[BWStearns]

Computers like most other things in life offer opportunities to screw up and engineering things requires a tradeoff between babysitting and general utility. I think the potential damage in the case above (the occasional presenter has to change a password afterwards) is less damaging than enabling most people to choose better passwords. Your coworker is unlikely to misuse that information. More likely: you have a shitty password and someone breaks a stolen hash because 'Pa$$word' isn't really that creative. I view accidentally showing your password briefly to coworkers as on par with accidentally having an embarrassing email up when you flip on the projector: unlikely to cause long term harm, slightly blush-inducing.

Edit: not implying that we should set up security procedures based on implicit trust of those we work with, but if you're talking about a global internet wide convention then likelihoods are more informative than exceptions.

[tedunangst]

Replace "change a password" with "change all your passwords" and it's a lot less fun.