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Questian Telka

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

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“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.

Knowing Every Harassment Policy Won’t Save You When It Actually Happens

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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

Time Blindness and Trader Joe’s Paralysis Doesn’t Define This Accountant’s Career

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Jina Etienne stood in Trader Joe’s, paralyzed by eight different ice cream flavors, unable to choose between them. This moment perfectly captured what her decades-long accounting career had felt like, not because she wasn’t capable, but because her ADHD brain was processing every decision through multiple filters at once.

In this episode of She Counts, the real-talk podcast for women in accounting, hosts Questian Telka and Nancy McClelland sit down with CPA and speaker Jina Etienne to explore a reality affecting countless women in the profession: living with undiagnosed ADHD while maintaining the appearance of having it all together.

When Your Child’s Diagnosis Becomes Your Own

For both Jina and Questian, ADHD recognition didn’t come through self-awareness; it came through their children, as many late diagnoses do for women in their forties.

Jina’s story began when her husband couldn’t understand their son Dominic’s behavior. “Dominic was really into this project,” she recalls. “He worked really hard on the project. My husband takes him to school, drops him off, and then he says, ‘So, Dominic, where’s the project?’ He forgot to bring it to school.” Her husband wondered how someone could be so invested in something and completely forget it. That bewilderment sparked a diagnosis journey that would circle back to Jina herself.

After Dominic’s diagnosis, Jina asked the psychiatrist how to parent an ADHD child. The doctor gave her a book called “Driven to Distraction.” Reading through the diagnostic criteria, Jina found herself checking off symptom after symptom. “If you have more than 12 of these characteristics out of 20, you might have ADHD. Well, I had 12. So I called back and I said, ‘Can you diagnose me?’”

Questian’s path was similar. Watching her 14-year-old son navigate challenges that mirrored her own childhood, she recognized patterns she’d never connected before. “We have so many similarities between the two of us,” she shares, though her son hasn’t wanted to pursue formal diagnosis yet.

The Gender Gap in Diagnosis

ADHD in women often hides behind a carefully constructed wall of competence. The diagnostic tools themselves were designed around boys’ behaviors, focusing on the bouncing-off-the-walls hyperactivity that disrupted classrooms rather than the quiet inattention more common in girls.

“We make gender assumptions about boys and girls,” Jina explains. “Girls are quiet, girls are thoughtful. Girls are nice. So if a boy is boisterous and he’s busy running around and can’t sit still, then it must be ADHD. But if a girl is sitting still, maybe it’s not ADHD.”

This gendered lens means countless women slip through diagnostic cracks. Questian’s grandmother used to say she was “bouncing off the walls all the time,” even “climbing furniture, hanging from the ceiling, just all over the place.” The solution was to put her in gymnastics. No one connected those dots to ADHD because she could also sit still when required, even if her mind was racing.

The biological component adds another layer of complexity. Estrogen helps regulate dopamine, the neurotransmitter already inconsistent in ADHD brains. “As our estrogen levels start to drop, the struggle becomes more obvious,” Jina notes. “It was always there, but as we get older, it can feel like things got harder.”

Nancy adds important context: only three to five percent of adults have ADHD, though informal studies suggest higher rates in accounting. When people dismiss it saying “everyone has ADHD now,” they’re conflating normal distraction with a clinical condition that, as Nancy’s therapist reminds her, “doesn’t become a clinical diagnosis until whatever it is that you’re dealing with interferes with your life.”

The Exhausting Art of Masking

After decades of compensating and overachieving to hide their struggles, women with ADHD reach a breaking point. Jina describes it perfectly with an analogy. “Imagine picking up a 10-pound weight. You’re holding it halfway up, and you just have to hold it like that for ten years. At first it doesn’t seem that hard. Eventually it gets heavy, but you can do it. And then it gets to the point where it’s so heavy, you’re struggling to do it, and you ask yourself, ‘Why am I even doing this?’ And then at some point you just throw it down.”

