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I felt like - this is it, I am proud of myself and I’ve made my parents proud.”
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She was wowed by the firm’s UK headquarters and the buzz she got after being given a company phone, a laptop and a corporate credit card. Lucy can still remember her excitement the day she started as a trainee auditor at EY, one of the world’s largest accounting firms. “I have a really hard time accepting that the people who are writing the rules of the corporate world are the same people who, when the rubber hits the road, really have no ethics and will ruin someone’s life to protect their reputation.” “Their clients are in every industry in the world, from universities to governments to businesses, and they are the ones setting the bar on ethics,” says Mary. They found this particularly galling given the influential role the Big Four - who employ more than one million people between them and posted $154bn in collective revenues over the past 12 months- have in advising the world’s most powerful institutions on best management practices. Many of these whistleblowers - most of whom shared documents with the FT that supported their accounts - claim they were treated like pariahs by their employers at a time when they most expected to receive support. Much worse than the incident itself is the fact that the company I thought was going to protect me then betrayed me and protected him
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Some don’t want their friends and families to know the full extent of their experiences. Several worry about employers viewing them as troublemakers, or about the impact of breaking confidentiality agreements. Many were extremely concerned about speaking to the FT, asking to meet in inconspicuous coffee shops and scanning the door every time a new customer walked in. “That has been much more damaging to me in the long run.” “Much worse than the incident itself is the fact that the company I thought was going to protect me then betrayed me and protected him and hung me out to dry,” says Mary. Legal clauses aimed at silencing them swiftly followed nine of those interviewed said they were pressured into signing restrictive non-disclosure agreements. The FT identified a disturbingly common pattern in terms of how complainants were treated: most initially felt ignored, then isolated and were eventually pushed out. They are among 20 former employees from the Big Four accounting firms who have spoken to the Financial Times about their experience of harassment, bullying and discrimination in the workplace over the course of a year’s investigation into how these firms treat whistleblowers within their ranks. These individuals worked for four of the most renowned names in the business world: EY, Deloitte, KPMG and PwC. Julia felt ostracised by colleagues at the Tokyo branch of her firm because she was not ethnically Japanese, and says she was subjected to a form of bullying known as mushi in Japan, in which the victim is completely ignored by co-workers.