One of the more amusing disclosures (and there are so many) that followed the recent ousting of Hewlett-Packard Co. CEO Mark Hurd was that the company was booting him due to a reported $20,000 worth of travel expense padding.

According to reports, HP’s board discovered that Mr. Hurd had filed inaccurate expense reports as they were investigating the now infamous sexual harassment charge brought by Jodie Fisher, a 50-year-old actress whom HP had hired to work at marketing events. Apparently, Ms. Fisher jetted near and far on HP’s dime, including trips to Europe and Asia, where the marketing contractor was employed to greet HP’s customers.

No matter: An investigation by HP’s board failed to turn up evidence of sexual misconduct by its CEO, and both he and Ms. Fisher have denied having a romantic relationship. Enough said. Now back to the $20k and subsequent expunging of $13 billion from HP’s stock market value. more

Like any newly recruited CFO, Mona Leung wanted to dedicate her first 6 months to learning everything there was to know about her new employer, Alliant Credit Union – the seventh-largest credit union in the nation.

Ultimately, everything she learned in those first few months helped her to answer one central question: How does Alliant make decisions?

“This begins with a lot of listening and talking with your own peers,” says Leung, whose “listening tour” also provided an opportunity for her to begin educating Alliant executives about how investing in analytics software could give the company’s enterprise risk management efforts a shot in the arm.

In Leung’s view, the fact that Alliant was many times smaller than her previous employers (Quaker Oats; Sears, Roebuck & Co.) was not a reason to ignore the value that advanced analytics could bring to the company’s growing risk management ambitions. But at the same time, Leung knew that realizing that value would depend largely on Alliant’s culture and how it made decisions. more