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Questian Telka

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.

The Hidden Gender Gap in AI That’s Reshaping Accounting Without Women’s Input

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When Apple launched its revolutionary health app in 2014, it tracked everything from blood pressure to copper intake, but somehow forgot that half the population has menstrual cycles. This stunning oversight, which took an entire year to correct, perfectly captures what happens when companies design technology without women at the table.

In a revealing episode of the She Counts podcast, CPA and AI educator Twyla Verhelst joins hosts Questian Telka and Nancy McClelland to expose a difficult realization about the accounting profession’s AI revolution: women are being systematically left behind by design. Verhelst, who serves as Vice President of Industry Relations and Community at Karbon and co-founded TB Academy to empower accountants with AI training, brings personal experience and industry-wide perspective to this critical conversation.

While the accounting profession races to embrace AI technology that promises to transform how we work, women accountants face unique barriers to adoption that go beyond straightforward reluctance. From juggling disproportionate caregiving responsibilities to battling perfectionism in male-dominated spaces, these challenges create a system where the tools shaping our industry’s future are being built without our input.

This conversation uncovers why women fall behind in AI adoption, what happens when technology evolves without diverse perspectives, and most importantly, how women can claim their seat at the AI table, even if they have to bring their own folding chair.

The Perfect Storm: Why Women Fall Behind in AI Adoption

The gender gap in AI adoption isn’t about capability or interest. It’s about a perfect storm of societal expectations, time constraints, and deeply ingrained psychological patterns that create unique barriers for women in accounting.

Verhelst knows this struggle intimately. Despite her current role as a leading AI educator for accountants, she spent two full years feeling paralyzed by overwhelm. “I sat with AI saying like, “Oh my gosh, I’m so far behind. I haven’t even opened ChatGPT,” she admits. Even at AICPA Engage 2024, surrounded by industry innovation, she found herself thinking, “I still haven’t done anything. I still feel behind.”

This paralysis stems from something deeper than mere procrastination. Women, Verhelst explains, carry an ancestral caution that shapes how they approach risk. “If you go way back to our ancestors, men went out to hunt, while women stayed home or back at the tribe to care for the children and the elders. We were cautious by nature.” This evolutionary programming still whispers in our ears when faced with experimental technology, urging us to proceed with caution while our male counterparts dive in headfirst.

The perfectionism trap compounds this hesitation. Women in accounting already fight to prove themselves in traditionally male-dominated spaces, and using AI can feel like taking a shortcut that undermines our credibility. Verhelst observes, “Women feel like they’re cheating by using AI while men are looking for any way possible to ‘do the thing.’”

McClelland’s confession during the conversation highlights another crucial barrier: the gaming gap. “I didn’t grow up playing video games. I didn’t grow up taking apart electronics and putting them back together. Those were considered ‘boy’ hobbies,” she shares. When colleagues tell her to “just go play with it,” she responds with genuine confusion, “I honestly don’t even know what you mean when you say that. I don’t know how to play with technology.”

But perhaps the most insurmountable barrier is time poverty. While AI adoption requires experimentation and play, women simply don’t have the capacity. “I don’t have the capacity in my day to play. That just doesn’t happen,” Verhelst states bluntly. “I’m looking after children. I’m looking after senior parents and managing a household. I have a career. I have a part-time job on the side.”

The irony is that AI could actually help alleviate this time poverty, but women need time to learn how to use it effectively. It’s a Catch-22 that keeps women perpetually behind the curve, watching as male colleagues who started experimenting early become the go-to AI experts in their firms.

When Products Aren’t Built With Women in Mind

The consequences of women’s delayed AI adoption extend beyond individual careers. They’re shaping the very DNA of the technology that will define our profession’s future.

The Apple Health app story is an example of what happens when technology evolves without diverse input. In 2014, Apple’s revolutionary health tracking app monitored everything imaginable, yet somehow missed that 50% of the population experiences menstrual cycles, an aspect of women’s health that affects heart rate, body temperature, and breathing patterns throughout the month.

“No matter who you are as a woman, no matter what phase of life you are in, our whole rhythm revolves around the 28-ish day cycle,” Verhelst explains. Without this critical data point, the app sent false alarms about potential health issues while missing actual problems. Women worried unnecessarily about elevated heart rates that were actually normal for their cycle phase. It took Apple an entire year to correct this oversight.

This pattern repeats across industries. McClelland shares her own revelation about automotive safety: “I used to date an engineer who designed seat belts for cars. He explained to me that for many, many years, they only had male models.” The very devices meant to save lives in vehicle accidents were tested exclusively on male bodies, leaving women—particularly petite women—vulnerable to injuries that could have been prevented with proper testing.

The same types of oversights are happening right now with AI in accounting. “ChatGPT and other AI tools are built off of user input,” Verhelst warns. “If most of the users are men or the earliest adopters are men, then it’s being trained on and continues to evolve on how males use the platform versus how women will use the platform.”

Every prompt, every interaction, every piece of feedback shapes how these tools develop. When women don’t participate in that early development phase, the tools optimize for male communication patterns, work styles, and problem-solving approaches. The technology literally learns to speak a language that may not resonate with how women naturally interact with technology.

