Former Fortune 500 chief financial officer Aaron Beam told College of Business students on April 13 that there’s only one way to maintain business ethics: Strive to be perfect at them.
“If you set the bar lower than that, you’re on a slippery slope,” Beam said. “What’s an acceptable moderate amount to cheat on your taxes? Zero. What’s an acceptable amount to cook the books? Zero.”
Beam, who gave both a lunch-hour and evening presentation in Austin Hall, learned that lesson the hard way: He served three months in federal prison for his role in inflating earnings reports while CFO of outpatient-care giant HealthSouth. He said he lacked the courage to say no when the company’s CEO told to him to make up numbers so the company could dupe investors and tell Wall Street what it wanted to hear.
Twelve months after failing to say no, a guilt-ridden Beam left the company, and four years later, in 2004, he was one of five former HealthSouth CFOs to plead guilty when the Securities and Exchange Commission accused the company of overstating earnings by $2.5 billion dollars dating to 1999.
Financially ruined by the restitution that was ordered, Beam went to work mowing lawns following his release from prison and now gives presentations such as the ones at Austin Hall to university and corporate groups around the country.
His main messages: Maintain a rigid commitment to the highest personal ethics, and investigate any company you might want to work for to make sure it has a similar commitment regarding its corporate culture.
Raised in Shreveport, La., Beam holds an economics degree from LSU and is the author of two books: “Ethics Playbook: Winning Ethically in Business” and “HealthSouth, the Wagon to Disaster.”
