Podcasts

From Spreadsheets to Raids: What Happens When We Defund Financial Oversight

Earmark Team · February 5, 2026 ·

Three years ago, Fox News host Greg Gutfeld warned viewers that 87,000 new IRS agents would create a “police state.” Today, armed ICE agents are going door-to-door in Minneapolis without warrants, investigating financial fraud. In other words, doing the work accountants would normally do with spreadsheets and calculators.

“We’ve replaced armed IRS agents with armed ICE agents doing work for the IRS,” says David Leary, co-host of The Accounting Podcast, still trying to process this turn of events. “I’ve lost sleep over this.”

In their latest episode, David and co-host Blake Oliver connect the dots between the 2022 fight over IRS funding and today’s reality in Minnesota, where billions in fraud have led to what they call a predictable but devastating outcome.

Minnesota’s Billion-Dollar Fraud Problem

The numbers coming out of Minnesota are staggering. On December 19th, prosecutors announced charges against more than 90 people across multiple public assistance programs. The fraud schemes read like a criminal playbook: daycares that collected $110 million through fake claims, the Feeding Our Future scandal that stole nearly $250 million in pandemic food aid, autism services billing for work never performed, using unqualified staff, and housing stabilization fraud.

A federal warrant has flagged 14 Medicare programs with significant fraud problems. The potential losses are in the billions.

“This is fraud that has taken place over many years,” David explains. The investigation has been ongoing for a while, but the political fallout came fast. Trump accused Somali immigrants of widespread fraud. A YouTuber documentary filmmaker went to Minnesota and started visiting these daycares, creating viral content that painted Minnesota as corrupt on all fronts.

In response, Trump sent 2,000 ICE agents to carry out what he called “the largest immigration operation ever.”

But here’s where it gets interesting for accountants. As Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin explained on a radio show, “Right now, on the ground in Minneapolis, Homeland Security investigators are going door to door to these suspected fraud sites. It’s daycare centers or healthcare centers and businesses around them as well.”

No warrants. Just agents showing up at doors.

Compare that to what happened just 30 days earlier at Taco Giro in Tucson. ICE and IRS Criminal Investigation spent years building a case, got proper warrants, then executed 16 search warrants as part of their investigation into immigration and tax violations. That’s how law enforcement used to work: investigation, evidence, warrants, then action.

“Raids have replaced audits and guns have replaced spreadsheets,” David observes.

The Time Machine: Back to 2022

To understand how we got here, Blake and David take listeners back to April 18, 2022. As explained in episode 292 of what was then called the Cloud Accounting Podcast, that’s when the IRS was set to receive $80 billion through the Inflation Reduction Act, including funding for 87,000 new enforcement agents.

The political response was fierce. They replay a segment featuring enrolled agent Adam Markowitz, whose tweet went viral and got him attacked on Fox News. Markowitz wrote, “All of my GOP friends who are worried about the 87,000 IRS enforcement agents coming after the little guy. How about just don’t cheat on tax returns?”

Gutfeld’s response on Fox was brutal, calling Markowitz a “schmuck” and warning viewers, “If you have an IQ higher than an artichoke, you must see that by now, this country is heading towards a police state.”

“The police state still happened,” David points out. “We didn’t avoid it.”

The hosts then shared a detail most people missed. In November 2024, a federal judge blocked the IRS from further record sharing with ICE. But the court documents revealed the IRS had already handed over tens of thousands of taxpayer records to ICE, including home addresses. ICE had requested more than one million records from the IRS.

“This might be the reason Billy Long is out,” David speculates about the departed IRS commissioner nominee. “He might have been pushing back on this.”

Following the Money (Or Not)

The pattern is clear to anyone who understands accounting controls. Over the past decade, Congress repeatedly cut the IRS budget while increasing funding for ICE. They shifted from investigation and fines to enforcement.

“Taxes dictate social policies,” David notes. “Budgets also do that. What you fund and budget is what the government is going to do.”

The result is less nonprofit oversight, slower detection of payroll and benefits fraud, and fewer audits. The absence of all those controls that seemed expensive created billions in fraud.

“We’re in the golden age of fraud,” David warns. “Maybe the new Enron is not one company; it’s just billions and billions and billions of small frauds because we’ve cut all of the controls that might catch it.”

Blake connects this to broader economic concerns. According to a Harris poll, 45% of Americans believe their financial security is worsening. Even 45% of Republicans think the economy is in a recession, despite GDP growth of 4.3% in Q3.

“If you’re the president and you don’t want people paying attention to the economy, what do you do?” Blake asks. “You start foreign conflicts or you create internal conflict.”

The Profession’s Own Control Problems

The accounting profession has its own control problem. The AICPA recently proposed major ethics rule changes for firms backed by private equity, worried that outside money could compromise auditor independence.

Under the new rules, firms can’t escape independence requirements by simply creating separate legal entities. If a CPA firm depends on a non-CPA entity for staff and infrastructure, they’re treated as one unit for independence purposes. PE-backed firms also can’t audit portfolio companies in the same fund.

