A recent story has broke that HP spied on its board members to find who was leaking info to the press.  I’m very disappointed that it has come to this, but I think the story is being spun the wrong way by the very press that enjoyed the information it was getting leaked.

First of all, there is no excuse for “leaking” news.  If a board member thinks the news media should get some piece of information, then he/she should come right out and tell them.  And if he can’t because of non-disclosure rules and the board won’t let him, he should go to the press and make an announcement that the board is refusing to release important information to the press that he is unfortunately unable to tell them.

So in that sense statments in the article like:

“Speaking out is a time honored tradition in the age of ornamental boards,” McGurn said. “It’s something that management, and CEOs in particular, have hated — but they usually let it slide.” 

are complete bogus.  They have nothing to do with the situation at hand.  This was secretly leaking information not “speaking out”.  As such, I have sympathy for the HP board and none for the press.  But there is another half of the story: spying.

Just as similarly, the board should not have been spying on anyone in the company, board members included.  If they suspected that someone was leaking inappropriate information, they should go to the person, make the accusation, and go through whatever formal steps necessary to make a determination whether that person was indeed leaking information.

What this article and so much of the discussion surrounding corporate America seem to forget is that there is a HUGE difference between honesty and transparency.  The real goal should be honesty.  Transparency is only a substitute for honesty.  It’s a way to ensure that people are telling the truth because one can see the behind the scenes stuff to verify the information.

So the difficulty becomes, where does the stock market need to “force” honesty by requiring transparency.  I don’t have the answer to these questions as I’m not a financial guy.  But what I do know is that the fundamental problem is a lack of character that is most manifest in a lack of honesty.

And it bugs me that the company I work for, once a proud example of honesty and integrity, has a management team that with the exception of Perkins (who quit over the issue months ago) no longer appreciates those values on both sides of this dispute.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 7th, 2006 at 11:11 am and is filed under Catholicism, Catholicism - Morals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.