At the risk of drumming ourselves out of the corporate governance fraternity, we have a message to our brethren: We, as a species and as individuals, make mistakes. Creating accountability doesn’t negate human fallibility.
That seems obvious. Yet we increasingly hear poor governance being cited as the reason for virtually every bad corporate outcome. The most recent example is the credit meltdown in the financial sector. The cry we’ve heard repeatedly is, “Where was the board?” as if given perfect information and an involved and courageous board, the credit crisis would never have happened. Somehow, we doubt that; even perfect ...