Sadly, it was the right thing to do. If the policy becomes "we don't mind you being a liar as long as you're our liar..." then the slippery slope starts accelerating. Just look at the Bush admnistration, which pays people handsomely to lie through their teeth, as long as they stay loyal while doing so.

Her dishonesty was a solution to aproblem -- she was good enough to get and keep the job, but couldn't get past the HR hurdles on the straight truth, because of their reliance on "credentials". The underlying problem, of course, is that HR people have no insight into the genuine potential of candidates, so they rely on paperwork as a substitute. The professionals whose notional job it is to find productive beings with the kinds of hearts and minds that will do the company proud (whatever its trade) simply do not have the tools to do their job in any predictable, reliable way.

And underlying that is a major paradigm problem in the field of psychology and a badly incomplete understanding of human beings and what they do.

A