigued and thus unable to think with the clarity needed for some of these big decisions. As we all know, it is easy to give in to the path of least resistance of compromise when beyond our physical, mental and emotional capacity. Secondly, some may have committed to a financial lifestyle that was unsustainable without the big options pay out. They mortgaged themselves up to the eyeballs or created other debts in expectation of a day that unless they hit the corporate numbers, would never come.

There is the pressure of isolation. The further up the food chain you go, the lonelier it gets. The more senior, the less likely that others will look you in the eye to ask the tough questions and call you to account. This lack of relational accountability, founded upon a clear set of articulated values of 'the way we do things round here', makes the best of us vulnerable to compromise when the pressure is on.

Finally there was obviously just 'bad' old-fashioned greed as Mr Greenspan outlined for us the other week. As the film 'Wall Street' showed us, the deeply spiritual nature of wealth has a power that can so easily corrupt.

Despite the above it is difficult to have any sympathy for these individuals who remain extremely wealthy, even though their reputations may be in tatters. All of the above goes with the territory of senior leadership and as the old saying goes 'If it is too hot in the kitchen - get out' (without the mega-bucks). Yet the question does remain on a personal level as to how we avoid countless repetitions of the Enron/WorldCom nightmares of recent days.

Well, as one of the senior board members of Enron stated during the early congressional hearings 'You can't stop this happening again because you can't legislate for integrity', and he's right. You can however create a different leadership culture that makes it far less likely.

Shareholder boards must take a long view and recruit a CEO with a degree of longevity in mind; this must be one of the lessons we learn from this recent boom to bust market. Long-term sustainable growth has to be better than the recent roller coaster nightmare.

Leaders themselves must create a level of personal sustainability both physically and financially that enables them to function at a very high level of performance over the long haul. Most executives tend to push themselves too hard mentally and emotionally but not hard enough physically. Change will require self-mastery of diary and diet, credit card and consumer drive.

Leaders must set up for themselves frameworks of personal accountability, giving strong people permission to eyeball the boss. John Donne was right 'No man is an island.' We all need support and we all need people to protect us from ourselves in our weak or insecure moments.

Finally, all of us who lead must 'up the bar' on what should be expected of us in terms of our 'ethical' leadership. Like it or not, the role of a leader is an incredibly moral one. Trust is the primary glue for effective working relationships, without it who can believe a word that we say? Hence it is up to the leaders to set the bar by articulating a very clear set of values and working principles that they expect to be measured by and call others to do the same.

Will these things definitely 'Enron Proof' your company? Absolutely not. Will it make such behaviour far less likely? Probably. In these very jittery economic days, when trust in leadership is at an all time low, they can't do anything but help.

Phil Wall
CEO