However, the fact this person acted in what appears to be such a criminal manner and get away with it for so long - despite "hiding" in plain sight - may come as less of surprise to HR professionals than to other groups of people. I say this because I am so used to colleagues in the field telling me how disturbed they are about the activities of one employee or manager making life difficult for others around the company. The impact of these figures' behaviour is often very destructive and can cause real distress or - at worst - lasting psychological harm to their colleagues.
The behaviour in question ranges from general neglect of any kind of people management responsibility at the one end through to flagrant bullying or the kind of psychopathic behaviours described in works such as Babiak & Hare's Snakes In Suits or Adrian Furnham's The Elephant in the Boardroom.
I'm often asked by HR business partners what more they can do when they've personally attempted to reason with these people and tried to get them trained and coached, but nothing works to shift the behaviour. Invariably the block is that the most senior people in the organisation have a vested interest in denial and sweeping the bad behaviour under the carpet.
People ignore emerging evidence of appalling management behaviour because the perpetrators are perceived to have some kind of indispensable skill or contacts without which the company will fall down or take a severe hit on its profitability.
There are people who want to stand up and complain that wrongdoing is not being challenged by those that have the power to do so. The trouble is they soon pick up the message that if they push too hard they will find themselves far more dispensable than the sacred cows.
HR people know that employee engagement is closely correlated with profitability but for many senior people in organisations this remains an abstract article of faith. They don't believe that whatever the short-term impact of challenging and potentially parting company with a really bad manager who can't or won't change their behaviour may be, their company will be healthier and more profitable in the long-term. Perhaps as a profession we are not good enough at producing metrics and case studies to persuade them.
One of the eight core attributes for HR practitioners identified in the CIPD's HR Profession Map is: Courage and challenge - has the courage and confidence to speak up and will challenge others even when met with resistance or unfamiliar circumstances. This is far easier said than done when good people stand to lose their jobs for speaking out.
I don't believe the situation will begin to change until such time as it becomes compulsory for organisations to report on people management indicators in the same way as they have to report financial information.
This will never happen unless politicians and regulators can be persuaded that people should come before profit, and that happy people are profitable people. As a profession we have not been good at persuading them of that and I note that the CIPD's position is still that human capital reporting should be voluntary.
Helen Giles is director of HR and consultancy at homeless charity Broadway
