CFOs say 'Repeal Sarbox!' But does that matter?

According to an article in the Financial Times, three-quarters of U.S. chief financial officers believe that Sarbanes-Oxley should be repealed. In other news, Paris Hilton does not believe that driving on a suspended license should be illegal.

But seriously, does the fact that CFOs believe that Sarbox should be repealed mean anything? According to the article, "Last month, Financial Executives International, a grouping of treasurers and chief financial officers, found that costs associated with implementing Section 404 had fallen by 23 percent since 2005. But it also found that 78 percent of executives polled in a survey believed that the costs of Sarbox still outweighed the benefits."

It's hard to quantify the benefits of Sarbanes-Oxley, which makes doing a cost-benefit analysis difficult. It's probably impossible to know how many cases of accounting fraud the bill has prevented -- kind of like trying to figure out how many deaths per year are prevented by laws requiring that guns be kept in locked cabinets when children are around.

Still, the CFOs do have a right to complain: Sarbanes-Oxley was passed mainly to restore investor confidence after the collapses of Enron and Worldcom, among others, and it may be more stringent than necessary. The SEC will enact some reforms to the bill to make it more business-friendly, while still keeping the substance in place to protect investors.