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Company secretary seen as most ethical occupation in corporate sector
New findings from the Governance Institute of Australia show that company secretaries are perceived to be the most ethical in a corporation – and by a fair margin, too.
Jerome Doraisamy
The Ethics Index 2019, released yesterday, quantifies the perceptions of adult Australians of the overall importance of ethics and what the actual level of ethical behaviour is within Australian society, examining the various sectors, organisations, occupations, issues and influences across the nation.
Just 21 per cent see company secretaries as unethical (15 per cent said “somewhat unethical” and 6 per cent said “very unethical”), resulting in a net ethical score of 20 – up from 18 last year.
Directors of foreign companies operating in Australia had the lowest net ethical score of those in the corporate sector, with -21. Just one-quarter (24 per cent) perceived said directors to be ethical, while almost half (45 per cent) see them as unethical.
This marked a slight drop from 2018, at which time their net ethical score was -19.
Elsewhere, directors of Australian companies had a net ethical score of five, with just over one-third (35 per cent) perceiving them as ethical and 30 per cent seeing them as unethical. CEOs, CFOs and managing directors all just remained in the black, with net ethical scores of 2 and perceived ethical and unethical scores of 35 per cent and 33 per cent respectively.
Chairmans and senior executives were, on balance, just considered to be more unethical than ethical. The former are seen as being ethical by 32 per cent of respondents and unethical by 33 per cent, while the latter are perceived to be ethical by 31 per cent of Australians and unethical by 35 per cent.
The Ethics Index also revealed that almost two in five Australians think lawyers are unethical.
Twenty-seven per cent of respondents perceive lawyers to be “somewhat ethical” and just 9 per cent see them as being “very ethical”, for a net ethical score of 36, Governance Institute wrote, and 23 per cent of Australians see lawyers as being “somewhat unethical” and 15 per cent perceive them as “very unethical”, for a net unethical score of 38, resulting in a net ethics score of -2.
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Jerome Doraisamy
Jerome Doraisamy is the editor of Lawyers Weekly. A former lawyer, he has worked at Momentum Media as a journalist on Lawyers Weekly since February 2018, and has served as editor since March 2022. He is also the host of all five shows under The Lawyers Weekly Podcast Network, and has overseen the brand's audio medium growth from 4,000 downloads per month to over 60,000 downloads per month, making The Lawyers Weekly Show the most popular industry-specific podcast in Australia. Jerome is also the author of The Wellness Doctrines book series, an admitted solicitor in NSW, and a board director of Minds Count.
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