Maven: Corporate Cloak and Dagger

With the vaunted "Hewlett-Packard Way," a phrase that alluded to corporate class defined, quickly giving way to the less stately defining corporate phrase, "Somebody's Watching Me" (cribbed from 1980s one-hit wonder Rockwell), the question from a public perception standpoint is how long this H-P(HPQ Quote - Cramer on HPQ - Stock Picks) spying story might last and how deep it'll go.

For investors faced with such crazy plot turns on the road of corporate life, that is always the operative question. Will this story blow over? That would obviously be good for H-P, which had been regaining a sense of itself with consumers and in the financial markets. And a troubling story that makes like a tree and leaves is obviously good for investors. But what shareholders want is not always what shareholders get. Isn't caution in order here because things might get worse and we might be talking about this peculiar peeping -- or some consequence that comes of it -- for some time to come?

Most of the time in these cases, the business media initially come down on the side of don't-sweat-it. Options backdating? An isolated thing. The accounting scandals? A few bad apples, some slight restating of earnings. Corporate spying? What, me worry?

We've seen plenty of that around this week with H-P. Here's a pretty typical entry, a headline from Marketwatch:

"H-P seen suffering little from board-spying flap: Leak probe fallout's 'really more of a sideshow,' says analyst."

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