Enron

Enron had a code of ethics, an experienced board, and outside auditors. None of it mattered. Through the 1990s the energy company reinvented itself as a trading house and adopted mark-to-market accounting, letting it book projected future profits the moment a deal was signed, regardless of whether cash ever arrived. Off-balance-sheet vehicles hid the losses. A forced-ranking system that cut the bottom 15% each year made raising concerns a career risk. When it collapsed in late 2001, it was the largest U.S. bankruptcy to that point, and about 20,000 people lost their jobs.

For founders and operators, this is the case on the real operating system of any company: not the values on the wall, but what gets measured, rewarded, and promoted. The fraud wasn't an accident; it was a rational response to the system leadership designed. It sharpens the decision of what your incentives actually reward versus what you claim to value, and how a single metric could be gamed.