HR acts as a barrier to the CEOs and upper management to provide opportunities for plausible deniability, the same way upper management and c-level provide buffers to each other and ultimately the CEO. Anything unbecoming of the company gets trickled down the chain of command to provide protection to the CEO because, "I had heard something about something maybe happening, but I'm not involved in the day to day."

While this is ultimately true, it leads to awful situations where people are being put in compromising positions where they're a mid-level HR person and are having to navigate what to do about Kanye showing porn to their staff. In the same way as with Weinstein, it's more likely that you'll be fired for bringing it up since Kanye is brining the company $8B a year and you're costing the company $75k a year to act as a patsy. Even if you do your job and ring the alarm, they'll acknowledge it and then brush it over, then pin it to you when it surfaces – there's no winning.

All the while, the CEO and c-levels are having dinners with Kanye and probably are fully aware of his behavior since he's likely doing the same at dinner with them - showing inappropriate photos and such – but it's good for business so they laugh it off.

The corporate systems of "accountability" are engineered to protect those at the top by removing them from the typical functions and adding buffers to ensure that they're not immediately responsible for anything and can point a finger anytime something doesn't go well.