Ctrl F, sensitive documents, and you

As media coverage of handsy software magnate Sir Rod Drury’s troubles continues, an Auckland barrister has managed to sum up, in one short paragraph, the ease of which a document writing shortcut can prevent a dumpster fire:

Whistleblower was assured of confidentiality, but her name was revealed to Sir Rod Drury | Stuff  (23 May 2026)

Naylor’s lawyer Michael Timmins said while mistakes do happen, “it's very simple when you're providing sensitive material to just do a ‘ctrl F’ search for names to make sure that they're excluded. Whilst it was inadvertent, it suggests a really sloppy process.”

Employment law and HR practitioners are generally paranoid about this sort of thing.  While whistleblower Ally Naylor had her name replaced with “the complainant” in a draft report in an effort to anonymise her (she had already resigned from Xero without a job to go to), one redaction was missed out and her name was mentioned once.

Timmins implies that Ctrl F (find) wasn’t used to check that Ms Naylor’s name had been completely redacted from the draft report, and here we are.

Another useful shortcut is Ctrl H – find and replace.  You can type the word you want to replace in the top field and the word(s) you want to replace it with in the bottom field.

Although the mistake happened in 2017, before the Privacy Act 2020 and Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Act 2022, that would be of little comfort to Xero or Drury.

Tristam Price, Editor