The Sarbanes-Oxley Act Of 2002

By definition, a CEO is “the highest ranking executive in a company whose main responsibilities include developing and implementing high-level strategies, making major corporate decisions, managing the overall operations and resources of a company, and acting as the main point of communication between the board of directors and the corporate operations” (Dictionary, 2015). The CEO position holds a lot of power and responsibility and, in my opinion, should be ethically accountable to the shareholders and employees of the companies they support. CEOs are also often the face of an organization, and their actions are a direct reflection on the company as a whole. In many ways this causes the masses to be judged by the actions of one person.

Despite the absence of an individual corporate code of ethics or a standardized international code of ethics for CEOs as outlined in the video, there are some controls in place to ensure CEOs act in the best interest of organizations and its shareholders. One such control is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), which “introduced major changes to the regulation of financial practice and corporate governance” (A Guide to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 2006). From a SOX perspective, CEOs and their leadership teams are required to certify the accuracy of financial statements as well as establish internal controls and reporting methods on the adequacy of internal controls (Dictionary,