“As CPAs, we stand for independence, objectivity, ethics,” Blake emphasizes. “Nobody else can do audits.”

But existing controls don’t always have teeth. The hosts discuss WH Smith, the historic British retailer. Their audit firm, PwC, missed profit misstatements that cost shareholders 600 million pounds. Yet the board recommended keeping PwC as their auditor.

“An auditor can cost a company half a billion dollars and they keep their contract,” David says, incredulous. “If anyone else failed that badly, you would fire them.”

The Lesson for Accountants

“Everything’s an accounting story,” David insists, and this one hits close to home.

The Minnesota fraud crisis shows what happens when you defund financial oversight. The 2022 IRS debate shows how fear of government overreach led to the exact outcome critics wanted to avoid. The profession’s own struggles with independence and accountability show these patterns repeat everywhere.

“If you have underfunded controls and you don’t have preventive measures, it always shows up as a very big expense,” David explains. “One time it was Enron. Now the expense is humans getting shot.”

Accountants talking to clients about taxes can do their part by explaining where that money goes and why controls matter. Because the alternative—as Minnesota shows—is much worse.

Blake and David dig deeper into these connections in the full episode, including their take on California’s proposed billionaire tax, why wars boost economies, and what Excel championship winners can teach us about efficiency. Listen to the complete discussion above or wherever you get your podcasts.

Three Fraud Schemes, Two Decades, and a Quarter-Billion Dollars in Stolen Money

Earmark Team · February 5, 2026 ·

On January 20, 2021, the last day of Donald Trump’s first presidential term, Eliyahu “Eli” Weinstein got a phone call that would rank among the best days of anyone’s life. The President of the United States had commuted his sentence, freeing him after eight years of a 24-year prison term for running a $200 million Ponzi scheme.

Six months later, he was already planning his next fraud.

In this episode of Oh My Fraud, host Caleb Newquist traces the jaw-dropping story of a fraudster who got a presidential second chance and immediately used it to steal another $44 million. It’s a tale that spans two decades, three separate fraud schemes, and over a quarter-billion dollars in losses.

The Community Leader Who Betrayed Everyone’s Trust

Eli wasn’t some shadowy figure operating from the margins. He was a pillar of the Orthodox Jewish community in Lakewood Township, New Jersey—home to Beth Medrash Govoha, the largest yeshiva outside of Israel. The son of a Jewish community leader and school principal from Brooklyn, Eli was known for his devout faith and generous donations to religious organizations. He spent millions on Judaica, Jewish devotional artwork and artifacts.

Starting around 2004, Eli began raising money for real estate deals. His pitch was simple: he had access to below-market properties, could flip them quickly to developers he had lined up, and everyone would make guaranteed returns with little risk. In the tight-knit Orthodox community, where deals often happen on handshakes with minimal paperwork, a respected leader’s word was his bond.

According to the 2011 federal indictment, just three investors—two in the UK and one in Bronxville, New York—put in over $136 million. The total losses exceeded $200 million.

The details in the indictment would be darkly funny if real people hadn’t lost everything. Eli raised $5.4 million for a project involving a national supermarket chain in Trotwood, Georgia. The only problems were there is no Trotwood, Georgia, and the supermarket chain had never heard of him.

Then there was the widow in Los Angeles who worked to help orphaned and poor children in Israel. Her dream was to open a music school for these kids. Eli convinced her to give him $1.2 million, promising to repay it in three weeks with interest. When she emailed asking him to “stop screwing around” and return her money, Eli’s response was two words: “f— you.”

He told a widow who helps orphans to go *$#%! herself.

But wait, it gets worse. When meeting with one victim’s representative, Eli asked what the representative’s wife and Eli had in common. When the man said he didn’t know, Eli replied, “We both f***ed you.”

The Judge Saw Right Through Him

At sentencing in February 2014, Judge Joel Pisano didn’t mince words. “You are a cheat. You lied and your deception is relentless. You’re consumed by deception.” He sentenced Eli to 22 years in prison, plus $250 million in restitution and $215 million in forfeiture.

But Eli couldn’t stop, even while awaiting trial. In February 2012, already under indictment, he started pitching investors on pre-IPO Facebook shares and Florida real estate he didn’t have. He used the money he raised to pay his lawyers for the fraud case.

That earned him an additional 24 months, bringing his total sentence to over 24 years. By white collar crime standards, it was harsh. But Eli had something most convicted fraudsters don’t: connections to people who could get his case in front of the President.

A Second Chance Immediately Squandered

The campaign for Eli’s clemency was well-organized. Criminal justice reform advocates argued his sentence was excessive. The White House statement noted that “numerous victims had written in support” and emphasized his seven children and loving marriage.

On Trump’s last day in office, he granted clemency to more than a dozen people facing fraud charges, which was a dramatic break from historical norms. As Caleb notes in the episode, white collar criminals were “very infrequently chosen for clemency” before Trump.

By July 2021, just six months after his release, Eli was building his next scheme. But his name and face had been everywhere. So he became “Mike Konig.”

