I want my D&B!'.

• Position: Editor's Note

IF MORE BOARD MEMBERS had been reading their personal subscriptions to DIRECTORS & BOARDS, we wouldn't have had an Enron, or an Adeiphia, or a WoridGom.

How is that for an audacious statement? Pretty bold, for sure. Do I believe it? Wholeheartedly.

Just look at a handful of the articles that we published in the two-year period preceding the fall 2001 meltdown of Enron (a period of time that could rightfully be considered the gestation phase of the accounting gimmickry that would roil boardrooms and markets this year):

* "Preventing and Detecting Financial Statement Fraud" [Summer 1998], a primer par excellence.

* "Audit Committee: Ten Best Practices" [Summer 1998], which presciently counselled: "Board members should encourage open, candid communication with all participants. This is done by showing interest, asking penetrating questions, and requiring crisp, focused, and clear answers.

* "Seven Myths about Stock Options" [Summer 1999], which included among the common misconceptions: "Stock options make managers think like stockholders."

* "How To Avoid Firing Your CEO" [Fall 1999], which included the exclusive presentation in a business publication of the authors' determinative Early Warning Signs of Trouble with a CEO(c).

* "Ten Steps To Avoiding a Restatement" [Winter 2000]. How's this for one of the steps: "Make sure that management manages the business, not the earnings."

* "It's Time To Improve Corporate Governance" [Winter 2001], in which the author, Bill George, then-CEO of Medtronic Inc., pounded the table, warning of impending crises: "Weak boards let their CEOs dominate them, to the detriment of...