Business Week has a review of a book written by Barbara Ley Toffler who used to work for Arthur Andersen. That wouldn't normal raise much interest from me as books by business big wigs are usually a waste of trees but this one caught my eye because she was...wait for it...head of the Ethics Consulting Unit. As job titles go it redefines the word 'oxymoron'. It seems whilst Andersens was willing to sell so called 'essential' programmes to customers to forgot it might need some of these 'essentials' themselves. The culture of Andersens was devoted to driving up revenues at the exclusion, and this is the important bit, of anything else. "Billing Our Brains Out" she calls it. I think we can safely say Andersens aren't the only consultancy guilty of this. The question of ethics has got me thinking. Are ethics and business compatable or mutually exclusive? Whatever answer you come to the situation with Andersens should get us all thinking.