“AI is not a fleeting technology,” Verhelst emphasizes. Unlike temporary disruptions like Covid-19, AI is fundamentally shifting how accounting work gets done. The patterns being established now will shape the profession for decades.

Telka’s reaction during Twyla’s WAVE Conference presentation captured the urgency perfectly: “That really blew my mind. Because we tend to be later adopters, these tools we’re using are being built without our input.” She realized something as adaptable as ChatGPT, which changes based on user inputs, could evolve into something fundamentally misaligned with how women work.

Bringing Your Folding Chair: Practical Strategies for Women in AI

Despite the barriers, women have unique strengths that position them for AI success if they can reframe their approach and find the right support.

“Women need to pull up their seat at the table. And if that seat’s not there, you just bring your folding chair,” Verhelst declares, offering both a rallying cry and a practical philosophy for women ready to claim their place in the AI revolution.

The first step is recognizing an advantage many women don’t realize they possess. Ashley Francis, a recognized AI innovator in the accounting space, points out that women are actually better positioned to excel with AI than their male counterparts because women tend to have stronger language and communication skills.

Verhelst confirms this. “The number one roadblock to not getting what you need out of AI is poor communication.” Since women generally excel at thorough, nuanced communication, they’re naturally equipped to craft the detailed prompts that make AI tools work effectively.

Instead of diving headfirst into complex automations, Verhelst advocates for a pain-point-first approach. “Take some steps back to recognize what it is you want from AI today. Start with a pain point you experience. How can you leverage AI to solve for that pain point?”

Community learning is perhaps the most powerful accelerator for women’s AI adoption. Verhelst discovered a TikTok creator who opened a Slack channel specifically for female founders and entrepreneurs to share AI experiments (both successes and failures) in a supportive environment. “With women we can be a bit more vulnerable,” Verhelst explains. 

The practical applications Verhelst shares do away with the myth that AI requires extensive technical knowledge. Her “restaurant flex” perfectly illustrates playful exploration. She takes photos of menus and asks ChatGPT which wine is driest, which meal fits her dietary goals, and even requests recipes to recreate favorite dishes at home. “It’s embracing AI for things that aren’t just work,” she explains.

For professional applications, meeting transcription tools have become game-changers. Tools like Fathom, Otter.ai, Read.ai, and upcoming Karbon integrations with Vinyl and Abacor allow women to fully engage in conversations without worrying about note-taking. “Meeting transcripts have certainly changed my life,” Verhelst shares. Telka agrees emphatically, “I cannot take notes and focus.”

Women also use AI to handle emotional labor that often goes unrecognized. Verhelst describes how women upload screenshots of ambiguous emails, asking AI to decipher tone and suggest responses. “That saves a lot of headache and sleepless nights in some cases,” she notes.

Perhaps most importantly, Verhelst rejects the “do more with AI” messaging that dominates tech marketing. “I don’t want to do more. I already do a lot. I want time back to do what I want with it, not more tasks.” She shares how AI helps her handle overwhelming projects, like reformatting documents based on meeting transcripts. “That task would feel incredibly daunting and very tedious if it wasn’t for AI.”

There’s also liberation in accepting that expertise is impossible in this rapidly evolving field. “I don’t believe there are experts in AI,” Verhelst insists, even about recognized leaders like Chad Davis, Jason Staats, and Ashley Francis. “They can’t be. It’s moving too quickly.” If no one can be an expert, then everyone is learning together, and starting later doesn’t mean permanent disadvantage.

Some firms are already seeing creative applications. One TB Academy participant created a custom GPT that sits on their website, allowing clients to ask questions as a first stop before contacting the firm directly. These innovations come from experimentation, not expertise.

The Future We Choose to Build

The gender gap in AI adoption isn’t a personal failing. It’s a systemic challenge rooted in time constraints, societal expectations, and technology designed without our input. But there’s hope in Verhelst’s message.

No one is truly an expert in this rapidly evolving field, which means the playing field is more level than it appears. Women’s natural communication strengths align perfectly with what AI needs to function well. And participation doesn’t require perfection, but curiosity and small experiments.

Telka closed the episode with a quote from Sheryl Sandberg: “No industry or country can reach its full potential until women reach their full potential. This is especially true of science and technology, where women with a surplus of talent still face a deficit of opportunity.”

The path forward is about bringing our unique perspectives to tools that desperately need diverse input. Every prompt from a woman teaches these systems something new about how half the profession thinks, communicates, and solves problems.

“Even listening to this podcast tells me you’re not behind,” Verhelst reassures. “It tells me you’re curious, you’re engaged, and you want to learn.”

Listen to this transformative episode of She Counts to discover how you can overcome the barriers holding you back from AI adoption. Learn more about Verhelst’s work at TB Academy (tbacademy.ai) or connect with her on LinkedIn. And check out Tam Nguyen’s free AI prompts at Tech with Tam for an easy way to get started.

The future of our profession is being written right now, with or without us. Will we let it be designed without us, or will we grab our folding chairs and help build a future that works for everyone?