Ethics in financial reporting and the corporate communication professional

Much has been written lately concerning the failure of several major corporations to report their financial statuses accurately. Enron, Global Crossing, IBM and others have failed to provide accurate information to their investors and to provide full disclosure of liabilities that would impact the valuation. While there has been significant discussion about the roles of both internal and external auditing in these cases of financial misrepresentation, little has been said about the role of the corporate communication professional. Does an ethical standard exist for the corporate communicator in the preparation of financial reporting documents and speeches? Has any study been undertaken to evaluate ethics in such a situation? What is being taught and what literature is available relating to ethics and the corporate communication professional? These are some of the questions I seek to answer in this paper. The basis of my paper is a literature search seeking information on what has been written, what studies have been done or how ethics is being taught in our colleges and universities to the corporate communication major.