“I constantly overprepare for everything and feel like if I don’t overprepare, I’m not going to be able to manage what’s happening,” Questian says, describing her version of this weight. But even this strategy is failing. “I’ve gotten to the point where it’s become very difficult for me to emotionally hide my overwhelm.”

Women tend to internalize the physical manifestations in professional settings. “If I’m in a meeting, trying to hide that,” Questian explains about suppressing her fidgeting, “if I can’t express it and move my body the way that I need to, then it becomes internal agitation. It moves inward.”

Decision paralysis adds another layer. Back to Jina’s Trader Joe’s story, “Instead of coming home with two things, I come home with eight things because I’m overloaded with the decisions I have to make, and I’m afraid to make the wrong decision.” This extends to work, where Questian describes having multiple big projects. “I get into a spiral in my mind. Which one do I start with?”

Time blindness creates special challenges in accounting. Jina explains there’s actual neuroscience behind it—something called scalar expectancy theory. The brain’s internal “pacemaker” runs inconsistently in ADHD brains. “It has nothing to do with not managing time,” she emphasizes. “People think it’s time management and I think it’s time processing.”

What Jina calls “imposter syndrome on steroids” compounds everything. Before diagnosis, the negative self-talk was relentless. “I felt like something was wrong with me.”

From Shame to Strategy

Diagnosis transformed self-blame into self-understanding for both women. “My whole life made sense to me,” Questian reflects. “Getting that diagnosis helped me understand myself a lot better and prevented me from feeling this level of guilt about who I was.”

For Jina, diagnosis brought vocabulary to experiences she couldn’t previously articulate. The revelation about difficulty reading social cues moved her to tears during the conversation. “Those words were not in my vocabulary. I just thought something was wrong.” But awareness brought empowerment: “Now I watch for things I didn’t watch for before.”

The practical strategies are highly individual. Questian found medication helps. She takes “a kid dose of Ritalin” because Adderall was too strong. Jina’s neurologist explained that different medications affect ADHD brains differently. “For anybody listening, if you had a reaction to one medication, try another before you dismiss it altogether.”

Technology is an ally when configured correctly. Jina’s iPhone has focus settings that automatically silence notifications on Monday writing days. “My phone automatically turns off all notifications at 9 a.m. It doesn’t ring. Nothing shows up on my screen.” She maintains 16 different Google calendars, color-coded for visual processing. At 11 PM, her phone grays out all icons, removing even visual temptation.

Communication strategies matter, too. Jina and her husband developed what she calls the “junk drawer” method. While he thinks internally before speaking, she needs to verbally process everything. Their solution was to let Jina talk it out. “I can just talk, and then I have to say, ‘This is the part you need to hear.’”

However, workplace disclosure remains complicated. “Some people worry about self-disclosure,” Jina notes, “because if you disclose something to your boss, sometimes the HR team feels an obligation to do something.” Her advice? “You don’t have to reveal that you have ADHD if you can explain what your strengths are.”

The Superpowers Are Real

ADHD brings legitimate strengths alongside its challenges. When Questian mentions her “high sense of intuition and emotional awareness” and extreme empathy, Jina confirms, “Those are markers for ADHD and so is high creativity.”

The same brain struggling with executive function excels at ideation. “You don’t even have a box to think inside of,” Jina explains. The hyperfocus that makes her work until 3 AM also allows her to solve complex problems others can’t crack. “When I’m in the zone, I can really work and knock stuff out.”

Nancy, who doesn’t have ADHD, offers perspective about the double-edged nature. “I don’t have the same creativity that y’all do, but I also don’t have to deal with idea overload.”

“We all have some of these things from time to time, but some of us have a lot of these things all the time,” Jina says, emphasizing an important distinction. Having occasional struggles with focus isn’t ADHD. It’s about having “ten, 12 or 14” of the chronic disturbances, not just a few.

