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Manners could go a long way to restoring faith in Wall Street.

Last month I had the pleasure of meeting P.M. Forni, co-founder of The Civility Initiative at Johns Hopkins University. Forni, a professor of romance languages and literature, wrote a book entitled Choosing Civility: The Twenty-Five Rules of Considerate Conduct. I was moderating a panel on civility and manners that included Forni and Richard Carter, author of a novel Bad Manners, and with the recent bad weather here in Maryland, I wasn't feeling very civil. But I was intrigued by Forni's guidelines on how to establish more civil relationships without giving up any sense of self.

It's a lesson that Wall Street professionals should heed, because when Forni talks about "civility," he means more than mere politeness. Honesty, trustworthiness, propriety, abiding by the rules: Forni sees these as civility-related notions. And they're exactly what is needed to restore investor confidence in corporate America and bring investors back to the stock market.

True civil behavior, as opposed to paying lip service to manners, can repair the relationship between the investment community and individual investors. Wall Street's workers -- analysts, auditors, even corporate boards -- should embrace "considerate conduct" to improve the quality of life and services they provide to the investing community.

In the past, Wall Street firms have been deceptive and obfuscatory. Just ask Arthur Levitt, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and a longtime advocate for individual investors. I recently spoke with Levitt -- himself the epitome of civility -- at Indiana University's annual business conference sponsored by the Kelly School of Business, and he noted that legislative bickering and brash opposition fostered by financial firms caused many of his initiatives to die on the vine. In hindsight, Levitt was right on target, and recent measures to reform corporate America include many of his suggestions.

And as we rush headlong into war that may create more problems than it solves, I'm fascinated by what Forni sees as the most important aspects of civility. It can bring a sense of peace and harmony to otherwise stressful situations. Forni surprised me when he boiled everything down to ethics. "Incivility in the workplace carries a very high price in both human and financial terms," Forni writes. "The more civil the workplace, the better the quality of life enjoyed by its workers. The higher the quality of life, the better the quality of their work, including the services they provide to customers. This ought to be an incentive to all organizations to foster a culture of civility at work."

Distancing analysts and auditors from the corporate and investment banking clients has the potential to boost the kind of interaction that Forni prefers. Eliminating conflict of interests between analysts and auditors and the investment banking firms for which they work is a great first step, because it forces them to deal with each other fairly.

It's not the only thing needed, of course. Rules set by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act passed last year provide a good framework for addressing conflicts of interest between auditors and their corporate clients. SEC Chairman William Donaldson has to set the tone by choosing a strong steward to lead the new accounting oversight board. And of course, Donaldson has to enforce the rules already on the books and apply those rules to everyone equally.

But nothing will work without a sense of true civil discourse, with the honesty and openness that it requires. In some ways, it boils down to the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Sounds obvious and simple, but if it were that easy, we wouldn't have had the problems of the past several years.

One last point Forni makes regarding civility: Don't shift responsibility and blame. Investors must always remain skeptical and do their homework and realize that it is their choice to believe hype and get caught up in the euphoria of a market that suspends belief. Mutual fund managers have been oblivious to the governance and accounting issues at companies in which they held substantial interests. Fund managers have a fiduciary responsibility to their investors to be more vocal, and less passive, while revealing to them the truth about fees, compensation and trading strategies that may affect the overall fund performance.

And when we restore civility, with its dedication to truth and earned trust, we can restore investor confidence to the markets.