Hewlett Packard CEO and spymaster, Patricia Dunn is sitting in quite the hot seat this week. Clearly she underestimated the potential (turns out, overwhelmingly) negative reaction to public disclosure of her acquisition of ten HP directors' personal phone records through questionable means. Dunn is now facing a much bigger problem than the media leaks her mole hunting was supposed to eliminate. The HP board is set to meet again as soon as today to determine what, if anything, will be done with Dunn. Meanwhile, here's a handy FAQ on the whole situation, from CNet and a little background on the phone records privacy issue. No new news for regular readers of this space.

As an aside, when we founded Caveat Research, my former firm, back in 2004, we made a decision that we would not employ pretextual interview techniques, and we certainly would have never, via a pretext, used an individual's personal details to obtain their private phone records. Even without pretexting, I'd like to think that our work product stood well alongside anyone else's in the business. All the same, you have to feel for Patricia Dunn. She's the CEO of a long-struggling company that was faced with regular, frustrating leaks to the media that she felt hurt their business.

As an executive might on any other internal fraud matter, she employed investigators to get to the bottom of it. And she DID get her man. The problem comes with the short cuts allowed by the phone record legal loophole (soon to be closed). With their tactics the investigators involved put their client (or in this case, their client's client) in line for potentially serious blowback. The investigators could have likely come up with evidence just as damning regarding confirmed leaker, George Keyworth II, without employing pretexting, just as professional atheletes who use steroids could in many cases reach the same heights of performace without the use of drugs. The results might not be as comprehensive or sexy and the investigation might have taken longer, but no one would be talking about Dunn losing her job at this point either.

-- MDT

Labels: Caveat Research, HP, Patricia Dunn