The cost of being right

Every society has its unwelcome truth tellers. In Bangladesh, we treat them with refined politeness. We do not silence them loudly; we quietly make them disappear from our lives. Our corporate culture has perfected this courtesy. In this ecosystem, incompetence is manageable, corruption is negotiable, and power is protected. What truly disrupts the system is not wrongdoing, but the decision to speak from the weaker end of the hierarchy. Until then, calls are returned, meetings happen, and tea arrives on time. Once the truth enters the conversation, calendars fill up, and support turns symbolic.

This is why so many corporate stories feel painfully familiar. Across television, film, and real life, the ending is rarely a mystery. Institutions survive, perpetrators adjust, and the victim bears the longest and heaviest cost of speaking up. That’s why everyone advises, don’t take a fight with your company!

In recent weeks, I watched two television series, which claimed to be true stories, set in corporate environments. One followed a sexual abuse complaint that ended in a sanitised termination letter. The other revolved around a rape allegation slowly buried under legal language, power equations, and organisational loyalty. I also watched a Netflix film, “Haq”, based on a “true story.” Different formats, different continents, same moral conclusion. The perpetrator remains protected by the institution and the legal system. The victim is left to negotiate with society without morale.

Power, it turns out, travels well across borders. What binds these stories together is not crime but consequence. Once a complaint is made public, the victim’s life begins to shrink. Careers stall. Social invitations dry up. Support becomes conditional and carefully private. Sympathy arrives quietly in personal messages, while public distance is maintained with professional elegance.

In a corporate environment, association is everything. Reputation behaves like a stock price. The moment a name becomes controversial, it is treated as volatile. Employers become risk managers. Recruiters turn into compliance officers. The resume may be impressive, the competence undeniable, but the file is quietly set aside. Litigation risk, cultural fit, timing issues. Polite phrases do heavy lifting.

Global data support this lived reality. Studies from the United States and Europe indicate that more than half of workplace abuse complainants face retaliation, while a significant portion struggle to re-enter comparable employment for years. In Asia, where hierarchy is deeply cultural and dissent deeply uncomfortable, the cost is often higher.

What is striking is the absence of institutional or legal support for any victims. There are organisations for many forms of injustice, rightly so. But if you are a mid-career professional undone by corporate politics, abuse, or retaliation, you are mainly on your own. Corporate victims are not a recognised category. They do not mobilise donors. They do not produce neat narratives.

Yet some fool still speaks. The protagonists in those series and that film knew the odds and went ahead anyway. Real life, however, is harsher than fiction. Court cases are longer than expected. Savings disappear faster than anticipated. Justice, if it arrives, arrives late.

I see similar stories unfold close to home. A former colleague, capable and credible, now spends his days chasing interviews to survive, while funding a legal battle against an organisation with deeper pockets and longer patience. People wish him well. Quietly. Few are willing to be seen. My 32 years of corporate experience are not significantly different.

As a society, we celebrate courage only in retrospect, in books or in our lectures. We admire integrity once it is safe to do so. While the victim is still living with the consequences, we choose to distance ourselves. Neutrality feels respectable. Silence feels prudent.

Silence is not neutral. It always sides with power. Until we are willing to stand visibly with the victim and carry some of the discomfort ourselves, we will keep perfecting systems that protect institutions and abandon those who tell the truth.

The writer is the president of the Institute of Cost and Management Accountants of Bangladesh and founder of BuildCon Consultancies Ltd