Some things in life are absolutes. You can’t be slightly untrustworthy or a little bit pregnant, and you can’t have selective anonymity, which is why Barclays’ chief executive, Jes Staley, has faced so much criticism over his two attempts to discover the identity of an internal whistleblower.

When the Barclays board and its chairman, John MacFarlane, found out what Staley had tried to do they acted decisively to protect employees’ trust, reporting Staley’s actions to the regulators even though they knew that some collateral damage would be inevitable.