[quote=davelj]That the CFA Institute – as an ORGANIZATION – professes to care about ethics should come as no surprise. Much as the American Institute of CPAs also professes to care about ethics, despite the clear conflicts that many CPAs face and often don’t handle particularly well. (Throw the American Bar Association vis-a-vis lawyers in there as well. I could go on.)
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I don’t know about the CFA Institute, but the American Bar Association is a voluntary group that is primarily educational in nature. It has no ability to enforce anything. Attorneys take state bar exams; professional ethics inquiries are handled by an office of the state (may or may not be the state bar association, depending on whether it’s an integrated bar). In any event, these organizations take ethics charges VERY SERIOUSLY, but they only investigate issues that are brought to their attention. So although there are lots of crooked lawyers out there, it is not the result of inattention by their bar associations (or equivalent). It’s the result of people not reporting problems (frequently because the clients who know about the transgressions aren’t squeaky clean either).
