In 2002, Cynthia Cooper, Vice President of Internal Audit at WorldCom, made a decision that would reveal one of the greatest corporate scandals in U.S. history.  Cooper discovered that WorldCom’s crafty accounting methods turned a $662 million loss into a $2.4 billion profit. In public reports the company had falsely categorized billions of dollars as capital expenditures in 2001. Rather than bury her findings and look the other way, Cooper made the decision to file her report, which unleashed a firestorm of investigations, media coverage, and accusations. The repercussions were enormous and in the months that followed, Cooper faced not only personal and professional challenges, but had to deal with the fact that by reporting her findings she triggered a remarkable fallout, including: Scott Sullivan, CFO, was indicted on charges of securities fraud, WorldCom filed for bankruptcy, 17,000 employees were made redundant around the globe, Shareholders lost some $3 billion, and the California public employees' retirement system, the largest state pension fund in the United States, lost $580 million it had invested in WorldCom.

Following Cooper from her early upbringing in Mississippi, to her high-level position in WorldCom, to the issues of fraud that she confronted, to the fall of WorldCom, Extraordinary Circumstances is an insider’s guide to the decision-making process that led her to "blow the whistle" and the role her personal faith and ethics played during this challenging time.  This book shows how one person's beliefs and values gave her the courage to tell the truth about widespread corporate wrongdoing at WorldCom, the number two long-distance carrier in the United States at the time, despite the extraordinary personal and professional risks. After its collapse, Cooper continued to work at WorldCom (which merged with MCI and is now known as Verizon) but in 2004 she resigned her position as the Chief Audit Executive for MCI to form her own consulting business, which specializes in consulting and training in internal audit, internal controls, governance, and ethics.