Corporate governance - Information is the key to survival.

(From Financial Director)

Byline: Robert Bruce, a leading commentator on accountancy issues.

The Higgs Report addresses one crucial issue which seems to have become lost in rhetoric - gauging whether the information that company directors are given is accurate.

This issue will drive companies away from the old and increasingly creaky methods of measurement and will push them toward the more useful end of the intangible spectrum. For directors - both executive and non-exec alike - determining what goes on within a company is vital. It is about self-preservation.

As corporate scandal after corporate scandal has shown, being on a board of directors and not having an inkling that the carpet is being ripped out from under your feet is not only embarrassing but can bring about the speedy death of a director's career.

The future, you might say, is intangible. The old certainties of what the finance function produced by way of measurement are no longer anything like the full story. It is, as Mark Goyder, director of the Centre for Tomorrow's Company, would suggest, "A question of getting measurement into what counts."

In mid-March, Goyder spoke at an RSA debate on leadership and culture change. He characterised the year of Enron and Marconi as "the great crisis of trust". Devastating as the consequences of those corporate scandals were, they have created an opportunity for board members to "think about the joined-up nature of their success and its measurement".