Imagine finding out you’ve been nominated for one of the most prestigious recognition lists in your profession. Thousands of ProAdvisors across the globe, and someone thought you belonged among the best. But your first thought is, “I don’t deserve this. I’m not good enough. I don’t know enough.”
That was Questian Telka’s immediate reaction when she learned she’d been nominated for the Insightful Accountant Top 100 ProAdvisor list. And the kicker is, at that very moment, she was preparing to deliver a session on imposter syndrome at a major industry conference.
How do we know this? Because Nancy McClelland shared the actual WhatsApp text thread on Episode 29 of She Counts, the real-talk podcast for women in accounting. In this episode, Nancy is joined by guest co-host Melissa Miller Furgeson, stepping in for Questian. This topic is near and dear to Melissa’s heart, having applied for the Top 100 ProAdvisor list for five years before making it.
Together, Nancy and Melissa pull back the curtain on the messy, complicated emotions that swirl around professional awards. The desire. The dread. The jealousy. The shame about feeling envious. All of it, out in the open.
The tug-of-war between wanting recognition and dreading rejection
Let’s go back to that WhatsApp thread – it captures something many women in accounting feel but rarely say out-loud.
Questian’s first instinct after her nomination was not to tell anyone. “I am embarrassed even to share it because I know I won’t make the list,” she texted Nancy. She was already preparing her public disclaimer before celebrating the achievement.
Nancy admitted she wasn’t going to post about her nomination either. Then she saw a colleague share theirs and watched friends rally around them with congratulations. Nancy felt sad nobody was lifting her up before catching herself: “I hadn’t even given them the opportunity.”
Nancy’s reframe stopped the spiral. “Literally, not a single soul will see the final list of who wins and think, ‘Oh, of course Questian and Nancy didn’t win. I figured they wouldn’t.'” The fear of losing publicly is a movie playing in our own heads, not in public theaters.
What makes this fear even more frustrating is the enormous amount of work these applications require. As Nancy explained, most of them demand extensive documentation. The Insightful Accountant application requires you to track all your continuing education throughout the year, not just CPE. “It’s a huge amount of work when you’re applying,” Nancy said, “and it’s actually a huge amount of work throughout the course of the year.”
When the system fails you, you have to advocate for yourself
Both Nancy and Melissa experienced something that adds another layer to the vulnerability: system glitches that initially left them off finalist lists.
In 2024, Nancy discovered she wasn’t on the Top 100 ProAdvisor finalist list despite completing the grueling application. When she reached out to Insightful Accountant, their system showed she hadn’t submitted. Nancy knew better. She’d kept records of her answers because the application was “very difficult.” They added her name to the list, but at the bottom, out of alphabetical order, where fewer people would notice and be able to vote for her.
The same thing happened to Melissa in 2025. The system lost her application, but showed she’d spent significant time on it. They let her use points from her 2024 application, adding her name… also at the bottom of the list.
“I am really proud of both of us for being brave and following up,” Nancy said, “and finding out it was a system glitch rather than a failure on our part.”
This adds another dimension to the courage required: not just applying, but advocating for yourself when things go wrong.
The middle school energy nobody wants to admit
“You want recognition, but you fear rejection,” Nancy said, naming the tension directly. “You want visibility, but you fear judgment.” Then she compared the entire awards cycle to middle-school popularity dynamics.
Melissa said she’d literally discussed this exact parallel with her therapist that day.
Nancy’s philosophy is, “We don’t grow out of the people we were when we were younger. We just grow into a different version of that person.” The worry about belonging never fully disappears. Awards season dials it right back up.
Nancy illustrated this with a story about discovering Financial Cent’s Top 30 Accounting and Bookkeeping Firm Owners to Follow list. Her emotional journey included:
- Opening it, excited for recommendations
- Feeling proud seeing friends on it
- Realizing she wasn’t listed
- Spiraling into jealousy and shame
- Feeling shame about feeling jealous
She made herself breathe and refocus on gratitude. When she returned to finish reading, there she was at number 30. She’d spiraled through five emotions before finishing the article.
“Happy-jealous-proud should be a word,” Nancy suggested.
