Hear that whistle blowing! Establishing an effective complaint-handling process addresses an important mandate of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act: the requirement that audit committees establish procedures for receiving, documenting, and handling complaints related to accounting and auditing matters. The paper outlines the Model Accounting Complaint-Handling (MACH) Process, a step-by-step approach to establishing a corporate whistleblower program. Among the issues examined are:
- Employee confidentiality
- Information disclosure
- Stakeholder needs
- Monitoring and performance metrics
Knock your SOX off- Getting business benefits from 404 compliance explores how SOX activities can be leveraged for business benefits, including:
- Improving the nature of certain controls
- Centralizing operations
- Improving the flow and reliability of information
- Implementing business process improvements
Sustaining SOX Compliance: Moving from chaos to consistency – covers recommendations for companies seeking to make their financial control systems and evaluations sustainable.
These and future CorporateGovernor white papers are devoted to addressing the needs and interests of the corporate governance community—the directors, officers, and executives who are responsible for ensuring that public companies are run in accordance with appropriate laws and regulations.
