SOX birthday reflections

SOX birthday reflections: impacts and extent to which companies have moved beyond treating compliance as an end goal.

Extract from source article at Business Finance Magazine:

“Improved controls are not by themselves an end goal,” notes Mark Plichta, a partner in the corporate governance practice of law firm Foley & Lardner (and a CPA).

As we celebrate the 10th birthday (or did at the end of July … or, more likely, didn’t at all) of Sarbanes-Oxley, one of my wishes for finance, risk and compliance professionals is to keep Plichta’s point in mind during the next decade.

Aside from all of its plusses and minuses, Sarbanes-Oxley represents a set of business regulations that gave rise to a compliance industry. (No matter how vehemently SOX critics argue that the rules hampered business, SOX helps boost the bottom line of many, many software and services companies.) Compliance is not a productive end goal; it’s a necessity, an ongoing exercise designed to enable much more productive goals, such as investor confidence and risk-taking.

More … http://businessfinancemag.com/article/risk-chat-sox-birthday-reflections-0814