Question

Does the financial manager have a greater responsibility or a lesser responsibility for maintaining ethical corporate governance? Why or why not? What is or will be your approach to ethical corporate governance now or in the future?

Answer 1

Financial manager has greater responsibility for maintaining ethical corporate governance. The finance manager has the primary goal of maximizing the profits of the shareholders. There are many ways of achieving this goal. It can be done my ethical means or unethical means. A manager is a leader of the company and the employees of the company look up to him. The behavior of the manager will be emulated by the other employees of the company. If the financial manager of the company will be ethical then the other employees of company will also be ethical and vice versa. The finance manager should be very carefyl about the example that he is setting for others. Most of the scams and money laundering cases in the past have been due to the greed and dishonesty of the finance managers. There have been several instances where the finance managers of different companies have forged documents and manipulated the financial statements of the company. Such practices help to hide the truth for the short term. In the long run, the truth with finally come out and the responsible persons will be punished. However, such unethical behavior is undesirable. Thus, the corporate governance policies of the company should be strong and they should be implemented properly. They should focus on the transparency of the financial transactions and the maintanence of proper records for each transaction. The audits conducted for the business should be impartial and any loophole that exists in the rules must be modified such that there is no scope for any unethical activity.