Sometimes it seems those of us who care about ethics are fighting a losing battle. My colleague, Chris Bauer, reports on some shocking findings in a survey conducted by the well-known accounting firm KPMG:

• Of 459 executives at US companies with revenues above $250 million, 75% had experienced fraud
• The fraud had cost 36% of the companies surveyed at least $1 million
• For those companies experiencing fraud in the area of financial reporting, the average cost was $257,923,000 (other types of fraud had less dollar impact)

I believe the only way we can turn this around is to show businesses that ethical behavior is ultimately profitable–that’s the position I advocated in my book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, and I continue to advocate that position in the Ethics Pledge campaign and elsewhere. The costs of the fraud itself, the hit the company takes when it’s discovered, the environmental, workplace harassment, and other lawsuits that tend to crop up against fraudulent companies, etc. etc. make this a very obvious conclusion. But apparently the business world can’t see it.