In the wake of the Enron scandal, Congress passed the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 (commonly referred to as SOX) in order to hold top executives accountable for corporate governance. The following list can help HR professionals identify some of the most common potential problems leading to SOX non-compliance.

• Payroll data does not match the organization chart.
• A corporation cannot show how separate entities running different payrolls or HRIS human resource information systems systems merge to provide a unified view by executive management and/or the board.
• Chain of command data is broken.
• Continuing to pay people after they have been terminated.