Canadian business leaders agree that corporate ethics initiatives such as CIBC’s new “ethics hotline” will help improve the ethics of businesses but there is a division of opinion about whether such actions are too insufficient or excessive.

The panel believes that companies should work energetically against all forms of unethical conduct including tied selling while they rank fraudulent accounting practices and fraud by executives as the top-two issues deserving attention.

Providing a secure forum to report unethical behaviour and ethics training for both management and employees are the most common initiatives taken by businesses themselves to ensure ethical business behaviour.

These are the principal findings from this week’s web survey, conducted on behalf of the National Post under sponsorship of BDO Dunwoody and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

View / Download complete poll in PDF