Compliance With Sarbanes-Oxley Requires Formal Ethics Training: Are You Doing It?

Abstract

This paper focuses on the business environment post Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). The premise of this paper is that after decades of an eroding of regulations to prevent corporate and personal self-serving behavior, the legislation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) is not enough to prevent unethical behavior. Kohlberg’s moral development theory states that cognitive ethical reasoning becomes more complex as one matures and gains cognitive processes. This theory assumes anyone with lower-order ethical reasoning is not able to process higher-order ethical reasoning. The theory is another indication that high ethical standards exhibited today do not guarantee the same standards tomorrow. Ethics theories and Rest’s four-component model is briefly discussed. This paper concludes with an ethical business training model which can serve as a guideline for accessing and improving individual organizational ethics standards of ethical behavior.