If an employer wants to issue me a company phone, that's fine. If an employer wants to enable IMAP, that's fine. Otherwise, I won't have mobile access to email, because the risk is unacceptable. And if that's not fine - well, it's been great talking with you, and I appreciate your time, but I'm afraid this position doesn't seem like a good fit after all.
There are various third party applications that will allow you to use Exchange protocols without the OS integration: they'll let the Exchange server admins wipe the application's container/data rather than the entire phone. I think it's a much fairer implementation.
Source : I have implemented this protocol.
So I guess I can understand not trusting the IT department but I worry very little about losing the data on the device.
Of course if you're not sold on the cloud-backed model because of privacy concerns and you prefer treating your device itself as a source of truth and a secure store then I can understand the attitude.