Some time ago I worked for a man who was very successful in his field, very driven and ambitious but (I thought) thoroughly decent. It was an industry where we did "deals" and some of the opportunities we were offered were borderline unethical but we'd discuss them and although we sometimes disagreed he never put any pressure on me to agree to do a deal I was uncomfortable with.
Although he was my boss, unless I agreed, we'd let the opportunity go. He used to call be his "conscience" and I used to think he liked to have someone to run these things past.
I was in my 20s at the time and he was 10 years older and married. We worked long hours, often alone in the building late into the evening and were in a car alone almost every day. We got on well working together but there was never any crossover into our personal lives and he never once behaved in a way that could have been labelled even sightly inappropriate.
We worked closely together for 6 years then our careers diverged ,although still within the same organisation. Our paths crossed occasionally and it was always good to catch up. Very occasionally we'd each ring each other to ask for advice/expertise on a business proposal, which was always useful but we didn't have much contact beyond that.
Since then he's been sacked for a very complex fraud at work, sentenced to a couple of years in prison, during the court case numerous witnesses described how he forced them to do things against their will and how they suffered from horrible sexual harassment at his hands.
He dropped a lot of people in it who lost their jobs because,whilst they hadn't been involved in the fraud, they hadn't properly followed procedures that would have prevented it ( following his orders).
At the time of the trial it was reported that he'd lost everything, his £3m pension pot was reduced to nothing to repay what he'd stolen, his house had to be sold for legal fees etc etc His wife divorced him and he was estranged from his daughters. I knew an absolutely committed husband and family man.
He's out of prison now, in his late 50s and working for the account holder he defrauded. Our employer was actually the one defrauded but one particular account was used to orchestrate it iyswim. He has a new name and is currently arranging a wedding, rumoured to be costing £100k+ to a woman in her early 20s. I know this because an ex-colleague has accepted a job working for him.
I know I'll never have any answers but it bothers me that I could spend so much time with him and get him so wrong. Or if I was right at the time, what on earth happened to change him so much.? Also, what a lucky escape I had. If he had put pressure on me when I was so young and he was my boss, I'm not sure I would have been strong enough to do the right thing.