How to win when you're right: reporter Bethany McLean fought to expose the truth about the Enron corporation. Here, she shares the lessons she learned about standing your ground. (On My Mind).(Brief Article)

* After Enron imploded from an accounting scandal last fall, I felt horrible for the thousands of employees who had had their life savings wiped out, but I also felt a wave of satisfaction. Back in March 2001, I published a skeptical story in Fortune about the company's stratospheric stock entitled "Is Enron Overpriced?" When I called then-CEO Jeff Skilling to ask him questions before we went to press, he accused me of being unethical and said I hadn't taken the time to understand the company. The next day, three Enron executives flew from Texas to New York to convince me I was wrong, while chairman Ken Lay called my boss to complain about me. But my piece ran, and as it turned out, their underlying concern wasn't that the article was negative but that it was true.

Asking challenging questions and then standing my ground in the face of an angry response doesn't come naturally to me. Although I did well in school, I was always more comfortable expressing my opinion in writing and kept mostly silent during class debates. When I began my career in journalism, I worried that my dislike of confrontation would hold me back. I wanted to write stories that would raise important issues, but when it came time to ask the tough questions, I'd get that sick, nervous feeling in my stomach. Then an editor gave me a valuable piece of advice. "It's not easy for anyone," he said. "The important thing is whether you do it or not--and you have only those two choices." In the case of Enron, here are some steps I took that can give you confidence in a confrontation:

1. Do your homework. No matter how smart you are, there's no substitute for concrete information. I spent a month researching Enron before I concluded that its finances didn't justify its then high stock price. So by the time I placed that call to the company, I had all the evidence right in front of me. People have to work harder to contest your facts than they ...