Ruth Simmons joined Goldman Sachs’s board as an outside director in January 2000; a year later she became president of Brown University. For the rest of the decade she apparently managed both roles without attracting much criticism. But by the end of 2009, Ms. Simmons was under fire for having sat on Goldman’s compensation committee; how could she have let those enormous bonus payouts pass unremarked? By February the next year Ms. Simmons had left the board. The position was just taking up too much time, she said.

    Outside directors are supposed to serve as helpful, yet less biased, advisers on a firm’s board. Having made their wealth and their reputations elsewhere, they presumably have enough independence to disagree with the chief executive’s proposals. If the sky, and the share price is falling, outside directors should be able to give advice based on having weathered their own crises.

    The researchers from Ohio University used a database that covered more than 10,000 firms and more than 64,000 different directors between 1989 and 2004. Then they simply checked which directors stayed from one proxy statement to the next. The most likely reason for departing a board was age, so the researchers concentrated on those “surprise” disappearances by directors under the age of 70. They found that after a surprise departure, the probability that the company will subsequently have to restate earnings increases by nearly 20%. The likelihood of being named in a federal class-action lawsuit also increases, and the stock is likely to perform worse. The effect tended to be larger for larger firms. Although a correlation between them leaving and subsequent bad performance at the firm is suggestive, it does not mean that such directors are always jumping off a sinking ship. Often they “trade up,” leaving riskier, smaller firms for larger and more stable firms.

    But the researchers believe that outside directors have an easier time of avoiding a blow to their reputations if they leave a firm before bad news breaks, even if a review of history shows they were on the board at the time any wrongdoing occurred. Firms who want to keep their outside directors through tough times may have to create incentives. Otherwise outside directors will follow the example of Ms. Simmons, once again very popular on campus.

答案精析：根据题干中的Paragraph 1和criticized可定位至原文第一段第二、三句。首段第二句指出西蒙斯女士同时任职高盛外部董事和布朗大学校长期间without much criticism（并未招致太多批评），第三句指出但在2009年底，她任职高盛公司薪酬委员会时under fire（招致批评），后面的反问句指出了原因：她对巨额奖金的支出unremarked（不闻不问）。可见她受到批评是因为没有尽到职责，让巨额资金莫名地流失了，故B选项为正确答案。

错项排除：原文虽然提及enormous bonus payouts（巨额奖金支出），但并不是西蒙斯女士自己获得了这笔钱，而是她错误地发放了这笔资金，故A选项错误。原文并未涉及compromise，C选项属于无中生有，故错误。原文只是提到2010年2月份时，西蒙斯女士离开了董事会，并未说明是困难时期，且她离开董事会并非招致批评的原因，故D选项错误。