The vehicle was Optimus Investments, Inc., supposedly dedicated to brokering deals on personal protective equipment (PPE) like masks, gloves, and hand sanitizer. This was mid-2021, when COVID supplies were still the hottest commodity on earth. “Mike Konig” claimed to have networks of government agencies, Turkish factory owners, and Israeli lawyers. He was always cagey about details. If everyone knew his contacts, he said, they could “reverse engineer him out of business.”

Richard Curry and Christopher Anderson started Tryon Management Group to raise money for these deals, eventually bringing in tens of millions. Investors received regular updates with videos of factories producing masks. “This is something that potentially has major legs,” Curry wrote enthusiastically.

Except almost none of it was real.

The Elaborate COVID Con Unravels

The deception was breathtaking. They hired temporary staff to pretend to be factory workers for videos. Someone in Vietnam procured just enough medical gear to fill a few kits for show. They purchased 5,000 empty boxes, wrapped them, and put them on pallets to represent orders.

The red flags were everywhere. A spreadsheet of Optimus’s expenses included a line reading “mystery expenses” next to $41,028,233.05. As Caleb observes, “A company dealing in medical supplies should not have mystery expenses. The only type of business that should have mystery expenses is whatever Scooby-Doo and the gang are always up to.”

Everything unraveled when Alaa Hattab, an Optimus associate, accidentally revealed the truth to Curry and Anderson. The baby formula deal was fake. The biggest mask deals were fake. The first aid kit deal was also fake.

Then came the bombshell: Mike Konig was actually Eli.

Curry and Anderson confronted him with hidden recording devices. On tape, Eli admitted, “I finagled and lied to people to cover us.” Then he asked them to keep his secret and help him continue. Incredibly, they agreed—at least temporarily.

By November 2022, with inflation surging and investors demanding their money, Tryon halted redemptions. When investors compared notes and found inconsistencies, one filed an SEC whistleblower report. The FBI arrested Eli at his home on July 18, 2023.

The Lessons for Accounting Professionals

After a seven-week trial, Eli was convicted in 2025 of securities fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy. In November 2025, he received a 37-year sentence. Over two decades, he had stolen more than a quarter-billion dollars.

Yitz Grossman, who had championed Eli’s clemency, told Bloomberg, “I still feel sick and embarrassed to speak with some of these people who gave me a letter to help out this family. My conclusion is he’s sick and he can’t control himself. He’s a deal junkie. He thinks he’s smarter than everybody else.”

This case is a reminder to accounting professionals and fraud examiners to look out for red flags appear over and over again, like:

Guaranteed returns with little risk
Short turnarounds that seem too good to be true
Minimal documentation or transparency
“Mystery expenses” in the tens of millions
Deals involving places that don’t exist

It also highlights how affinity fraud remains devastatingly effective because it weaponizes the trust that holds communities together. Eli’s victims trusted someone who demonstrated a commitment to their shared values.

On the political front, Obama’s administration created the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force in 2009 to prosecute financial crimes. Trump terminated it and replaced it with his own version. As Caleb observes with characteristic bluntness, Trump is “mercurial, petty, vindictive” and wouldn’t be above granting clemency to people Obama prosecuted simply because Obama prosecuted them.

The broader lesson is that when we reserve mercy for the wealthy and connected while ordinary offenders remain incarcerated, that’s not mercy at all. “That’s callous. That’s malevolent. And now maybe it’s American,” Caleb says.
Eli’s lawyer maintains his innocence and will appeal.

Listen to the full episode of Oh My Fraud to hear all the jaw-dropping details, damning quotes from court documents, and Caleb’s sharp commentary on what this case reveals about fraud, mercy, and American justice. Because when someone uses a presidential pardon to immediately start stealing again, we all need to pay attention.

Which Employee Benefits Survived Recent Tax Legislation and Which Disappeared Forever?

Earmark Team · February 5, 2026 ·

Picture an HVAC technician standing in a Florida hardware store, personal credit card in hand, about to purchase a part needed to complete an air conditioning repair. It’s a routine moment that plays out thousands of times daily across the country: an employee spending personal funds on a legitimate business expense. But what happens next determines whether that simple transaction remains a straightforward reimbursement or transforms into unexpected taxable income.

This scenario is part of the final installment of the Tax in Action podcast’s three-part series on fringe benefits. In this episode, host Jeremy Wells, EA, CPA, completes his comprehensive discussion of IRC Section 132 benefits by looking at the remaining four fringe benefit categories and tackling the often-misunderstood topic of accountable plans.

The timing couldn’t be better. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 initially suspended many traditional benefits through 2025. Now, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act has made those restrictions permanent. And ir’s crucial for tax practitioners to understand these changes.

The Legislative Wrecking Ball: What’s Gone and What Remains

Before advising clients on fringe benefits, practitioners need a clear picture of what recent legislation has taken off the table permanently.

No Qualified Transportation Benefits Deductions for Employers

The qualified transportation fringe once covered four benefit categories:

Transportation in a commuter highway vehicle
Transit passes
Qualified parking
Qualified bicycle commuting reimbursement

For employers in major cities, these benefits were a meaningful way to help employees manage commuting costs.

