Am I missing something at Hewlett-Packard?

The Justice Department has been investigating the company for fraudulent investigative techniques that aimed to uncover who among its directors might be leaking information to the press.

Then this past week, CEO Mark Hurd announced that he would assume the role of chairman following the resignation of Patricia Dunn - the former non-executive chairman of the board.

Admittedly it's standard corporate operating procedure when a scandal hits: Find a villain to take the rap (in this case the hammer fell on Dunn) and circle the wagons. But am I the only person in the business world who wonders how Hurd can be promoted and given additional responsibilities when so much deception took place on his watch as CEO?

Dunn hired companies to obtain the personal telephone records of HP board members and reporters who covered HP. To do so, it used pre-texting: pretending to be those people in calls to the phone company so that they could obtain their data. Such pre-texting was carried out on seven directors, nine journalists, and two HP employees.

Hurd admitted that he had approved of a company plan in March to send a fraudulent e-mail to a reporter. The e-mail was intended to appear to be a leak from a discontented senior manager. The aim in sending it was to implant a software tracer in hoping to track what the reporter did with the e-mail and locate the source of the leak. Hurd claims that he didn't know about a software tracer planted in the message. Such selective memory loss never inspires confidence.

At the time, Kevin Hunsaker, HP senior counsel and chief ethics officer (please, someone at HP, suggest that Hunsaker's latter title be revoked) assured the company that the techniques used in the probe would be legal. Also, company counsel Larry Sonsini, arguably the most eminent lawyer in Silicon Valley, told various members of the board that the methods used to acquire information had been not generally unlawful and within legal limits.

The advice from the chief ethics officer and legal advisor does to some degree help us understand why HP was not more alarmed about the legal ramifications of their actions, but how can the people involved in the scandal believe that spying their directors, journalists and employees might be acceptable?

In its past, HP has been a corporate pioneer on how to do the right thing. As recently as 2005, the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) joined HP in the sponsorship of the HP Privacy Innovation Award ‘to recognize and foster world-wide leadership in privacy protection and practices.’ How ironic.

It is assumed that HP found the leak its leak. The method that the company used to find it was the fastest way to do so. But it sold out its values to in the process. As a consequence, it may destroy in just few days the reputation it has worked to build for years.