Enron whistleblower talks ethics, corruption to business students

More than 400 students and faculty from the Kelley School of Business heard former Enron executive Lynn Brewer speak in the IU Auditorium on Friday about the unscrupulous dealings she witnessed within the infamous energy company.\nBrewer recounted her personal experiences working for Enron, where she oversaw risk management in energy operations, e-commerce initiatives for Enron's water subsidiary and competitive intelligence for Enron Broadband Services. She cited specific examples of unscrupulous behavior and fraudulent actions within the company that she directly witnessed and explained how Enron got away with it for some time.\nAfter seeing fraud firsthand and telling her supervisor about it, Brewer said she was discouraged from bringing it up again. She explained the ethical dilemma she faced and how it could be tempting to ignore.\n"Some days I was making $20,000 or $30,000 per day. I didn't even have to go to work to make money," she said. "I began to realize that I'd been given twice as many stock options. ... I realized that I'd become Enron at that moment because I chose to look the other way for the financial benefit of the stock options, something that (former Enron CEO) Jeff Skilling and (former Enron chairman) Ken Lay were doing every day."\nIn addition to telling her own story, Brewer made an example out of Enron by explaining how easy it is for large corporations to become entangled in corruption and what students should know before considering a job at such places.\n"When you hear about Enron or other companies like them, you have to realize there are two destructive forces within these companies," she said. "There is the corruption that goes on, but that's very small. The more destructive force is the complacency towards that corruption, which allows it to grow."\nBrewer, who left Enron because of frustration she felt with the company after refusing to acknowledge the crookedness she reported, wrote the novel "Confessions of an Enron Executive: A Whistleblower's Story," which chronicles her days at Enron and explains why she decided to blow the whistle on corruption at the company. \n"It really is up for you in the audience to take these lessons learned today and change it for the future," she said. \nHowever, not all in attendance felt Brewer was an appropriate person to talk about ethics. \n"It wasn't a credible speaker, and the speech was a waste of time," said junior Elise Roberts. "I just didn't think she had any room to talk because she did the same thing as everyone else. She just happened to resign at the right time so that she could get out with the millions that she made without getting caught and then reap the benefits of blowing the whistle"