Even successes can trigger hesitation. Nancy was thrilled to make the Forbes Best-in-State list this year. It’s an award where you don’t even know you’re being considered until you win. But she’s been hesitant to share it because Forbes charges a fee to use its logo and name in promotional materials. “I’m kind of waiting to figure out how that works exactly before I tell people about it,” she admitted.
Breaking the shame spiral through honesty
Melissa was candid about jealousy. “It’s so real and natural and something I feel more often than I care to admit.”
She reframes her mindset by saying, “We want other people to do well,” Melissa said. “We love our colleagues and friends, but we also want a little bit for ourselves.”
Nancy’s therapist keeps it even simpler. When Nancy worries about being jealous, her therapist asks, “Do you want what they have?” When the answer is yes, “Well, that’s just a fact.”
No moral judgment. No character flaw. Just information.
The power of community courage
If these feelings are universal, the solution isn’t to eliminate them. It’s to act despite them, together.
Nancy organized nomination sessions for Ask a CPA members. People showed up thinking they were there to help others apply. The idea of applying themselves hadn’t crossed their minds.
Then one usually introverted and quiet member spoke up for the first time, to say, “I’m just gonna say this out-loud in case I’m not the only one. Does anybody else in here feel like an imposter?”
Every hand went up.
The group rallied. Members nominated one another, worked through applications together on mute during virtual study halls, and held one another accountable. As a result, 15 Ask a CPA members made the Top 100 finalists list.
Among them was Sandy Rehart, who’d been working in accounting for decades but never applied. Like Melissa years earlier, Sandy assumed “they weren’t talking about me.” Nancy got emotional describing Sandy’s joy at finally seeing her name on that list.
When the nomination matters more than the win
Nancy’s experience with the AICPA Global Women to Watch award proves this point. The hardest part was asking a colleague to nominate her, essentially saying out-loud, “I want this. Will you help me?”
When she posted about the nomination on LinkedIn, talking about the women who inspired her and what it meant personally, the response was overwhelming. But when she actually won, “practically nobody said anything.”
The vulnerability in sharing the journey resonated more than the achievement itself.
Understanding what awards really are makes sharing easier. “Awards are visibility events. They’re not objective truth,” Melissa observed. Vendors benefit every time you post about a nomination. That’s the business model. You’re not bragging, you’re participating.
Practical permission: Scripts for showing up
Nancy calls it “flexing the Ask muscle,” or pushing through fear to ask for what you want. Every time you do it, it gets a little easier.
As Melissa tells her adult kids, “What’s the worst that can happen? You don’t have it now. If you go for it and don’t get it, you’re in exactly the same place.”
For those ready to post but unsure how, here are suggested scripts from the episode:
- “Look at all the incredible people on this list. What an honor to be included.”
- Share that tooting your own horn is hard, and why you’re doing it anyway
- Tell the personal story of why this award matters to you
- Express gratitude by tagging people and vendors who made it possible
- Frame it as paying it forward. “I want to be the example for others that someone was for me.”
Nancy teared up when Melissa said, “We are not rooting for each other to lose. We celebrate each other.”
Raise your hand. Someone behind you is watching.
The most important takeaway from this conversation is to show up for the awards process, even when you feel undeserving. It creates permission for others to show up, too.
As Nancy said in that original text thread, “If we don’t show up, then other people don’t feel like they have reason to show up, either.”
For women in accounting, especially in a profession that hasn’t always rewarded self-promotion, these conversations matter. Every woman who posts about her nomination, asks for a recommendation, or fills out an application after years of assuming “they’re not talking about me” is lighting the path for someone behind her.
Melissa closed the episode with a quote from Mae Jemison, the first Black woman in space: “Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imagination, and never limit others because of your own limited imagination.”
Listen to the full episode of She Counts to hear the complete text thread and the unfiltered emotion in Nancy’s and Melissa’s voices. Then head to the She Counts LinkedIn page and share: What’s an opportunity you’ve been too afraid to pursue, or a time you went for it anyway?
The shiny trophy is nice. But the courage to raise your hand is what actually changes things for you and for every woman watching who needs to see someone go first.