It is not as severe of a consequence as my story, but it reminds me of a scene from Suits where the owner of an investment firm is adamant he had no knowledge of illegal activities occurring under his nose by his hedge fund manager. Lawyer's response? "It is your [profanity] responsibility to know" (paraphrased). In other words, little oversight, and no controls.
Management should have immediately removed the departed preparer from software (or disabled them), and reassigned clients to another tax preparer. Failure to do so certainly represents poor controls, and as others mentioned, can lead to circumstances where intent is brought into question. Let's pretend the statement concerning the new tax preparer forgetting to change the paid-preparer info was not made, because it is management's responsibility to ensure that is done. It is why, for example, most tax prep programs allow you to easily reassign clients to different tax preparers.
Also, forget the printed name in the signature field. Do you not physically sign paper returns? Perhaps I am just uptight, but not a single printed return leaves my office without my physical signature over my printed name.