[Image description: Photo of a Wall St. street sign, with the text, “Half of financial industry CEOs say they either have firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing or believe financial professionals may need to engage in illegal/unethical conduct to succeed.”]

This isn’t actually an accurate representation of the survey’s findings. First, the people surveyed were not only CEOs but “senior individuals within the financial sector, including, but not limited to, Fund Managers, Bankers, Analysts and Asset managers.” Second, what the survey actually found was that

• 26% of respondents indicated that they had observed or had firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace, and
• 24% of respondents believed that financial services professionals may need to engage in unethical or illegal conduct in order to be successful.

There’s no indication that these two items were part of the same question, so we can’t add those percentages up to 50%, because they may (and probably do) overlap to some degree. This is important because we want our reporting to be accurate.

Of course, the actual numbers are still terrifying. Here are some other disturbing findings from the survey:

• Only 55% of respondents could say definitively that they would not engage in insider trading to make $10 million if they wouldn’t get arrested. 16% said that they would be likely to do it.
• Only 30% of all respondents felt that the SEC/SFO effectively deters, investigates and prosecutes securities violations.
• 30% reported feeling pressure to compromise ethical standards or violate the law as a result of their compensation or bonus plan.
• Only 35% felt certain that their employer would “definitely not” retaliate against them if they reported wrongdoing in their workplace.

The survey notes significant gender discrepancies as well. For example:

• 19% of men reported a willingness to engage in insider trading compared to 10% of women.
• Meanwhile, among U.S. respondents, 22% of women believed that they would be retaliated against if they reported wrongdoing in the workplace compared with 12% of men.

You can download a copy of the executive summary of the report here (PDF).