[Background information: A grand jury in Houston, Texas, Thursday handed up an indictment against the Arthur Andersen accounting firm. The company is charged with obstructing justice in connection with the collapse of one of its biggest clients...energy trader Enron.

Dawn-Marie Driscoll is a business consultant and author who is associated with the Center For Business Ethics at Bentley College in (the U-S state of) Massachusetts. News Now's Tom Crosby asked her if the indictment of Arthur Andersen and the collapse of Enron have undermined public confidence in big business:]

MS. DRISCOLL: I think there are two ways you can look at that. You could say that there is a distrust of business. On the other hand, I almost think this shows that the system works, that if there is a business that apparently does not have the ethical underpinnings to it, whether it's Enron or Arthur Andersen, eventually that comes to light and the business doesn't survive.

MR. CROSBY: But when we talk about the business, of course, in this case we're talking about people who sat in the highest levels of those businesses. It doesn't necessarily permeate down to the lowest ranks, though, does it?

MS. DRISCOLL: Not necessarily, no. That is one of the frustrations. If you have an organization where there is not a strong ethical culture that is driven at the top, you can have some very good people in the organization at lower levels who just get frustrated.

MR. CROSBY: What does this mean for a company like Arthur Andersen, which at first seemed to be on the periphery of the Enron scandal? Does this mean that this company is about to go under totally as far as you can tell?

MS. DRISCOLL: Well, I wouldn't want to take any guesses. That's always a possibility. Arthur Andersen, of course, is a partnership made up of individuals. And as you and I have heard all the terrible stories about what happened in Houston with Enron, I have also heard some positively heartwarming stories about Arthur Andersen partners on other accounts that have gone directly to the Audit Committee and have blown the whistle, essentially, on what the company was doing. So I think it is a real question for Arthur Andersen now what some of the other partners will do. That is a case where clearly we cannot judge an entire firm by a few individuals.

MR. CROSBY: But in the meantime, Arthur Andersen has lost many of its major clients, hasn't it?

MS. DRISCOLL: Yes. And that's a real problem. And that I think shows a stunning example of the fact that even if you have ethical problems just in one piece of the company, it doesn't take much for the whole reputation of the entire firm to go down.

MR. CROSBY: And two companies that had been considered as possible buyers of Arthur Andersen I guess have pulled out of the bidding as well?

MS. DRISCOLL: Well, sure. They have to be very careful about assuming any liabilities of Arthur Andersen. And I think those liabilities are still open to question, how much it's going to be.