Whether you are a meeting planner with a public or private company, you should know how the best practices of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) apply to your company, and how they may affect specific activities in your department. Meeting planners in today's environment must understand that SOX is the gold standard for corporate accountability and should take proactive steps in contributing to overall compliance within their company.

In June of 2006, Jon Wollenhaupt, Vice President of Excel Meetings and Events and Marketing Committee Co-Chair for Meeting Professionals International Northern California Chapter (MPINCC), interviewed SOX expert Peggy Jackson, DPA, CPCU, for Perspective Magazine - a publication of MPINCC. Dr. Jackson is an author, consultant, and nationally recognized lecturer on risk management, business continuity planning, and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. Dr. Jackson has co-authored five books on risk management and has recently completed her sixth book, Sarbanes-Oxley for Nonprofits. The interview was published in the August 2006 edition of Perspective and is presented here in its entirety.

Perspective: What are the most prevalent myths surrounding SOX?

Dr. Jackson: Myth #1: SOX is something you throw money at and it will go away. Reality: Spending a lot of money on consultants - essentially give SOX lip service, is not the same as changing your business practices.

Myth #2: This is just a fad -- it will eventually go away. Reality: Shareholder activism will not go away. Enron was the beginning of the end of the corporate board where you got patted on the head, took your stipend, and didn't have to do anything.

Myth #3: It costs private companies too much to comply with SOX and you really don't get any return. Reality: The corporate behavior that SOX compliance enforces is the ethical behavior that should have been practiced before SOX.

Perspective: What sections of the SOX Act most readily apply to the activities of private meeting planning companies?

Dr. Jackson: All privately held firms must be concerned with compliance regarding two articles of SOX. The first is whistle blower protection. This is more than having a policy. Everybody in the company should know there is a whistler blower protection policy, and everyone should know how to make a confidential report. This should be good news for companies because it puts in place a system that empowers people to act if they witness wrongdoing. It is important that acts of malfeasance or unethical behavior are brought to the attention of top management. Most whistler blowers are fired or harassed by managers who are perpetrating the misconduct. Because of this, awareness of misconduct often becomes isolated within the company. A good whistle blower protection policy can save the company from some very difficult situations.

1) The company must have a system in place whereby important documents such as legal papers and emails that solidify business contracts have to be stored in an easily retrievable location. With a well-conceived document protection policy in place, everyone knows where to find certain documents. Saving important materials is an important goal for the company. 2) If the company is under investigation or in the midst of legal proceedings, destroying documents is prohibited.

Perspectives: What types of meetings have the most potential to raise SOX issues?

Dr. Jackson: Board of directors meetings. Meeting planners should be very conscious about the handling of sensitive documents when managing a board meeting. Planners should ask companies to set guidelines for handling sensitive materials that do not relate to the planner's job function. Such materials should only be handled by those who are authorized to review them. In today's environment corporate meeting planners should be careful to avoid handling sensitive materials that do not relate to immediate job function.

The handling of sensitive material brings up another practical issue: third-party planners should never put PowerPoint presentations that contain financial information or other proprietary data on personal or company laptops. Consider the what-ifs that could arise from this: you are accused of giving sensitive proprietary information to a competitor; your laptop is lost or stolen and sensitive financial information becomes public and damages the image or reputation of your client; or the information is newsworthy and ends up in the hands of the media. In any of these cases, your career as a meeting planner could be over.

Meeting planners should also be aware if their names appear on a list of attendees for a board meeting. They could conceivably be called in to testify about what they may have heard during that meeting if their company or their client's company comes under investigation.

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