ethics

When businesses do things that harm workers, the environment, or the health and safety of their consumers, we are justifiably outraged. But do the companies deserve all the blame? Not necessarily.

Congressmen, lobbyists, and car salesmen have some of the worst reputations for honesty and ethics, as do business execs, stock brokers and real estate agents. And there's a reason why: The rules of their games are stacked against good behavior.

Earlier this year, Ethisphere published its fifth annual list of the World's Most Ethical Companies. You'll be interested in which ones made the top of the list, but what's more important is how -- and how well they do by doing good.

David Sokol, once considered a likely successor to Warren Buffett as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, resigned this week from Berkshire under a cloud of possible insider trading charges. But these recent ethical lapses are hardly the worst of Sokol's business transgressions.

David Sokol, widely viewed as the heir apparent to famed investor Warren Buffett, abruptly resigned Wednesday. What investors want to know now is who's still in the running to succeed Buffett as CEO. Here are four possibilities.

StopTheChamber, a group critical of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, says it was the target of a planned dirty tricks campaign. The group has filed an ethics complaint against three partners at the Hunton & Williams law firm.

The state Public Integrity Commission fined him more than $62,000 for accepting five free tickets to the 2009 World Series opener at Yankee Stadium. It's the latest chapter in the long and dubious history of politicians getting wooed at sports events.

For the ninth year in a row, nurses topped the list of professions that Americans consider the most ethical, according to a new Gallup poll released Friday. Who do Americans trust least? Car salesman and members of Congress.

Despite all the media fervor over WikiLeaks massive document dump of decades of U.S. diplomatic correspondence, the leaked material hasn't revealed anything new. But while it may not harm national security, the leak could deal a serious blow to mainstream efforts to increase government transparency.

In a scandal that raises troubling questions about journalistic ethics in the Web era, writers for Breakingviews, a media property owned by Thompson Reuters, failed to disclose that they owned shares in companies they wrote about.