One of the biggest scandals of this century was the Enron scandal of 2001. Before its collapse Enron was seen as a very profitable and innovative organization. Enron was lauded as the most innovative company in the world six years in a row by Fortune Magazine and at its height was the 7th largest business in the country. Throughout the 1980's and 1990's Enron's control over gas and electric commodities was the rival of the industry. The company made its money trading energy futures. Essentially Enron made its money by buying energy companies and selling stock at varying price based on how well the price of energy was during that time period. The Enron scandal has been a topic for leaders on many occasions and brings to account the need to look into the ethics in the leaders of today and tomorrow. We will look at the issue that caused Enron's ethics to fail and focus on one of its main employees; Jeffrey Skilling. The principal idea of this was very innovative. The company was taking something that was marketable and having people buy stock based on how high the price of the commodity was. In the early stages of the company this was a very lucrative process, however, this investment practice came with more than the average amount of risk. Generally speaking, risky investments can pay off in high profits but they can also cause the investor to lose what they have invested and even more than that causing the investor, the company or even both to go into debt. The risk of an investment is only worth the amount of profit that will be made from it because the profit should outweigh the risks [Fin, 11]. The problem was that Enron was gambling with big risks and losing. With all of the risks that Enron took the company was losing money very fast. One of the primary goals of the CEO of the company, Ken Lay, was to make sure that stock prices stayed high. Keeping stock prices high meant keeping the market and shareholders believe you were still profiting. Also something that was needed was someone a way to keep the employees believing the company was doing well. Lay did this by hiring Jeffrey Skilling. Jeffrey Skilling was a Harvard graduate and worked with the McKinsey firm before his tenure at Enron began in 1990. The McKinsey firm was a consulting firm that helped Enron turn from a utility pipeline company into a trading company. "McKinsey thinking helped Enron switch, seemingly overnight, from being a company that simply piped stuff around the US to a giant marketplace in which companies could "cherry pick" commodities such as oil and gas contracts, seeking out new suppliers and cheaper prices over the web" [The, 02]. By doing this the firm developed a solid relationship with Enron and they hired Skilling. Jeffrey skilling was the perfect leader that Enron needed to keep its workforce happy and unaware of what was going on around them. Skilling was a very dramatic figure and was prone to enjoy taking risks of a different type. Skilling routinely led company outings, some with dangerous physical risks. Skilling was described as a sort of "nerd trying to get his machismo back. He wore glasses, he was losing his hair and to compensate he took employees riding motocross, mountain climbing and  various other risky trips to keep them occupied and to show his dominance in the company" [Pai, 05]. Eventually under Skilling's leadership Enron and its employees became a force to be reckoned with. Skilling had used his leadership knowledge, manipulation and business savvy to turn the oil and gas company into what he needed to further his goals. "By mid-2000, Jeff Skilling had achieved his goal: Almost all the vestiges of the old Enron were gone. In its place, Enron had become a trading company. And with that change came a rock-em, sock-em, fast-paced trading culture in which deals and "deal flow" became the driving force behind everything Enron did" [Bry, 02]. Skilling also exuded an air of darkness and mystery to the employees. He liked to be in control and enjoyed it when people feared him. "To many people inside Enron,  Jeffrey K. Skilling was the ultimate control freak -- the sort of hands-on corporate leader who kept his fingers on all the pieces of the puzzle. As the leading protege' of the genial former chief executive, Kenneth L. Lay, the intense Skilling built the company in his own demanding image: Some co-workers called him  Darth Vader, a nickname he was said to have been particularly proud of [Sch, 02]. Skilling also took great control over Enron's accounting practices. He developed a system to organize funds in different accounts and pad the numbers to make them look like they had more than they did. "Skilling exercised control over almost all facets of the organization, particularly regarding its accounting procedures, which were designed to 'massage' reported earnings in order to meet analysts' expectations. Earnings management was accomplished largely using special purpose entities (SPEs), a