I am a singer who worked with several teacher-coaches over some 30 years. Two were excellent and taught me valuable techniques that have kept me singing into my mid-60s despite severe asthma. One was a bad bully, and one was just incompetent.

If the bully had been knocked off his tenure track by an honest and unguarded assessment such as keberoxu provided, many students would have been spared his toxic attentions.

Oddly, the question that was directed at keberoxu sounds like something I experienced as a mid-ranking civil servant at the Department of National Defence in Ottawa. When a senior naval officer was a candidate for promotion to a very high position in the bureaucracy, the search committee conducting the hiring process deliberately sought to interview subordinates as well as his peers and superiors. I was interviewed by a blindingly elegant commodore who wanted to know all about how my ex-boss had treated not only the subalterns and non-commissioned officers in his chain of command, but also the civilian employees who did the humdrum administrative tasks that kept the directorate functioning.

As the studio accompanist, keberoxu was a critical witness to the singing teacher's techniques and relationships with his pupils. The professor who sought keberoxu's opinion was following what the human resources people call a "best practice".