Moving Forward with Understanding

This conversation reveals that ADHD in professional women isn’t about inability; it’s about brains that work differently in a world designed for neurotypical processing. The exhaustion comes from constant translation and compensation.

When someone dismisses ADHD saying “everyone has it,” they miss the clinical reality. As Questian shares, “I’ve actually had people make this comment to me, and I’m sitting here going, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, have you lived in my life? Have you walked in my shoes?’” Yet by speaking openly, Questian creates space for others to recognize themselves and seek understanding. 

“The labels we’ve been using do not reflect the beautiful, complex diversity that lives within each of us,” Jina reminds us. “Inclusion isn’t about them. It’s about how we show up for others.”

For women in accounting who’ve spent years perfecting their professional masks while struggling with focus, time management, and mental chaos, you’re not alone, you’re not broken, and there are strategies that can help. Whether through diagnosis, medication, technology, or simply understanding that your brain works differently, there’s a path from exhaustion to empowerment.

Listen to the full episode to hear more about specific strategies and the transformative power of understanding your own mind. Then join the conversation on the She Counts Podcast LinkedIn page, where we’re continuing this discussion about ADHD in the accounting profession.

Your Imposter Feelings Are Actually Proof You’re Growing, Not Failing

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Picture attending a White House event. You’re surrounded by accomplished professionals, and you find yourself gravitating toward the back of the room because you don’t feel you belong. Now imagine discovering the person next to you feels exactly the same way, and that person is Neil Armstrong.

This story, shared in the latest episode of She Counts, captures what nearly every woman in accounting knows but rarely discusses openly. When hosts Questian Telka and Nancy McClelland asked a room full of accounting professionals at the Bridging the Gap Conference who experiences imposter syndrome, virtually every hand went up. The same thing happened at Scaling New Heights.

“It ain’t a syndrome if everybody experiences it,” Nancy declared after witnessing the sea of raised hands. “How is it a syndrome? That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.”

It’s Not a Medical Condition—It’s Being Human

When 99% of accomplished professionals admit to these feelings, we’re not talking about something that needs fixing. We’re talking about being human.

Psychology Today reports that 70% of adults experience imposter feelings at least once in their lifetime. But Nancy and Questian’s informal polls suggest it’s nearly universal. The problem isn’t the feeling; it’s calling it a “syndrome.”

“A syndrome has to truly be interruptive in your life,” Nancy explains. “It needs to prevent you from accomplishing something you would otherwise accomplish.”

Instead, she argues these are “just parts of the human condition, in the same way that we will all at some point struggle with being depressed, we will all at some point struggle with loss.”

The hosts push for new language: imposter feelings, imposter phenomenon, imposter experience, or simply imposterism. Each strips away the medical connotations while acknowledging the reality.

Even Nancy, despite decades of public speaking experience, admits: “I am always convinced that people are going to think I’m a rookie at public speaking, which is completely ridiculous.” The fear persists not because she lacks competence, but because it’s how humans process growth.

When “Fake It Till You Make It” Goes Wrong

Before we go further, let’s be crystal clear about what imposter syndrome is NOT.

“It does not mean being unskilled and doing something anyway,” Questian emphasizes. “We are not telling anybody, ‘Oh, you don’t know what you’re doing, so go and do it.’ We don’t want to fake anything until we make it in accounting. We need to know what we’re doing.”

Questian describes the real definition as “a persistent, self-limiting belief that you’re not as competent as others perceive you to be.”

For her, it manifests as fear that someone will “find her out.” 

“It’s like, ‘Oh, we hired her to do this thing, but she really isn’t competent to do that.'” This despite the fact that people hire her precisely because they recognize her competence.

The Perfect Storm for High-Achieving Women

For women in accounting, these universal feelings collide with specific pressures. After successfully moderating a panel, participating in another, and recording a live podcast at Bridging the Gap, Questian came home and texted Nancy, “I don’t deserve to be in this space with these incredible people.”

This was after Nancy told her, “That was the best panel moderation I’ve seen in years.”

