In a detailed questionnaire sent to 5,000 directors of the top 4,000 publicly traded companies, Deloitte & Touche determined that 83 percent of the firms responding have established formal codes of ethics and conduct, but 25 percent are not actively monitoring compliance.

Further slippage can be seen in the allocation of resources to ethics activities. When asked if their company had an ethics officer (either full- or part-time), only 55 percent answered in the affirmative. However, positive data also emerged from the survey, with progress being made on several fronts. For example, more than 95 percent of companies said their code of ethics applied to every member of their organization, including senior management and board members.

According to the survey, several issues are impacting the implementation and sustainability of successful ethics and compliance programs. For instance, slightly more than half of the respondents address ethics and compliance issues with their board only when failure happens. At that point, the board is forced to react to failures rather than mitigate or prevent them, said Deloitte. 

In addition, less than 35 percent of the companies surveyed report that an outside third party manages their reporting mechanism -- and if a third party does not manage whistleblower help lines, companies may encounter challenges with the anonymity requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley. Deloitte said that for this reason it expects in-house managed help lines to become a thing of the past.    

Survey respondents outlined which activities they plan to implement for their ethics program:

A key challenge facing U.S. businesses are the tight timetables and multiple obligations defined by Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404, which requires management to file an internal control assessment with its annual report. It also requires the auditor to audit and issue an opinion of management's assessment.

"We believe that as deadlines pass and new internal control and corporate governance measures become integrated into the everyday activities of companies, ethics and compliance programs will assume their rightful prominence. Investors and regulators will accept nothing less," said Sherrie McAvoy, national director of corporate compliance and ethics consulting at Deloitte.

The ethics and compliance survey (PDF) was jointly conducted by Deloitte and Corporate Board Member magazine and had a response rate of 7.5 percent, with 373 questionnaires returned.