Accountability Archives - Page 7 of 8

Buckner

In Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, the Boston Red Sox were one strike from winning their first championship since 1918. In the tenth inning the New York Mets tied it. Mookie Wilson hit a slow ground ball toward first base. Vin Scully called it on television: “Little roller up along first, behind the bag. It gets through Buckner.” The Mets won the game, and two days later the Series.

For years, Boston blamed first baseman Bill Buckner for the loss. He received death threats and moved his family to Idaho. In 2008 he came back to Fenway Park to throw out the first pitch at the home opener. The crowd gave him a two-minute ovation. A Boston newspaper headline read “All Is Forgiven.”

Heart Surgeons by Name

New York State requires every cardiac surgeon to report the results of bypass operations. In late 1991, after a lawsuit by the newspaper Newsday under the state’s Freedom of Information Law, the state released death rates for individual surgeons by name, adjusted for how sick the patients were.

Surgeons responded. In a survey published in 1999, a majority of the New York heart surgeons surveyed said they had refused to operate on at least one high-risk patient. Accounts of the survey give the share as 62% or 67%. In a survey published in 2005, 79% of interventional cardiologists in New York said the report cards influenced whether they offered angioplasty to high-risk patients.

The No-Fault Clawback

On October 26, 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted Rule 10D-1. It carries out Section 954 of the Dodd-Frank Act. Every listed company must have a policy to take back incentive pay, such as cash bonuses and stock awards tied to financial results, from its executive officers when it has to restate its financial results.

The rule reaches back three years and covers former executives as well as current ones. Fault does not matter. Recovery “is required regardless of whether the executive officer engaged in any misconduct.”

The Engagement Partner’s Name

An audit of an American public company is signed by the audit firm. Since 2017, the public can also learn the name of the one partner who led it. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board adopted the rule in December 2015. For audit reports issued on or after January 31, 2017, the firm must file a Form AP that gives “the name of the engagement partner.”

The board said the rule was “intended to provide increased transparency and accountability for key participants in issuer audits.”

Blindsided

The American word for being harmed by information you were not given, borrowed from football, where the hit comes from the side the player cannot see. The word places no fault on the person hit. All of it falls on whoever saw what was coming and said nothing.

No surprises

Stated openly by American managers as a standing instruction: I don’t like surprises, tell me early, bad news does not improve with age. The instruction concedes that the news may be bad, and asks for it anyway. What is being forbidden is not the problem but the concealment.

The buck stops here

Truman kept a sign on his desk in the Oval Office reading exactly that, and used the phrase repeatedly to describe the presidency. The buck is passed, in American usage, from one person to another. The sign announces where the passing ends — at a named individual, in a specific room.