In many of these instances, it seems more like multiple layers of ‘rose-colored glasses’, than one person being willfully ignorant. This is somewhat similar to engineering situations where each reviewer adds some safety margin, and the end product becomes bloated.
Enron is a particularly interesting case, because the filings and statements were all truthful, but almost nobody ever read them. They also had one or two good businesses, but were dragged down by liabilities from the others, so it wasn’t a total fraud. That said, I do think the Enron CFO was guilty of criminal fraud, though I think Lay and Skilling should have only been held civilly liable.
Enron is a particularly interesting case, because the filings and statements were all truthful, but almost nobody ever read them. They also had one or two good businesses, but were dragged down by liabilities from the others, so it wasn’t a total fraud. That said, I do think the Enron CFO was guilty of criminal fraud, though I think Lay and Skilling should have only been held civilly liable.