As some of you may recall, as part of a settlement with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission last August, General Electric Company brought an end to a 4-year SEC investigation when it agreed to pay a $50 million fine. The $183 billion company admitted to nothing, while at the same time promising to never do it again. See the SEC’s complaint from last August.

“The real tragedy is that the $50 million fine will be paid by the stockholders. We have let the bad guys get away with their shenanigans and have penalized the innocent,” wrote accounting professor J. Edward Ketz in his blog following the SEC’s announcement of the settlement.

Ketz’s thoughts were echoed far and wide and have cast doubts on the early reign of Mary Schapiro, the new SEC chairman whose tenure was only 5 months old when the settlement was announced. At the time, the SEC stated that its investigation of GE was over, but it mysteriously did not say the same about the people involved, whether they are accounting officials from GE or from its auditor, KPMG. more

Virtualization is hot, right? Just a couple of weeks ago, it led wiredFINANCE’s list of hot IT for 2010, and back in the spring, readers here were advised to virtualize finance to lower costs and improve performance.

Articles about the joys of virtualization from me and many others have been plastered across the Internet. Here’s one I wrote on virtualization do’s and don’ts for Cisco, and another for AMD, the chip maker, on virtual desktops.

But like every other technology, virtualization has drawbacks that go along with the benefits. Those thinking of pursuing a virtualization strategy in 2010 — a good idea overall — also need to be aware of the gotchas, the things that can undermine a virtualization investment. Here are five to note: more

Over the past few years, I have discussed a paradox with Doug Hicks, President of D.T. Hicks & Co., a performance-improvement consulting firm in Farmington Hills, MI. The paradox, which continues to puzzle me, is how chief financial officers (CFOs) and controllers can be aware that their managerial accounting data is flawed and misleading yet not take action to do anything about it.

Now, I’m not referring to the financial accounting data used for external reporting; that information passes strict audits. I’m referring to the managerial accounting used internally for analysis and decisions. For this data, there is no governmental regulatory agency enforcing rules, so the CFO can apply any accounting practice or cost allocation method that he or she likes. more