As an investor, one who has been entrusted with helping to safeguard other people’s money over many years, I value the high degree of disclosure required from American public companies. Corporations and the world in which they operate change every day, so investors need to know the risks their money faces.

No area of business demonstrates the need for full disclosure as much as one that has been in the news a lot lately: large American companies’ shifting profits overseas to minimize tax bills, or to avoid taxes altogether. These schemes are starting to attract the attention of regulators and governments who view them more as tax dodges than as legitimate financial arrangements.

Given the risks, the last thing investors need is less disclosure. But the Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency responsible to ensure that companies are being open and honest, is considering exactly that: scaling back the information available to the public.

Earlier this year, the S.E.C. published 340 questions seeking feedback about what companies should be required to disclose to investors as part of the agency’s “Disclosure Effectiveness Initiative” — a process that was started following comments by the S.E.C. chairwoman, Mary Jo White. She warned of “information overload,” which made it difficult for an investor “to wade through the volume of information she receives to ferret out the information that is most relevant.”