The Right Way to Blow the Whistle
Insiders who go public with company dirt often pay a terrible price. Enron's Sherron Watkins may start a different legacy
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Enron Vice-President Sherron Watkins has emerged as a hero for speaking out when no one else would about the company's accounting practices. Last August, she dropped her now-famous memo in former Chairman Kenneth L. Lay's in-box, warning that the energy trader might "implode in a wave of accounting scandals." In hindsight, her warning was remarkably prescient.
Future whistleblowers may want to follow her example closely. So far, she's writing a new chapter on how to come forward with important information when no one else will, say past whistleblowers and career experts.