When you look at the names below, what is your first reaction?

For most, the common thread is that each has been accused or admitted to cheating in their respective sport. Barry Bonds for using steroids (and don’t tell me he didn’t use them); Bill Belichick for filming the Jets defensive signals; Shoeless Joe and Pete Rose for gambling; Tanya Harding for trying to disable her competition; Ben Johnson for steroid used to sprint faster than any other human being and Rosie Ruiz for only running half a marathon. All of them will forever be associated with scandal first and their accomplishments second.

But sport is not the only place where cheating is running rampant. The financial markets have been and continue to be rocked by financial scandal. We all know about the high profile cases like Bernie Ebbers (Worldcom) and Andrew Fastow (Enron) but a recent university study has shown that from 1978 to 2006, there were 788 Security and Exchange (SEC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) enforcement actions for financial misrepresentation or as the layman would call it, “cooking the books”. In those actions, there were 2,206 individuals identified as being culpable for some or part of the financial fraud. While all the sports figures above had their reputations tarnished, only some of them have suffered financial hardship and if I remember correctly, none served jail time for their initial actions. For financial misrepresentation, the penalties are far more severe. Over 93% were fired or left their jobs with another 31% barred from future employment as an officer of director of any publicly traded company. In addition, 617 of these individuals have been charged with criminal violations; 469 were found guilty and sentenced to an average of 4.3 years in jail and 3 years of probation. Needless to say, their financial position suffered as well. On average, these managers lost $15.3 million in stock value once the scandal was revealed and paid $5.7 million each in SEC fines.

Cheating never comes to good end. Most scandals generally start small, then greed sets in and the rest is history. Is cheating worth it? Even if you don’t get caught, you will always be looking over your shoulder. And sometimes scandals can occur even with the best of intentions. Compared to other industries, hosting is still in its infancy and is just beginning to address the provisions of Sarbanes-Oxley. Who knows what kind of accounting and operational issues will come to the forefront as some of the leaders in the industry enter the public markets?

Around here we foster an environment of honesty and integrity. What are you doing in your company? How do you want your company to be perceived in the marketplace? Are you ready to face the public scrutiny of the SOX generation? Your customers and the markets are watching.

Thanks to my financial brethren at Enron, Worldcom, Barings, BCCI and all the companies currently embroiled in the stock back-dating scandals, I have sit through an ethics seminar every other year to maintain my status as a certified public accountant.

In my position as Chief Financial Officer, ethics and integrity are of paramount importance and as a company, we work hard to hire staff with these characteristics. Keeping that in mind, a survey was taken in 2005 by Deloitte and Touche of American youth between the ages of 13 and 18 in which they were asked the question, “If your boss told you to do something you thought was unethical, would you do it anyway”? An astounding (at least to me) 53% of the kids said they would do what their boss asked them to do.

As a technology company with a work force that gets ever younger as kids become more and more technologically savvy, that is frightening statistic. However, what it points out is the need for us to set the behavioral standards and to train our staff in what those standards are.

What are those standards? For every company those will differ somewhat but a recent survey points out the types of unethical behavior every company faces on a daily basis. In 2005, the American Management Association’s Human Resources Institute asked companies why their employees behaved unethically. The top five reasons:

1. Pressure to meet unrealistic business objectives
2. Desire to further one’s career
3. Desire to protect one’s livelihood
4. Working with a cynical, demoralized environment
5. Ignorance that the act was unethical

We have all faced having to make decisions in light of one or more of those five reasons at some point in our lives. How we have reacted to those situations has helped define each of us as we moved through our careers.

How will you know what the ethical choice is when you are trying to make a decision? Let me leave you with one final quote from Potter Stewart, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice on his definition of ethics:

Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is the right thing to do.

Are you doing the right thing? And are you demonstrating that to your peers and those you lead? The world is watching.