James Mills is a web developer in the North East of England and founder of Refresh Teesside »
Mike Hughes is the Head of Business for the Evening Gazette. He will be blogging on all matters of importance to Teesside businesses - and some that are just worth knowing »
Jez Davison, business writer at the Evening Gazette, is a regular blogger on all things business - particularly finance, entrepreneurship and the state of the Teesside economy » 
Karen McLauchlan is the Evening Gazette's deputy business and features editor - with special interest in all things industry, property and arts related » 
Jeremy Middleton is a venture capitalist and the co-founder of FTSE-200 company HomeServe » 
Deloitte, which has 23 offices across the UK including Newcastle, is among the country's leading professional services firms » 
ClimateNE & Climate Change Schools Project support the move to a low-carbon, resilient economy and help businesses avoid risk and realise commercial opportunities. Posts by Jen Atkinson, Krista McKinzey and Harriet Thew » THE moral issue of how much companies need to know about their staff reared its head following revelations that construction firms were paying a private investigator to run the rule over prospective recruits.
More the 40 alleged offenders, including three firms with interests on Teesside, have been named and shamed by the Information Commissioner's Office for indulging in a practice described as "deplorable" and "outrageous" by union leaders.
But can companies really be blamed for undertaking what is in effect a risk assessment of their workforce - which is, after all, probably their biggest fixed cost? A few thousand pounds is small beer for vital intelligence on an employee who could end up being a costly burden.
The public has a right to be worried about the clandestine handshakes with "consultants".
And the way some of this business is carried out is hardly going to improve construction's reputation in particular.
But there are some that might argue this is due diligence in just the same way that browsing social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Bebo is to check the moral fibre of potential recruits.
Much of our so-called confidential personal information is already parading au naturel on this, the biggest stage of all and no one makes quite so much fuss.
If people are willing to publicise their personal lives so freely on the worldwide web, they have few grounds for criticising employers who use it to form an initial opinion of them, after all.
While nobody wants to see discrimination in the workplace the social networking revolution has left us all very much more exposed.
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