A few months ago I was asked to contribute to the 20th anniversary edition of the quarterly best practices newsletter ethikos. One of the questions they asked was “What have been the most significant disappointments in the business ethics movement during [the last twenty years]?

One of the disappointments I wrote about was the overemphasis that has been given to the Organizational Sentencing Guidelines. It turns out my comments surprised some of my colleagues since many of them have known me primarily through my work with the Sentencing Commission. So maybe a clarification is in order.

On the one hand, it’s undeniable that in 1991 when they were first approved, the Organizational Guidelines gave the business ethics movement a structure, impetus, a common language and a common set of issues. It’s no coincidence that the ethics officer community exploded in both size and energy immediately after 1991.

Similarly, since the 2004 revisions, we’ve seen a huge increase in the number of conferences and forums devoted to culture, integration of ethics and HR practices, board training, and tone at the top – all topics that were added to the Guidelines in 2004. It’s clear that the Guidelines continue to be extremely influential in setting our agendas.

But therein lies the problem. Our focus on the Guidelines has advanced a best practice model and a specific set of issues but at the same time it has led to an overly narrow view of what constitutes business ethics.

As a community we have too often excluded broader marketplace and strategic issues which don’t fit neatly into the Guideline’s scheme of things. Even today, and in spite of their critical importance, executive compensation, marketing and advertising practices and human rights generally fall outside most ethics and compliance officers’ responsibilities. I think this narrowing of our concept of business ethics can be directly traced to the dominance of the Guideline model.

For 2008, we have included sessions at the Conference Board’s Ethics and Compliance Conference which attempt to address some of these broader issues. I’m interested in your opinion. What do you think? Should topics like executive compensation and marketing practices be addressed by ethics and compliance officers? Do you already do so or have you considered the possibility and rejected it?