Bethany McLean

Bethany McLean wrote a Fortune article in March 2001 asking "Is Enron Overpriced?" — the first prominent challenge to Enron's inflated valuations. This investigative work, continued with Peter Elkind in the book "The Smartest Guys in the Room" (2003), documented Enron's massive accounting fraud. She later co-wrote "All the Devils Are Here" (with Joe Nocera) about the 2008 financial crisis and "Shaky Ground" about the ongoing conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. McLean is one of the few journalists who has broken major financial fraud stories before regulatory investigations. Her method — combining deep document review with rigorous questioning of accounting assumptions that analysts accepted at face value — demonstrated that financial journalism, when practiced with analytical rigor, can serve as an effective check on corporate misconduct that regulators and auditors may overlook.