User list shows wrong profile fields (of previously listed users)

If some of public user profile fields are empty, instead of showing nothing, the user list displays values of a previously listed user. The problem is in the the folloiwing function, where $fields argument is already initialized to previous user values.

/**
 * Helper function: update an array of user fields by calling profile_view_field
 */
function _profile_update_user_fields($fields, $account) {
  foreach ($fields as $key => $field) {
    if ($value = profile_view_field($account, $field){
      $fields[$key]->value = $value;
    }
  }
  return $fields;
}

A quick fix is to change the if line to if (($value = profile_view_field($account, $field)) || $value == ''). However, the if clause could probably be eliminated altogether. In that case, the whole function might be redundant.