Both hosts confess to a toxic combination of overpreparing AND procrastinating. “I overprepare because I want it to be the best that it possibly can be, and I’m scared I won’t do a good job,” Questian explains. “And then I procrastinate because I build up this thing in my mind.”

The systemic roots run deep. When Questian shared her vision for expanding her work empowering women in accounting, a colleague responded: “Well, no one will really want to listen to you because you’re not a leader.”

“For a moment I thought, well, yeah, I’m not a C-suite individual,” Questian reflects. But she runs her own firm and co-hosts a top-ten accounting podcast. “Do you think he would have said anything like that to a man?” Nancy asks. The answer: absolutely not.

When Identity Multiplies the Pressure

The intersection with other identities intensifies everything. “A woman of color in a majority white firm may internalize the pressure and feel like she needs to be twice as good to prove herself,” Questian explains.

For those with neurodiversity, like Questian’s ADHD, there’s exhausting masking. “I’ve spent a lot of time masking and trying to hide or overcompensate for my ADHD traits,” she shares. “When I compare myself to how a neurotypical person is, then it can also intensify my feelings of imposter syndrome.”

Nancy shares a story about a friend who grew up poor and, despite now earning good money, felt she didn’t deserve to eat at a nice restaurant. “Success felt very new to her, and therefore it felt very fragile.”

Nancy’s own experience joining boards at 27 reveals another layer. “I knew I had to work ten times more than anybody else to prove I deserved to be on that board.” But here’s the thing: she was already invited. They already knew she’d do a good job.

“I’m still that 27-year-old,” Nancy admits at 53. “I’m still trying to prove myself in the way that person was.”

What Doesn’t Help (And What Does)

Let’s talk about what makes things worse: toxic positivity.

“Just hearing you say ‘You got this! You can do it!'” Nancy tells Questian, “I’m bristling literally just hearing that.”

Empty affirmations without substance can actually increase shame. What works is specificity. Instead of “You got this,” try “You’ve got this because you’ve been studying S corps and reasonable compensation for years” or “You’ve got this because you spent three hours preparing.”

Nancy shares a quote from a friend that sums it up perfectly. “Remember, your entire life has brought you to this moment.” It’s not empty encouragement; it acknowledges of a decade studying the topic.

The Four R’s That Actually Work

Nancy developed a framework that starts with three R’s:

  • Recognize. “We have to name it out loud. Call it what it is,” Nancy emphasizes. Say to yourself or others, “These are imposter feelings.” The simple act of naming it strips away its power.
  • Reframe. Transform “I’m a fraud” into “I’m growing and learning.” Nancy shares insights from a member of Ask a CPA who thought the world of bookkeeping knowledge was small and she knew most of it. After joining, that member realized the world of knowledge was infinitely larger. Her knowledge had grown, but relative to what she now knew existed, she felt smaller. “That doesn’t make you a fraud,” Nancy insists. “That gives you an opportunity to go to the next level.”
  • Relief. “When you recognize and you reframe, ideally that takes some pressure off of you needing to go learn all the things.” Because learning everything is impossible.

Questian adds a crucial fourth R:

  • Redefine competence. “We’re not looking for perfection; we’re looking for progress,” she emphasizes. “No one has the entire tax code memorized. Okay, maybe somebody does, but I doubt it.”

Track Your Wins (Even If You Don’t Journal)

Neither host journals traditionally, but they’ve found other ways to document accomplishments. Nancy maintains a presentations and podcasts page on her website. When asked how many webinars she teaches, Questian had to think: “Wow, actually quite a few.”

“Set your own metrics of success,” Questian advises. “Don’t worry about what other external metrics there are. Determine your why and what it means to you individually.”

The goal isn’t to never feel like an imposter; it’s to recognize those feelings as signals of growth and push forward anyway.

Join the Conversation

These feelings you’re experiencing? They’re not evidence that you don’t belong. They’re proof you’re exactly where you need to be: on the edge of your next level of growth.

