Personal Insult: Is it a distraction?

Peter said (Here I go again!) that organizations were bodies in motion and politeness was the lubricant that kept the organizations working smoothly.

At one of my previous organizations, we had a meeting with the executives of another business unit to review a chargeback issue. There was a problem with the design of chargeback mechanism. The result was that IT did not have enough dollars to meet business needs. During the meeting, one of the IT executives got frustrated and said that if the issue was not resolved then he would have the appropriate chargeback amount directly deducted from the budget of the business unit. The debate got a little heated and there was an exchange of insults couched in satirical language. The resulting distraction delayed IT investment and business results by at least three to four months at huge loss to the organization.

Should a savvy executive allow a personal insult get in the way of organizational or professional goals?
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