That’s all changed now.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act disallowed the employer deduction for these benefits from 2018 through 2025, with one narrow exception: employers could still deduct transportation costs provided to ensure employee safety. As Jeremy explains, this means “vehicles that need additional security, such as bulletproof glass or a driver, a chauffeur that is trained in defensive driving techniques”—not typical small business scenarios.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act made this disallowance permanent under IRC Section 274(a)(4).

But there’s a crucial nuance: the employee exclusion still exists for most of these benefits. Employees can still receive transit passes or qualified parking tax-free, within the limits in Treasury Regulation Section 1.132-9. The employer just can’t deduct the cost anymore. This creates an awkward situation where “there’s really not a strong incentive for the business to provide that fringe benefit,” Jeremy notes.

Bicycle commuting reimbursement fared worse. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act eliminated both the employer deduction and the employee exclusion entirely. “Beginning with tax year 2018, the qualified bicycle commuting reimbursement is no longer a thing,” Jeremy confirms.

Moving Expense Reimbursements Apply Only to Military and Intelligence

Under IRC Section 217, employers used to be able to exclude from employee income the reimbursement of moving household goods and travel expenses between residences (including lodging but not meals). It was a practical benefit for companies relocating talent.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act suspended the exclusion and the individual’s ability to deduct moving expenses. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act made that suspension permanent, with two specific exceptions.

Members of the U.S. Armed Forces on active duty who move pursuant to a military order still qualify. Also, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act added employees or new appointees of the intelligence community, as defined in Section 3 of the National Security Act of 1947.

For everyone else, this is a benefit “we just really won’t see that much anymore,” Jeremy says.

What Benefits Survived?

Not all benefits fell victim to legislative changes. Two Section 132 benefits emerged unscathed.

Qualified Retirement Planning Services (Section 132(m)) allows employers maintaining qualified employer plans to provide tax-free retirement planning advice to employees and their spouses. Jeremy describes this as situations where “you might meet with a financial advisor” when becoming eligible for employer-sponsored retirement plans.

The benefit requires nondiscrimination. Highly compensated employees can participate only if services are available “on substantially the same terms to each member of the group of employees.”

Qualified Military Base Realignment and Closure Fringe (Section 132(n)) compensates military personnel and certain federal civilian employees for housing value declines caused by base closures. Jeremy explains how military bases drive local economies, and when they close, “selling a house could be pretty difficult.”

The Defense Department’s Homeowners Assistance Program provides three payment scenarios:

Private sale: difference between 95% of prior fair market value and actual selling price
Government acquisition: greater of 90% of prior value or mortgage payoff
Foreclosure: payment directly to lienholder

The program is run by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and is currently limited to wounded, injured, or ill soldiers and their surviving spouses.

Achievement Awards and the Gym Membership Myth

Beyond Section 132, two benefit categories generate frequent questions (and misconceptions).

Specific Rules for Achievement Awards

Employee achievement awards survived legislative changes intact. Employers can provide tax-free awards for length of service and safety achievements, but the rules are rigid.

Safety achievement awards cannot go to “a manager, administrator, clerical employee, or other professional employee.” Jeremy clarifies the recipient must be “someone that is actually in a line of work within that company where safety could be an issue.” For example, awards can go to workers on factory floors or construction sites, but not office workers.

No more than 10% of eligible employees can receive safety awards annually.

Length of service awards require at least five years of employment. Jeremy notes these are “usually ten, 15, 20 years” in practice.

For both categories, the awards must meet the following requirements:

It must be tangible personal property (such as the “stereotypical gold wristwatch”)
It cannot be cash, cash equivalents, vacations, meals, lodging, event tickets, or securities
The award must involve a “meaningful presentation,” such as a sort of ceremony or all-hands meeting
The award cannot create conditions suggesting disguised compensation

There are also dollar limits to keep in mind. The award value is limited to $1,600 per employee per year for qualified plan awards, and $400 for non-qualified awards. A qualified plan must be written and not discriminate toward highly compensated employees.

Athletic Facilities: The Question That Won’t Die

Jeremy addresses a common question from self-employed clients: “How do I let my business write off my gym membership?”

But gym memberships are inherently personal expenses, and therefore not deductible.

The athletic facilities benefit under IRC Section 132(j-4) requires the facility be “owned or leased and operated by the employer” for the “substantially exclusive use” of employees, spouses, and dependent children.

The following absolutely do not qualify:

Gym memberships
Country club memberships
Personal trainers
Any fitness program open to the public

Jeremy sympathizes with self-employed clients who want to look good for their clientele, but wanting doesn’t make it deductible. The only path requires the business to literally own or operate the gym itself.

The Three-Requirement Test for Accountable Plans

When employees spend their own money on business expenses, accountable plans determine whether reimbursements are tax-free or taxable wages.

The Employee’s Dilemma

IRC Section 62(a)(1) creates a problem. Employees cannot deduct business expenses from their gross income. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act suspended the old miscellaneous itemized deduction (subject to 2% of AGI), and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act made the exclusions permanent.

