It was a corporate spying scandal that led to congressional hearings and an enhanced state privacy law.
But with the criminal case against former Hewlett-Packard chairwoman Patricia Dunn and three others ending with a whimper, Hewlett-Packard is working hard to move on. It says that fixing the boardroom leaks and stopping a repeat of the ethical lapses is now a priority.
HP's new ethics officer Jon Hoak says he is determined to make sure there'll be no more ethics bungles.
In this interview with the Legal Times, available on the Law.com site, Hoak says HP has learned its lesson. It's now looking at the big risk areas, including the way it handles its contractors.
"Our program is to help us know who we're dealing with." Hoak said. "We've made changes to our contracts to prevent things like pretexting. But more importantly, we've designed a process, with application forms and due diligence, where you have to sign up for our standard contract, and you are required to submit your investigative plans. Then, on the back end, there are internal audits to make sure we're following these steps, to make sure this doesn't happen again. This ensures that we have the vision of what the contractors are doing. In the past, there wasn't enough visibility or transparency in the company to make sure [pretexting] was not being done."
Hoak has told Bloomberg that he believes the scandal was "an aberration rather than an indication of a culture problem or a bunch of cowboys running a company." The processes, he said, were just loose.
He manages to gloss over little details, like who made the decisions to engage in pretexting and why no-one stood up and said this was wrong. That may or may not have been legal but it certainly didn't pass the ethics smell test. Making a decision to engage in an activity with questionable legal standing that's plainly unethical legal has got nothing to do with loose procedures. It takes more than tightly written codes and policies to ensure ethical conduct.
Hoak and his superiors believe they are moving to achieve some closure on the scandal. But winning back trust might take longer.
While the media centered on the pretexting side of things, this all started with George Keyworths’ unethical behavior which he largely got a free pass on.
To this day I still wonder why his betrayal and behavior has been swept under the rug.
Part of their makeover needs to start in the boardroom and the culture of the business.