An HR expert with decades of experience found herself doing something she never expected: hiding from a retiree who kept asking for hugs. Despite her master’s degree in human resources and years of training others on harassment prevention, she went along with the unwanted contact until she caught herself actively avoiding him in the building.
“What is going on here?” Julie Thiel finally asked herself.
Julie shared this moment of clarity during a live recording of the She Counts podcast at the AFWA Women Who Count conference in Mesa, Arizona. Over 100 women in accounting filled the main stage room to tackle one of the profession’s most uncomfortable topics with Julie, hosts Questian Telka and Nancy McClelland, and employment attorney Kami Hoskins.
As the first of a two-part podcast series recorded live at the session shows, knowing every policy and law doesn’t protect you from freezing when harassment actually happens.
The Gap Between Knowledge and Action
Julie’s credentials should have been enough. She has a psychology degree, a Master’s in HR and years of experience conducting investigations and leading training sessions. She knew all the best practices.
None of it helped when the retiree walked past her office.
“Julie, can I get a hug?” seemed harmless at first so she said yes. He visited periodically, always stopping by with the same request. She kept agreeing.
Then she noticed her own troubling behavior.
“Anytime I saw him coming into the building, I would start going the other way,” Julie told the audience. “I found myself in a position where I felt uncomfortable hugging him. I didn’t want to hug him anymore.”
The woman who’d trained countless others was doing exactly what she’d tell them not to do: complying with unwanted contact, then avoiding the person instead of addressing it.
“I want you to know that we’re all in the same boat when it comes to this topic,” she said.
The session proved her point in real time. While Julie shared her story, Nancy had a sudden realization.
“It happened to me earlier today,” Nancy admitted. “Somebody said something really inappropriate related to the fact that we were going to be talking about this topic on the stage, and I laughed.”
She paused, processing the irony of laughing off harassment while preparing to discuss harassment prevention.
“I’m going to go back to that person and say, ‘hey, you know what? I shouldn’t have laughed there because that was a really good opportunity for me to teach you that it’s not okay to say things like that.’”
If experts freeze and laugh off inappropriate comments, what’s really happening? It stems from how deeply women are conditioned to keep everyone comfortable—often at their own expense.
Why We’re Conditioned to Comply
The disconnect between knowledge and action isn’t personal failure. It’s social programming that starts before anyone enters the workforce.
“We’re so conditioned to smile and laugh it off,” Questian observed. “To overlook things that bother us in order to de-escalate.”
Women learn early to smooth things over and prioritize others’ comfort. By the time we enter professional environments, these responses are automatic. They kick in before we register something is wrong.
Julie acknowledged that comfort levels vary. “I’m sure some people would think, ‘No big deal. I’m happy to hug him.’ But for me, I had to pay attention to that inner pause.”
That “inner pause” is the moment something feels off before our conditioning overrides it. Learning to recognize and trust that pause is where real work begins.
Kami reframed the challenge. “This stuff takes practice. It’s not a muscle we’re going to have overnight. The more you do it, the stronger your muscle gets and the easier it gets.”
She emphasized self-compassion. “We need to have a little grace and forgiveness for ourselves. If we sometimes laugh because we felt unsafe or needed to de-escalate a situation, that’s okay. Just keep practicing.”
The audience’s responses confirmed how much work remains. When asked how they’d feel about speaking up if they experienced or witnessed harassment, their word cloud was revealing. “Uncomfortable” dominated the screen, followed by scared, hesitant, and nervous.
But some responded with “confident” and “empowered,” proof that building this muscle is possible. Unexpectedly, “empathy” and “responsibility” also appeared, suggesting women felt duty to speak up for others even when speaking for themselves felt impossible.
Understanding the Spectrum of Harassment
Sexual harassment ranges from uncomfortable requests to explicit threats. Understanding this spectrum helps us recognize harassment even when it doesn’t match our mental image.
Kami emphasized the word “unwelcome.”
“Is the behavior unwelcome? If it’s unwelcome, it’s probably a problem,” she explained. “It doesn’t matter whether someone intended harm or whether others would be bothered. What matters is whether the behavior is unwelcome to you.”
The session’s two stories illustrated this spectrum perfectly.
Julie’s experience involved a retiree with no power over her employment. His hug requests started casually without explicit threats. No quid pro quo existed, yet the unwelcome behavior affected her enough that she avoided parts of her workplace.
A listener’s submitted story painted a darker picture. Her supervisor at a large accounting firm repeatedly asked her to lunch, then dinner, then begged her to spend time outside work. During layoff discussions, he made it explicit: “I have feelings for you. I want you to go out with me. I can help make sure you don’t get laid off.”
“That is a very different kind of sexual harassment than what Julie shared with us,” Nancy said, noting the contrast. I don’t know that I would have heard Julie’s story and thought, that’s sexual harassment.”
Both involved unwelcome behavior. Both deserved addressing. But they fall into different legal categories.
“The story you shared is an example of quid pro quo harassment, Latin meaning ‘something for something,’” Kami explained. “That’s when a person in a supervisory capacity conditions employment on being subjected to sexual harassment.”
This legal distinction matters for understanding options, but shouldn’t determine whether you speak up. Behavior can violate company policy without necessarily creating a legal claim.
“It doesn’t mean we should keep it to ourselves,” Kami emphasized. “We should still share that information and give our employer the opportunity to correct the behavior.”
What the Numbers Tell Us
The session’s polling data was sobering. While 37% of women nationally report experiencing sexual harassment according to McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2024, the accounting professionals in the room showed higher rates.
About 44% had personally experienced sexual harassment. Another 31% knew someone who had. Only about 20% had neither experienced it nor knew anyone who had.
“Ours was closer to 50%,” Nancy observed, noting the accounting profession appeared to exceed national averages.
Whether from self-selection or something specific about accounting, these numbers demand attention. They represent colleagues, partners, and sometimes ourselves.
Building Strength for Next Time
Traditional training rarely acknowledges that knowing the right answer and doing it in real time are different skills. Knowledge doesn’t equal action, our conditioning runs deep, and harassment exists on a spectrum where “unwelcome” is the standard that matters. Most importantly, boundary-setting is a muscle requiring practice, not perfection.
For women in accounting, these insights matter. We’re not failing because we don’t know policies. We’re struggling because we haven’t practiced the skills in real situations.
The goal isn’t perfection; it’s shrinking the gap between what we know and what we do. It’s making “uncomfortable” smaller on that word cloud while “confident” and “empowered” grow.
This conversation continues in part two, with practical reporting strategies, what actually happens when you go to HR, and navigating harassment as employees, employers, and business owners.
Listen to the full episode and return for part two. These women are building the roadmap we all need.
Resources for those experiencing harassment:
- National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-4673
- National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233
- National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: 988