These days Brewer, author of Confessions of an Enron Executive and CEO of the Integrity Institute, is traveling the world spreading the message that good ethics translates into good business. She says companies can use their IT systems not only to keep their businesses clean, but to help prepare for the future.

COMPUTING CANADA: What do you see as the key trend in terms of how companies are dealing with this issue of compliance?

LYNN BREWER: I have seen a shift from "Let's get Deloitte," or ''Let's get KPMG," or '"Let's get everybody who can help," to the focus now being put on the chief information officer, which is interesting, because so far they have been left in the dark. CFOs and CEOs had been signing on the dotted line to have outside assurances that everything is in place. Now they are turning to the CIO.

But clearly the issue that brought down Enron, was in large part because they did not have the systems in place. Actually, they had fabulous IT systems in place, they just did not have the systems in place that could not be corrupted.

CC: What IT systems were in place at Enron?

LB: They used SAP, but what became the focus of their corruption was an integrated system that they had created. Enron had done some very large trades, and really got caught with their pants down, so to speak, in that they did not have the risk management systems in place to make sure the deals were legitimate.

CC: Was it a case of incompetence combined with corruption?

LB: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. It was not incompetence. It was definitely dishonesty.

CC: How could have this have gone on for so long? Presumably you have must have been looked at by external auditors and who knows who else.

LB: We had GAAP reports done every day. In the first six months of 2000, there were 264 trading violations, and yet not a single trader was fired, even though they exceeded trading limits previously established by the system.

Unfortunately, that's part of the problem. It's interesting you are interviewing me today because the Supreme Court has actually overturned the conviction against Arthur Andersen. It will be interesting to see what the outcome of that is.

But ultimately, the fact of the matter is Arthur Andersen was not doing just our internal audit but also the external audit. They were getting paid US$52 million to look the other way. You had employees throughout the organization getting stock options. Every day Enron stock goes up by one dollar, I make $2,000 in stock options. So if you have enough people getting paid huge sums of money, they will overlook what is going on. Ultimately, you get a lot of people who are willing to bend the system.

CC: Where are most organizations at in terms of having the right systems in place?

LB: The fact of the matter is you have a large majority of companies still using spreadsheets to manage their business and to do things they were not intended to do. They are managing a business rather than intelligently understanding predictively [sic] what the outcome is likely to be. If you know there are trading violations going on, and you don't change the system, you're just allowing it to happen.

CC: Do you think the situation has improved since the days of Enron?

LB: Probably the most frightening statistic is this: Between 2000 and 2001, the year Enron imploded, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the U.S. received about 6,400 whistle-blowing reports among the 10,000 or so publicly traded companies. In 2004, it's 45,000 that come up even if you take out 75 percent because they won't have all the facts or the investigation may not go further.

-- Martin Slofstra