I don't think belonging to a professional organization matters, by itself. Many of the best doctors do not belong to the AMA, and that affiliation is not listed in, for examople, the Washington DC Physicians Directory. Much more important is board certification, referrals from other doctors and patients, and personal reputation. In consulting, imply beloging to the iMC matters little. Having the CMC matters more, and that's why IMC should make it easier for deserving consultants to obtain this certification.

I agree that the CMC seems to be of more interest than IMC membership to my clients.

Yes, I reference the code of ethics and the certification in the signature of all of my emails, whether they are business related or to church friends; it is part of my identity.

The thing that struck me about the NYT article is the assertion that it will take decades to unravel the causes of the 2008 meltdown. I find that assertion preposterous. The fundamental cause of the meltdown was an over-valued real estate market pumped to excess by misguided if not fraudulent valuations from appraisers and non-collateralized loans made possible by the political decision to pump the home ownership percentages to record levels. There were other issues, to be sure, but the house of cards collapsed when financial institutions started returning individual loans in the portfolios purchased from mortgage companies for a reason allowed in the purchase contracts between Wall Street and the mortgage houses, under-collateralized individual loans. When mortgage companies and local banks started running short of cash, the house of cards simply collapsed. Other recessions may have been part of a normal cycle, but not this one. In SQC terms, this one had an assignable cause that nobody wants to discuss because of the political implications for somebody.

I wrote a blog post on this very subject last week. My theory is that if someone is accountable to a "written" code of ethics, they will be less likely to stray. www.lambrechtcmc.wordpress.com Also, when was the last time a CMC was disciplined for not abiding by the code? Without that piece of data, are CMC's really any better than the attorneys mentioned in the NYT article?

It has been a few years since a CMC was disciplined for an ethics violation. However, an ethics violation conviction rate is a poor measure of ethical conduct. Ideally, no one would violate the Code of Ethics and hence no allegations of misconduct would be brought. As part of the new Ethics Committee activities, we are more vigorously promoting the awareness of the Code (thank you David Norman) and encouraging more reporting, as appropriate. Early response is interesting - a lot of comments about nonmembers and larger firms, which IMC has not authority to adjudicate, and a few about IMC members, cases for which are under way or have been dispensed with.