October 5th, 2006
Waking up to an HP executive's nightmare
Former HP Chairman Patricia Dunn will "surrender to authorities" on Thursday in response to criminal charges filed by Bill Lockyer, California's Attorney-General. Bail will be decided, and she will likely post it, freeing her to work on her defense, whatever shape that defense might take.
Maybe I'm being overly empathetic, but I bet the people caught up in this scandal feel like they woke up one morning and their bad dream had become reality. Some have been forced to resign, their reputations are permanently shredded, and they've been trotted before Congressional committees as if they had done something on par with the executive team at Enron…
…which they didn't. As noted in my last post on the subject, the HP scandal doesn't even come close to the level of Watergate or the Enron accounting scandal. This is a lapse of judgement in the pursuit of a legitimate objective - putting a stop to information leaks at the board level - not an organized campaign of fraud that harms other people. That doesn't make "pretexting" (the act of claiming to be someone else in order to gain access to private information) justified. It is, however, in a different category.
In that light, I would suggest that the people caught up in this affair pay careful attention to two Latin words, and allow it to shape their future actions:
Mea Culpa.
You know, at least you know now, that the methods used to gain access to phone records of board members and journalists were illegal. Therefore, take every opportunity afforded you to apologize profusely for your lapse of judgement, and throw yourself at the mercy of the court.
Don't try to play chicken with legislators and government officials (like Lockyer) weeks from facing constituents at the polls (Bill Lockyer is running for State Treasurer) and looking for every grandstanding opportunity they can find.
Martha Stewart is a demonstration of that principle. After the Enron collapse, legislators were looking for someone - anyone - they could throw a book at in order to show that government was "doing something" about corporate malfeasance. Enter from stage right Martha Stewart, a self-made billionaire with the bedside manner of a mortician who likely used insider information when deciding whether or not to sell stock in ImClone. The sale helped her to avoid a loss of around $51,000 when the share price of ImClone dropped the next day. Her decision to plead her innocence and play chicken with the US government cost her hundreds of millions of dollars due to the beating her company, Martha Stewart Living, took from all the bad press…and half a year in jail.
When governmental entities are in full witch-hunt mode, better not to be caught wearing pointy hats and holding broomsticks. Better to admit what was, at core, a mistake, and trust that reasonable people will reward your honesty and willingness to admit wrongdoing.
John Carroll has delivered his opinion on ZDNet since the last millennium. Since May 2008, he is no longer a Microsoft employee. He is currently working at a unified messaging-related startup. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 10/05/06
