Teaching Enron: the rhetoric and ethics of whistle-blowing

Sherron Watkins has been labeled a corporate whistleblower based on the letter she sent in August 2001 to Kenneth Lay, Chairman of the Board of the Enron Corporation. In her letter she identified Enron's unethical and illegal financial management practices, but her letter was never made public until the company's stock was all but worthless. This case is based on the Watkins letter, as well as other articles published in the New York Times and Time magazine. First, we identify the context of the Enron scandal, reviewing the accounting practices that Watkins revealed in her letter. Second, we analyze the Watkins letter, focusing on the rhetorical moves that Watkins makes in the letter and discussing how these moves constitute a persona for Watkins as author. Finally, we present a developed case for use in the classroom; the case continues the analysis of Watkins' persona as it evolves through articles in other publications. We argue that the persona Watkins creates for herself in her letter undergoes a transformation so that by the time she appears as Time magazine's Person of the Year 2002, she is corporate whistleblower. The case includes a two-day course plan with specified student learning outcomes, teaching resources, a group activity, and a selection of student responses to the case.