Ready to hear the full conversation? Listen to “Imposter, Interrupted.” Then join the discussion on the She Counts Podcast LinkedIn page. Share a time when feeling like an imposter impacted your career and whether you found a way through it. Or help Nancy and Questian answer their question: What should we call it instead of “syndrome”?

Because if there’s one thing this episode makes clear, it’s that you’re not alone in these feelings. And maybe that’s the first step to interrupting them.

She Fired Every Client She Had and Made More Money Within 24 Hours

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Life has a way of interrupting our best-laid plans. As this episode of She Counts begins, co-host Nancy McClelland is racing to handle another family crisis. Her mother must be moved from her nursing facility with just two days’ notice after Medicaid refused coverage. It’s the kind of real-life emergency that women in accounting juggle daily while trying to run businesses and serve clients.

Stepping in to help is Candy Bellau, CFE, co-host of the Unbalanced Podcast and a fraud expert who knows firsthand what it’s like to manage a parent’s care from another state. “While I was in it, it was hard. It was so hard,” she shares. “I got a lot of insight afterward. What am I doing with my life? What am I doing with my family? Why am I running my business this way?”

The two had a raw conversation about how chronic underpricing affects women across accounting and how to break the cycle.

From Six Figures to Financial Ruin

Candy’s story sounds impossible until you realize how common it is. At 16, she was already supporting her entire family, negotiating a full-time salary for part-time bookkeeping work. “They hired a full-time person to do the job, and they couldn’t do it,” she recalls. When asked to fix the mess, she saw opportunity. “Why don’t you pay me what you were paying her? I will come in every day after school. You should send a car to pick me up.”

That teenage negotiator became a New York powerhouse. “I would get bonuses that were 100% of my salary,” she explains. “I was making so much money.” Her credit was so perfect that a BMW dealership handed her keys to a convertible without even a down payment, telling her to “go show off to your friends.”

Then she moved to New Orleans for love.

“I immediately brought it way down,” Candy admits. Despite years of experience in turnarounds and investigations, she started charging $25 an hour. “I thought, oh, these people can’t afford New York prices.” Soon she was charging $350 a month to run entire businesses—handling bookkeeping, HR, compliance, even picking up mail. “I did everything.”

The financial collapse was swift. “I did everything I would never let a client do. I depleted my retirement account.” Credit cards maxed out. Cash advances followed. While living in a 600-square-foot house with a baby, she maintained a 1,500-square-foot office she couldn’t afford. The breaking point came when she couldn’t pay the minimum on her credit cards while two mortgages loomed.

“I was lying about my reality,” she confesses, “trying to live the same lifestyle I had in New York without making the money.”

The $6,000 Wake-Up Call

Desperate for solutions, Candy enrolled in a $6,000 marketing course for accountants. What she found shocked her. “It was ‘tired of doing hair? Be an accountant. Don’t want to fix cars anymore? Be an accountant.’”

These complete beginners were using scripts to close $4,000-per-month deals while asking questions like “What’s QuickBooks?” and “What is a bank reconciliation?”

“Literal morons in this group,” Candy says, still incredulous. “And here I am charging $350 a month.”

Even more infuriating were her male colleagues. They’d invite her on sales calls, knowing she had the expertise they lacked. After she’d solve all the problems and outline the work, they’d ask what she would charge.

“I might say, I know what I’m doing. I would do this for like $5,000 a month,” Candy recalls. “And they’d say, ‘$5,000 a month? Are you insane? I wouldn’t do this for less than ten.'”

When she asked if they knew how to do the work, they answered, “I have no idea, but you’ll clearly do it for five and I’ll charge them ten.”

The Real Cost of Underpricing

The research confirms Candy’s perception. Women in professional services charge at least 25% less than men, sometimes up to 50% less. “The median woman in an online labor marketplace in the US sets a bill rate that’s 13.5% lower than a median man,” Nancy notes.

