Microsoft Sets Bar on Investigating Harassment. Who Will Follow?

You’d think that the brilliant brains running America’s shiniest institutions would get it right by now. They’re hardly virgins in the arena of sexual harassment, discrimination, bullying, and other unlawful conduct in the workplace.

Just a few weeks ago, Microsoft did something simple and logical in laying out a road map on how to handle investigations into those thorny issues: It hired a firm (Arent Fox) that’s not its regular counsel to review its prior investigation into harassment allegations against Bill Gates, and benchmark its “current practices against ‘best practices’ adopted by other companies.”

Independent review. Benchmarking. How radical. Microsoft ...