The survey was conducted by the Society for Corporate Compliance and Ethics, and was launched on July 15, 2008 to a target audience composed of members of the Society for Corporate Compliance and Ethics and the Health Care Compliance Association.

This 2008 benchmarking survey of 23 questions pertaining to financial disclosures was answered by 62 respondents. The majority of respondents had hands-on responsibilities for financial disclosure or compliance questionnaires in their organizations. Over 58 different types of organizations were represented from small organizations of less than 200 employees to those with more than 50,000 employees.

Governments at the federal, state, and local level have been practicing financial disclosure for senior officials and key employees for over 30 years. In addition to the government sector, other types of organizations and businesses have in recent years begun using financial disclosure and or the compliance questionnaire to manage conflicts of interest. The compliance questionnaire shares the same purpose as the financial disclosure questionnaire, which is to discover if a key executive or employee has a conflict of interest or has engaged in outside activities, either commercial or civic, that may create a conflict of interest between the employee and that of his or her employing organization.

Organizations manage conflicts of interest by using financial disclosure or compliance questionnaires. Almost one-half of the organizations (47%) use financial disclosure. Slightly over half of the organizations (53%) use compliance questionnaires. Ninety four percent of organizations require employees to either certify that there is no conflict of interest, or notify their employer when there is a conflict of interest.

Download Survey