But statistics don’t capture the human cost. When Candy asked her team what would make them happy, the answers broke her heart.

“I would love it if I could take my kid to the doctor when they were sick,” one employee said. “I would love to be able to go to the doctor when I get sick. I don’t have health insurance.”

Another employee, after receiving a raise, shared something that changed Candy’s perspective. She said, “This is the first time in my life that I’m living with somebody out of choice and not need. For the first time in my life, I am making enough money to leave.”

“Everybody needs to make a wage that they can live off of without a man,” Candy resolved. “That became one of my driving forces.”

The irony wasn’t lost on her. “I can’t help anybody if I have to shut this place down and get a job. The person I wasn’t helping was me or my team. I was helping everybody else buying second houses, boats and stuff. And here I am thinking we’ll just have spaghetti again tonight for dinner.”

The Day Everything Changed

After the marketing course revelation, Candy did something drastic. “I fired every client I had.”

Her husband was stunned. When he asked about the office rent she couldn’t afford, she told him, “I no longer have low-priced clients.” His next question: “Do you have any leads?” Her answer: “Nope, but now I can take them.”

Within 24 hours, she got a call about a potential client. “I said, sounds to me like it’ll be $3,500 a month. She just paused and said, ‘That sounds fair. Where do I sign?’

She replaced all her fired clients with just two new ones, each paying what dozens had paid combined.

Breaking the Cycle

The conversation reveals five essential strategies for escaping the underpricing trap:

  1. Reframe from cost to value. “Because it’s easy for us, we price that way,” Candy explains. “Instead of charging for what we are bringing to the table: the education and the years of experience.”
  2. Practice raising rates incrementally. Start with specific client groups rather than everyone at once.
  3. Build community. “Don’t just go at it alone,” Candy urges. “Call somebody you respect.” During the episode, co-host Questian Telka realizes she’s underpricing a current cleanup. “I was underpricing it in my mind already,” she admits.
  4. Model confidence for others. Show other women what’s possible through your own pricing decisions.
  5. Recognize the long-term impact. When women underprice, they perpetuate industry-wide disparities and create businesses too fragile to provide security for their teams.

Candy now uses specific language that commands higher prices. When prospects aren’t ready, she tells them, “You’re not ready for a firm like me. Here’s where you need to be. When you hit this point, I’m the exact firm you want.”

For cleanup work, she tells clients, “If you need 12 months cleaned up and my monthly rate is $3,000, it’s the same monthly amount for the cleanup. If I discount it, you’re going to say, why did I sign on monthly?”

And always, “If you don’t pay me up front, I don’t lift a finger.”

No Margin, No Mission

Nancy shares a piece of wisdom she heard from a client: “No margin, no mission.” Without sustainable pricing, there’s no health insurance for teams, no living wages, no ability to weather crises like caring for aging parents.

Candy dropped her own family’s health insurance until everyone on her team could have it too. “Until we all have health insurance, nobody has health insurance,” she announced. The urgency drove her to find the revenue quickly.

“These things that are important to me,” she says now. “If clients don’t want to work with us the way we’ve got things set up, they’re not our client.”

Your Next Step

This episode strips away the polite veneer covering pricing discussions in accounting. The gender wage gap isn’t just about employment. We recreate it every time a woman undervalues her expertise.

As Oprah says, “You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.”

The conversation already changed Questian’s pricing. It just might change yours too.

Join the conversation by following the She Counts Podcast LinkedIn page and comment under “Marking Ourselves Down.” Do you struggle with pricing and asking for what you’re worth? The hosts want to hear from you about topics for future episodes and would love your reviews to help other women in accounting find this community.

Find Candy on LinkedIn and learn about her firms, Kramerican Business Solutions for controls work and Vandelay Forensic Group for fraud investigations. Yes, both are Seinfeld references, and yes, she just passed her private investigator exam.

Listen to the full episode to hear more of Candy’s story, including details about her financial recovery and the specific strategies she uses to maintain sustainable pricing today.