We need a culture which allows two-timing, over-sexed, effective, loyal CEOs to behave as they like in private, provided they don’t fiddle the expenses. In short, the public needs to stop muddling-up the bedroom and the boardroom. PRs should lead the way (with their advice).

Apropos Paul Seaman’s excellent coverage of the trouble at HP, a big FT analysis piece (“Moral Hazards”, 14/15 August 2010) suggests that there’s a new and very strict “moral” climate about. In particular, the modern CEO has to be virtue personified. The FT notes that CEOs aren’t often castigated for sexual failings, per se. However, if affairs are linked to employees (see the recent case of Mr Hurd, the CEO of HP), then it becomes a matter of abuse of power. If they are linked to competitors, then conflicts of interest are cited. Being casual or naughty about expenses is bad in a more obvious way: because no-one else is allowed lax accounting. (Again, see the Hurd case.)

It’s hard to argue against these versions of the new strictness. Leaders should show a good example, and so on.

I am less thrilled by the way any kind of lying is now bad news, even if it’s small stuff done to cover up embarrassment rather than bad behaviour (see the case of Mr Browne, of BP). In the good old days, white lies were regarded as inevitable and invaluable and there’s merit in that old hypocrisy.

Still, if we insist on banging on about openness, and perhaps we should, then I see that it becomes harder to keep little convenient zones of condoned mendacity.

But I am uneasy about this new Puritanism and I doubt that it will be kept in proper check.

I meet a very wide range of leaders of every kind and always in conditions of strictest privacy. I think I can say that it has taught me that “there’s none so odd as folk”. I mean that it is almost impossible to predict who will have dark secrets, terrible doubts, awesome strength in a crisis, great honour, sudden feebleness. Some people show all of these in a fortnight.

Of all the fallibilities people show I’d say sexual weaknesses (or secrets) outmatch greed, cruelty, fear and a whole bunch of others put together for frequency and career-crashing potential.

So I repeat the earlier caveat: sexual shenanigans (or secrets) should only matter insofar as they are a corporate problem, which ought to be not often. But in the real world, sex still has enormous power to drag reputations under.

This is part of a wider problem.

We see already in politics that there’s a demand for a new institutional and personal purity. The same taste seems to be spreading to firms. The worrying thing of course is to wonder whether we want colourless parliaments peopled by colourless politicians, or colourless firms led by colourless managers.

It seems obvious that politicians can’t be any good and be quite normal. They have to be risk-takers of a high order, and the more so if they are operating in a lively democracy which tips people out of power pretty swiftly and even chaotically. Many good politicians are chancers, and sometimes on a large scale. I should say that scandal is inevitable.

Firms are a bit different, because they are so diverse. A one-man band, or a family firm, or a partnership can be as odd as its customers like. A public firm, especially a large one, is much more likely to be dull, and perhaps needs to be. But should we want its bosses to be very dull?

As a rough guide, the more entrepreneurial an outfit, the more its bosses will be a little naughty. It follows that only if you want an accountants’ paradise can you ordain a firm run by the well-behaved. (And it isn’t guaranteed that accountants will be either dull or decent, of course.)

Here is a way out. We can require the bosses of firms only to be as honest and as well-behaved as they promise to be. I know: you’d still not know whether you’d trusted a liar. But you take my point. We can be very strict about the stated rules, but beyond that, a person’s private life should indeed be private. I think that is Max Moseley’s excellent point as he insists that the media should not have been allowed to pry into his sex-games. But we see the difficulty.

Max is saying he has a right to his privacy. It doesn’t follow, but I think it is implied, that there are lots of things which might damage a person’s reputation or standing which he or she has a right to keep secret. I agree. I don’t think it’s fair that a leader should be required to satisfy the public that they wouldn’t be shocked by his or her private behaviour. So the public should be shielded from it.

That’s the deal. CEOs (like teachers, footballers and all the so-called role-models) must be squeaky clean in a quite new way, and be shielded from prurience in a quite new way. Only if we have the sense not to pry can we be guaranteed to see good behaviour wherever we look.

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