Returning to Jeremy’s HVAC technician example, “They get to a site, they are ready to make the repair, but they’re missing a part.” The technician buys it with personal funds. Without proper reimbursement, “this was not a personal expense. This was a business expense. The employee should expect to be reimbursed.”

Three Requirements, Zero Flexibility

Treasury Regulation 1.62-2 establishes three criteria for accountable plans. Miss any one, and “allowances, advancements and reimbursements paid under a non-accountable plan have to be included in the employee’s gross income.”

Requirement 1: Business Connection

The expense must be “ordinary and necessary for the employer” and incurred “in connection with the performance of services as an employee.”

Jeremy warns against payments made “regardless of whether the employee actually incurs or is reasonably expected to incur bona fide employee business expenses.” Those payments automatically fail the test.

Requirement 2: Substantiation

For general expenses, employees must provide documentation “sufficient to enable the payer to identify the specific nature of each expense.” Vague terms like “miscellaneous business expenses” don’t qualify.

For Section 274(d) expenses (travel, meals, vehicle use), strict rules require:

Dates and durations
Locations and distances
Business purpose
Identity of individuals involved

Jeremy emphasizes “receipts or contemporaneous logbooks” as the standard.

Requirement 3: Return of Excess

When providing advances, employers must get back any unsubstantiated amounts. Jeremy gives a simple example: “You give an employee $100 to drive across the county” but receipts total $40. “The employee needs to return the additional $60.”

A safe harbor exists if the company provides quarterly statements showing advances versus substantiated amounts and gives employees 120 days to substantiate or return the excess.

The Cascade Effect of Failure

Revenue Ruling 2006-56 contains a harsh rule. If an arrangement “routinely pays allowances in excess of the amount substantiated without requiring actual substantiation” or repayment, “all the payments, not just the excess, but all payments” become taxable wages.

The Recharacterization Trap

“An arrangement that characterizes taxable wages as nontaxable reimbursements or allowances doesn’t satisfy the business connection requirement,” Jeremy points out, emphasizing a critical limitation.

This comes up frequently with S-corporation shareholder-employees who engage advisors mid-year. “We can’t go back in the past and look at that and try to recharacterize some of those wages. That is not allowed,” Jeremy explains.

Who’s Excluded

Independent contractors fall outside accountable plan rules entirely. Jeremy clarifies that reimbursements “need to be included in the gross income that’s reported as payments to that independent contractor” on Form 1099-NEC. The contractor then deducts the expense themselves.

Partners in partnerships create a gray area. “I don’t really see a case for using accountable plans for partners in partnerships,” Jeremy says. Instead, handle reimbursements through the partnership agreement, with unreimbursed expenses deducted on page two of Schedule E.

Protecting Clients from Costly Mistakes

The fringe benefit rules have permanently changed, and the remaining benefits require careful implementation. As Jeremy concludes, employers must understand the rules “whenever they provide any sort of benefit or compensation to employees that they want to be deductible and/or excludable.”

Accountable plans are a critical mechanism for separating tax-free reimbursements from unexpected wage income, but the three requirements don’t allow for partial compliance.

Practitioners must know what’s permitted and work to correct persistent misconceptions. Gym memberships don’t become deductible because clients want them to be, and companies can retroactively reclassify wages.

The stakes justify the diligence. Every employer who mishandles these benefits creates lost deductions for the business and unexpected taxable income for employees. And nobody wants that.

This concludes Jeremy’ three-part series on fringe benefits and accountable plans. Listen to the full episode for complete details, and check out part one and part two covering qualified employee discounts, no-additional-cost services, working condition fringes, and de minimis benefits.

Beyond the Policy Binder: Building Workplaces Where Women Actually Feel Safe

Earmark Team · February 5, 2026 ·

“I ended up leaving that company by choice because I did not feel comfortable with him still there,” audience member Kimberly shared, her voice steady but carrying the weight of a difficult decision. “I didn’t want to go to court. But if I prevented this from happening to anyone else, that was enough for me to speak up so I could prevent some other young woman from ever going through that again.”

This powerful moment came during Part Two of a special She Counts podcast episode, recorded live on the main stage at the Accounting & Financial Women’s Alliance (AFWA) Women Who Count conference. Hosts Nancy McClelland and Questian Telka called it their best episode yet, bringing together employment attorney Kami Hoskins and HR expert Julie Thiel for an unfiltered two-hour CPE session about sexual harassment in accounting.

“Seeing all those faces in the audience and hearing from women who’ve been directly impacted by sexual harassment, it was everything I hoped it would be,” Nancy reflected. The discussion tackled the issue from multiple angles, including employees facing uncomfortable situations, employers trying to build better cultures, and small business owners managing client relationships.

The Real Goal is to Stop the Behavior, Not Destroy Careers

One revelation from the session was understanding what actually happens when somebody reports harassment. Many women fear reporting because they don’t want to destroy someone’s career or face retaliation.

