Movie critic Roger Ebert, in his review of The Smartest Guys in the Room, the scathing Oscar-nominated documentary about the collapse of Enron, pulls even fewer punches than the film itself. “The crisis, made possible because of deregulation engineered by Enron`s lobbyists, is still being blamed on ‘too much regulation`,” he says. “If there was ever a corporation that needed more regulation, that corporation was Enron.”

It is difficult to underestimate the impact that the Enron scandal has had on corporate governance, not just in the US, but also around the world. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, passed in the wake of general fury over Enron, was designed to prevent the kind of ongoing rampant fraud that it made famous. But, like any regulation, it has imposed costs on the day-to-day aspects of doing business. Internal controls, in particular, are under constant scrutiny for accuracy, lest the CEO and CFO have to face the public humiliation of a trial and possible fines or jail time. The number of accounting restatements has boomed as a result.

Sarbanes-Oxley and other governance legislation have changed at least some attitudes locally, says a senior Accenture executive.