Depth of code nesting can be reduced using many syntactic tricks. You have shown the use of multiple return. This trick is generally considered as a hidden goto (go to the end of the function).
'GOTO considered harmful' is practically biblical law amongst many programmers, but it's worth remembering that he made that statement in the context of an argument with Donald Knuth. Knuth won: (http://pplab.snu.ac.kr/courses/adv_pl05/papers/p261-knuth.pd...)
Strict application of usual "good" coding conventions works well in most of the cases, but always results in poor code for the remaining cases.
I think a relaxed application of coding conventions would be better, but in case of code review, this requires a lot of efforts to explain why the not compliant code is cleaner.
Writing code compliant to coding convention is frustrating, but is often easier than to convince stupid bosses.
The compliant way to reduce code nesting is to create small functions (with a single return), even if they are called only once.