“The goal of a good investigation is for the behavior to stop,” Kami explained. “It’s not to put the person in the public square and flog them. It’s not to cause them physical harm or to embarrass or shame them. It’s to stop the behavior.”

Sometimes extreme behavior requires termination. But often, intervention works, behavior stops, and everyone moves forward. This reframing matters because reporting helps create a workplace where everyone can do their jobs.

Harassment from clients and vendors matters just as much as harassment from coworkers. Julie emphasized that protection extends beyond your own company walls. “You are protected both within your company and in how you’re interacting with others as well,” she said. The investigation process and standards don’t change because the harasser works elsewhere.

When Nancy asked how many audience members were managers or supervisors, about 80% raised their hands. This matters because supervisors are legally obligated to report harassment they witness or hear about, even if the affected employee hasn’t complained.

“The supervisor can get the message to the Human Resources department,” Kami noted. “It doesn’t have to be the employees themselves. It’s on all of us to make sure that information gets to this function.”

Simple Words That Stop Bad Behavior

The experts shared surprisingly simple strategies for interrupting inappropriate behavior before it escalates. You don’t need a confrontational script or perfect comeback.

“It’s always easier to interrupt bad behaviors when they’re sort of lower level,” Kami explained. When someone makes a weird comment or inappropriate joke, small responses like “What?,” “That was weird,” “Awkward,” or even a pointed look can work.

Julie’s favorite intervention might be the most powerful: “What did you mean by that?”

“Often, people aren’t really thinking deeply about what they’re saying,” Julie explained. “That question gives them a pause to reflect again.”

Nancy shared a story that showed exactly why these tools matter. At an accounting conference earlier in the year, a woman made an extremely inappropriate sexual comment to a man in front of a group. The comment was so explicit Nancy wouldn’t repeat it on air.

“We were all just stunned,” Nancy recalled. “If a man had said that to a woman, there is just no way they would have gotten away with it. But we were just all so stunned because it was a woman saying it to a man. None of us knew what to say.”

Looking back, “What did you mean by that?” would have been perfect. Instead, Nancy managed only “Awkward,” which, the experts agreed, also works.

Julie noted that conferences pose particular risks. “When people are relaxed and in informal settings, those are often the situations where they make bad decisions.” Her advice is to stay self-aware. Check in with yourself about how you feel and whether anyone seems uncomfortable.

Culture Beats Policy Every Time

The most powerful moment came when another audience member, Katie, shared her experience at a nonprofit healthcare company. Despite being almost all women with male leadership, everyone felt comfortable because of one consistent practice.

“They called it the tone from the top,” Katie explained. “Every single meeting started with a tone at the top, coming from the board members and from the executive leadership.”

Even during days with 13 budget meetings, each one began with acknowledging company values and recognizing someone who exemplified them. This wasn’t performative; it was how the organization operated.

Kami shared why this works. “I don’t think leaders understand how often employees need to hear the message. It’s not something that you can hear once a year or twice a year. Employees need repetition.”

The discussion revealed a critical gap in leadership training in most organizations. “Most leaders get put into leadership positions without any training,” Julie observed. “It’s like, ‘Good luck in the deep end of the pool!’”

Nancy illustrated this with a story from her husband’s job at Microsoft. A colleague discovered he’d been promoted to manager when someone said, “I guess I report to you now.” An email had announced it to his new team, but nobody had told him first.

“You’re taking somebody who’s an introverted software developer who’s very good at technical work, and now he is managing people,” Nancy said. These preparation gaps contribute to cultures where harassment can flourish.

Real Questions, Real Challenges

The audience Q&A highlighted the complex realities women face. An anonymous question asked about an executive who had asked if her “boobs were fake.” She never reported him because of his position.

“Any comments about anyone’s body for any reason are not cool,” Julie responded firmly. Kami added that while a judge or jury determines if something legally constitutes harassment, it’s clearly “problematic behavior that should not have happened.”

For those fearing powerful harassers, Kami noted many employers have anonymous ethics helplines. “Having been on the inside of a legal department, I can tell you a lot of work goes into maintaining anonymity.”

Michelle, a volunteer firefighter, raised another challenge: inadequate investigations in volunteer organizations. She described a situation where someone was falsely accused, and the accused faced immediate threats of expulsion before any investigation.

“That’s why that investigation is so critical,” Kami responded. “We want to do good fact-gathering before we make decisions about what to do next.”

Kimberly asked about the “he said, she said” problem, when harassment happens privately with no witnesses or proof. “How do you prove that?” she asked, describing her own experience reporting someone in power.

“If there’s no reason for me not to believe you, I would still address it,” Julie reassured her. She explained that HR’s job is to remain neutral and hold everyone accountable. Even without proof, strategies exist to ensure behavior doesn’t continue, such as never being alone with that person again, check-ins, and accountability measures.

“If there’s no proof, it’s hard to win in court,” Kami acknowledged. “But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a whole other universe of resolutions available to ensure the behavior stops.”

Resources for Every Organization Size

When Nancy asked about resources for small firms that don’t have an HR department, Julie recommended fractional and outsourced support. Just as firms use fractional CFOs, they can access fractional HR and legal expertise. “Building that relationship can be important,” Julie advised. “This isn’t the kind of stuff you want to guess about.”

