… you opened the morning paper and discovered there were no ethics scandals in the news? No stories about cheating, lying, broken promises, bad faith excuses; no individual fudged the numbers, misled or deceived a co-worker, family member or friend? At the end of a recent talk, one person confided, “With all the ethics scandals going on, your talk could...

Fast-talking, mob-saving New York Lawyer Murray Richman famously said, “When the word is in your mouth, you are the master. When the word is out of your mouth, you are the slave.” Anyone who reads my commentaries with any regularity knows that I am a stickler for the facts. The facts played an important part in my research for my last...

Ahh, New York’s Columbia University… where the walls are ivy, the shirts are Ralph Lauren and the pedigree (alumni) includes five Founding Fathers, nine Supreme Court Justices, twenty-nine heads of state and three U.S. Presidents. It’s also where the Pulitzer Prize acknowledging excellence in journalism is administered each year. But wait, what’s this? As The New York Times reported (Dec. 3, 2006)...

The defense always seems the same. Enron’s Jeff Skilling: “I didn’t get the memo… notes… e-mails,” “I do not recall.” BP CEO Tony Hayward reacting to the worst oil spill in U.S. history: It’s “relatively tiny” compared to the “very big ocean.” Robert Murdoch tweeted: “No excuses for phone hacking. No argument. No excuses either for copyright stealing, but plenty of ignorant...