When Philip Bowman was chief financial officer of Coles Myer, an Australian retailer, he exposed the fact that a vice-chairman had used a big chunk of the retailer's money to buy shares in a company that he, the vice-chairman, controlled. The case made headline news. Yet even after a two-year court battle to win compensation for wrongful dismissal, Mr Bowman was, in effect, ostracised from working in his home country. He says that companies that might have hired him worried about skeletons lurking in their own cupboards. Yet Mr Bowman was lucky: he moved to Britain and subsequently became chief executive of Allied Domecq, the world's second-largest wines and spirits group. Sadly, few whistle-blowers' stories end so happily. Many ruin their careers, and sometimes even their health. Because of society's aversion to people who are often seen more as snitches than as heroes, those who blow the whistle (and put up with the persecution and harassment that almost invariably follow) have to be abnormally persistent. They become obsessive about their cause and blind to other aspects of their life. Many end up pursuing personal vendettas as well as the wrongdoing that originally sparked their action.
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