For those needing to escalate beyond their employer, resources include:

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) at the federal level
State civil rights divisions
Anonymous ethics helplines within larger companies
Employment attorneys for serious cases

Kami emphasized starting with your employer when possible, but “there’s always opportunities to go outside of the organization.”

Measuring What Matters

For an audience of accounting professionals, Kami offered data-driven accountability. “You can actually look at the data and see if your culture is working for you.”

Key metrics include:

Retention rates
Efficiency metrics
Promotion patterns across genders
Pay equity (“same role, same experience, different comp?”)

“In addition to all the warm and fuzzy stuff,” Kami said, “there are really tactical, measurable metrics organizations can look at to make sure they’re keeping themselves honest.”

Your Voice Is Your Power

The session closed with Questian sharing a quote from Melinda Gates. “Women speaking up for themselves is the strongest force we have to change the world.”

Julie’s admission resonated throughout the room. “I was 50 learning how to find my voice, and I am still finding my voice at 55.” Finding your voice is an ongoing practice that gets stronger with use.

For women in accounting firms, corporations, or running their own practices, these insights offer a path forward. Not just policies on paper, but real cultural change that makes speaking up safe and normal.

Listen to both parts of this special She Counts episode to hear the full conversation, including more audience questions and expert guidance. Follow She Counts on LinkedIn to join the conversation about creating workplaces where women don’t have to choose between their safety and their careers.

Because as Kimberly’s story reminds us, no woman should have to leave a job she loves to escape harassment. It’s time to change the culture, not just the policy.

The Accounting Profession Has AI Completely Backwards

Earmark Team · February 5, 2026 ·

When Accounting Today surveyed industry thought leaders about AI’s impact on the profession, every expert agreed that AI would automate the boring stuff like bank reconciliations, data entry, and transaction matching while humans would rise to strategic advisory work. Not one thought their own job was at risk.

On a recent episode of The Accounting Podcast, hosts Blake Oliver and David Leary did something clever. They fed the same questions to ChatGPT, asking it to respond as an accounting thought leader. The AI’s answers were just as good as the human experts’.

“None of the accounting thought leaders think their job could be replaced,” David said, “which is crazy because essentially AI can at least do the thought leader job.”

Blake and David argue that the profession has AI’s impact exactly backwards. While everyone confidently predicts automation will eliminate mundane bookkeeping tasks, the technology actually excels at synthesis, narrative-building, and strategic analysis—the very work that defines “thought leadership.”

What AI Actually Does Well

The standard story about AI in accounting is machines will handle the boring, repetitive tasks while humans ascend to strategic advisory work. It’s comforting and logical. But according to Blake and David, it’s completely wrong.

“AI can take financial statement information and turn it into a narrative better than I can, better than almost anyone can at this point,” Blake states. “That’s what we should be using it for.”

Consider Mike Salvatore, a Chicago business owner with two cafes, two bars, and a bike shop. He used to analyze his cost of goods once or twice a year, spending hours crunching numbers. Now he does it every three weeks by feeding data from QuickBooks and his point-of-sale system into Google’s NotebookLM, which creates a podcast-style summary of his business performance. He sends these AI-generated recordings to his managers.

“It’s essentially my CFO,” Salvatore told The Wall Street Journal.

This isn’t AI doing mundane bookkeeping; it’s performing executive-level analysis and communication.

Blake’s own experience drives the point home. He built an AI system that turns news articles into detailed research notes and social media posts. That work used to eat up hours each week. He also trained an AI ghost writer on hundreds of his past writings. Now he can dictate a voice memo and get back a polished article in his own style.

“Basically, it has made it so, as ‘thought leader,’ I don’t do any of that anymore,” he admits. “It’s like I have a team that does that for me. I started working out and I’m just enjoying life.”

Meanwhile, the supposedly “easy” transactional work is stubbornly resistant to automation. David, who spent years taking QuickBooks support calls before co-founding the podcast, gets fired up about this misconception.

“Matching bank feeds is not bookkeeping. That’s just matching,” he argues. “Accounting is sending an invoice to somebody so they’ll pay me.”

He describes his recent struggle trying to upload an invoice to a client portal. It’s a “mundane” task that should be simple but isn’t. The process requires navigating confusing interfaces, making contextual decisions, and handling exceptions that don’t fit predetermined patterns. AI can’t do this reliably because it lacks the real-world context that humans take for granted.

The disconnect is striking. Thought leaders keep repeating the same message they’ve preached about cloud accounting for a decade: technology will free you up for advisory work. But as David points out, “I don’t think AI is freeing up your time to do that work yourself.” Instead, AI is doing the advisory work directly.

Are You Willing to See the Opportunity?

Where things get interesting is the same AI capabilities that threaten thought leaders create a massive opportunity for regular practitioners if they’re willing to see it.

Mike Salvatore, the Chicago business owner interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, wasn’t working with an accountant before. His AI “CFO” didn’t displace a human. He simply started getting insights he’d never received.

