The full horror of what I was seeing didn't hit me all at once. At first, I was even mildly amused as I watched the antics of Indiana Pacer Ron Artest on the Web. And then I realized what a terrible thing I was seeing as Artest entered the stands and started throwing punches at members of the crowd.

In a single instant, Artest had destroyed years of work and millions (perhaps hundreds of millions) of dollars of value that NBA commissioner David Stern (and others) had struggled to build. Would I take my kid to see another Pacer or a Piston game? No way. Would I take him to an NBA game? Good question.

Meanwhile, up on Capitol Hill, the Vioxx controversy threatens to take down a great company and do untold damage to the pharmaceutical industry. The repercussions promise to be quite extreme. One wonders whether Merck execs have acted irresponsibly. (The CEO, who says his wife was taking the drug up until the day the company took it off the market, insists the company has been upright.) Or was it the media, ambitious politicians and an angry "whistleblower" at the Food and Drug Administration blowing things out of proportion?

And then, there's Larry Ellison -- who has spent his whole career pissing on his competitors. Is it any wonder that PeopleSoft execs -- who no doubt are mostly protecting themselves -- would plant poison pills to fend off Oracle's acquisition? Despite the fact that a majority of shareholders supported the takeover, the fight continues and no doubt will end up in court.

None of this is good news for the software industry. The sector has seen an array of execs face penalties or jail time for illegal financial behavior in recent years. Enterprise software customers, at best, tolerate their vendors and, at worst, hate them. In recent years, manipulative sales people, failed implementations and all sorts of other other bad boy behavior have deeply damaged the reputation of high tech.

Given such trends, perhaps we should step back and take stock of what is going on here. Is it worth it to be on the leading edge of business -- whether you are engaged in customer intellligence work or something else -- when your business is about to implode? What good would it have been to do world-class CI work at Enron or WorldCom? It's like building beautiful sand castles in the face of an onrushing tide.

Don't despair. The point is that maybe we should exercise our deep analytical skills -- our due diligence capabilities -- to ensure we are investing our time in organizations that have honor, integrity and real vision. If we are working for liars or fools, we are probably wasting our time.