A coalition of organizations representing 50,000 professional communicators gathered January 2003 in New Jersey to discuss ways to restore trust in American business. Buffeted by scandal and crisis since the Enron debacle, the average citizen's belief in the integrity and honesty of corporate American had reached an all-time low. The coalition agreed on three basic actions that they could recommend to each and every CEO in America.

1. The CEO should articulate a set of ethical principles closely connected to their core business processes and supported with deep management commitment, enterprise-wide discipline and training.
2. The CEO should create a process for transparency that is appropriate for current and future operations. It should include an oversight committee, culture audit and consistent messaging. CEOs should ensure that they have professional, competent counsel to serve as a strategic integrator, champion, bridge builder, catalyst, facilitator and record keeper for appropriate transparency.
3. The CEO should establish a formal system of measurement, measurement of trust a business standard for that proved benchmarking and encouraging peer pressure and CEOs should make trust a corporate governance issue and a board priority tied to compensation.

The first two are essentially process issues that are relatively easy to implement. The third poses a problem to many corporations which has only been addressed by a few: How to measure trust?

This document offers standard guidelines to help professional communicators answer that question and implement the third directive of the PR Coalition.