“Very few accountants serving Main Street businesses will actually do that kind of work for a price these business owners want to pay,” Blake explains. “So they do it themselves, but they don’t do it often and they don’t do it well.”

AI is filling a vacuum, not replacing existing services. And that vacuum is huge.

If a business owner can get advisory insights that are even 50-80% accurate from AI, that’s better than the nothing they’re getting now. The question for accounting firms is whether to let clients figure this out themselves or to offer AI-powered advisory services with professional oversight.

“Firms can feed data from clients’ QuickBooks files and their point of sale systems into these tools to generate AI analysis,” Blake suggests. “You can charge for it, because you’re adding the oversight—checking the numbers, making sure it actually makes sense.”

David connects this to a decade-old challenge. He remembers when LivePlan tried to train bookkeepers to offer business planning services. “They really struggled with it because they’re good at bookkeeping. But it’s hard to teach somebody to tell a story and create the narrative around the numbers.”

Now, “all those bookkeepers can basically offer that with AI out of the box and charge for that additional service.”

When ChatGPT (playing the role of thought leader) was asked what would make it worry about being replaced, it gave a revealing answer: clients accepting “AI-generated advice as good enough, even in ambiguous scenarios.”

Blake’s interpretation is blunt. “That’s what AI will fill—the gap in the market where accountants aren’t providing the service. There’s a big gap and there aren’t enough of us.”

Why Billable Hours Kill Innovation

One survey question asked about the “AI premium.” How much more should an AI-savvy accountant earn compared to an identical colleague who doesn’t use AI? The thought leaders said these employees should obviously be paid more.

Blake laughed at this. “How can you pay them more if you’re looking at them in terms of billable hours? AI is going to actually reduce their billable hours, not add more.”

If an employee uses AI to finish work in half the time, they bill half the hours. Under the traditional model, they look less productive, not more. Under the traditional model, “you should pay the AI employees less because they’re working less,” Blake points out.

This creates a ridiculous situation where your most innovative, efficient employees appear to be your worst performers.

Ryan Lazanis, who built and sold an accounting firm and now coaches other firm owners, has a different approach. He focuses on just two numbers: bottom-line profit and monthly recurring revenue. Not billable hours, utilization rates, or time per client.

“He is not breaking it down by client. He’s not looking at individual job profitability,” Blake explains. The only thing that matters is whether the firm made money over the year.

This makes sense because staff costs are fixed. “The amount of hours they spend has no impact on your profitability,” Blake notes. You only need to worry if one client is so demanding they prevent you from taking on others.

“You don’t have to track hours for months to figure out which clients are eating up your profits,” David adds. “You just go to your team and say, ‘Who’s the biggest pain in the ass client?’ And they’re going to tell you.”

There’s also a technical angle to consider. Blake cites research showing AI is nearly 100% accurate on tasks that take humans 4-5 minutes. That accuracy drops for longer tasks, but the threshold is “doubling every seven months.” By the end of 2026, AI might handle 10- to 20-minute tasks reliably.

But this only matters if firms can capture the productivity gains. Under billable hours, faster work just means more hours to fill. Under outcome-based metrics, faster work means more capacity for growth.

Is the AI Accounting Influencer Coming?

As the episode wraps up, Blake and David float an idea that captures the absurdity of the current moment. They’re considering creating an AI accounting influencer—a completely artificial thought leader to see if it can build a following comparable to real industry voices.

“Let’s make an AI accounting influencer and see if we can build its following to eclipse that of those real influencers,” Blake suggests. They could have it write newsletters, create content, maybe even land sponsorship deals.

It’s partly a joke, but it makes a serious point. If an AI can answer thought leadership survey questions as well as humans, write articles, and provide strategic insights, what exactly makes human thought leaders irreplaceable?

The answer might be less comfortable than the profession wants to admit.

Looking Ahead

The Accounting Today survey offered some important insights, though probably not what it intended. The people most confident about AI’s limited impact are those whose work AI does best. When ChatGPT generated answers indistinguishable from human experts, it demonstrated the very vulnerability those experts deny.

The real story is that AI excels at synthesis and narrative, which are the heart of advisory work, but struggles with the contextual, exception-filled world of everyday bookkeeping.

Firm owners should rethink their services to capture the advisory opportunity AI makes possible, and abandon billable hours before they strangle your ability to innovate.

For individual practitioners doing transactional work, the news is actually good. Your skills remain valuable precisely because your work requires the messy, contextual judgment that AI lacks.

And for thought leaders? As David observed with obvious frustration, the elitist attitude that “I’m better than you” has been in accounting for 30 years. “The reality is completely opposite. People are completely missing what’s really going to be replaced by AI.”

The race isn’t between humans and machines. It’s between practitioners who recognize AI’s true capabilities and those who cling to comfortable narratives while missing the transformation happening around them.

To hear more about Blake’s AI-powered lifestyle, David’s thoughts on what bookkeeping really is, and their plan to create an AI influencer that might outperform the human ones, listen to episode 469 of The Accounting Podcast.