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She Counts

Grieving, Relieved, Scared, and Strong All at Once: None of That Has to Cancel the Other Out

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Imagine you just finished reading 31 pages of divorce paperwork. Your hands are shaking. Then a package arrives. It’s a gold star chart, the kind you got in elementary school, sent by your podcast co-host and friend. You stick a gold star next to “getting through it” on your to-do list, and cry because you’re happy and sad at the same time.

That moment kicked off the Season 3 premiere of the She Counts podcast. Co-hosts Nancy McClelland and Questian Telka had a raw conversation, with Questian opening up about navigating divorce while running her nonprofit-focused accounting firm, raising kids, speaking at conferences, and watching her client base lose government funding all at once.

The thing about divorce is it doesn’t wait for a convenient time. It crashes into tax deadlines, client crises, and keynote presentations. The women navigating it don’t need permission to feel relieved and devastated in the same breath. They need radical acceptance, a practical framework for stopping the fight against reality so they can redirect that energy toward the decisions that actually matter.

 

What Radical Acceptance Really Means (And Why Your “It Is What It Is” Mug Might Be Right)

Nancy learned this lesson from a mug.

Years ago, while doing consulting work, she constantly tried to rewrite the past. “If only this had happened, then we wouldn’t be dealing with this.” The company’s COO was blunt, “Dude, it is what it is. Let it go.” She eventually bought Nancy a mug with those words printed in big letters. It became one of Nancy’s favorite possessions and a simple summary of a concept that sounds academic until you desperately need it.

Radical acceptance comes from dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). “Dialectical” means acting through opposing forces. Two seemingly opposite things can be true at the same time. The framework doesn’t ask you to like your situation or pretend pain isn’t real. It asks you to stop burning energy arguing with reality so that pain doesn’t turn into prolonged suffering.

“You can choose something and still grieve it,” Questian explained early in the episode. “Relief and struggle can sit at the same table and neither one cancels the other out.”

Nancy tested this with an exercise therapists use regularly. She asked Questian, “What is something you keep wishing were different?”

Questian’s answer came fast. She wishes she’d chosen a partner who fit her better. She was young, didn’t fully understand herself, and after 13 years of marriage, she knows her ex is a good person, just not her person. The “what ifs” circle endlessly.

But Nancy pressed, “You can’t go back in time. What changes when you stop arguing with that reality?”

“It leads you to acceptance,” Questian said, “which ultimately gives me a lot more peace.” Then the crucial follow-up, “What can I do?”

That shift from fighting what happened to focusing on what’s possible transforms radical acceptance from therapy-speak into a tool for business, parenting, and survival.

When Professional Success and Personal Crisis Collide

Divorce doesn’t happen in a vacuum. For Questian, the paperwork was just one layer of challenges that had been building for over two years. North Carolina requires an excessively long separation period before divorce proceedings can begin, prolonging the emotional and logistical limbo.

The financial fear hit first. “When you have a partner, if one of you is having a tough time professionally or financially, you have the other person to lean on,” Questian explained. Remove that buffer, and every business decision gets heavier. She became noticeably more risk-averse. Each client contract or slow-paying invoice shifted from uncomfortable to existential.

Then came the client crisis. Questian’s firm serves almost entirely nonprofits. During her separation, they started losing government funding. She was managing her own anxiety and emotionally supporting executive directors who were terminating employees and watching their missions shrink. “I feel like I should change my LinkedIn profile to nonprofit therapist,” she joked, but the exhaustion was real.

Through it all, she kept showing up on stages, looking polished in front of 500 people while privately unraveling. But she refuses to fake being fine. “Divorce rates are high,” she pointed out. “There must be so many other women in our industry going through this at the same time.”

She shared a moment from the Advisory Amplified tour. When Valerie Heckman asked how she was doing, instead of the automatic “I’m fine,” Questian told the truth: her stepfather, who was like a second father, was dying. Valerie responded with genuine warmth and compassion. That exchange reinforced the idea that honesty permits others to be honest too.

In an ironic twist, Questian’s professional success contributed to the divorce. Her partner wasn’t supportive of her conference speaking, travel, and growth. “When the person you’re doing life with isn’t cheering you on,” she said, trailing off. Nancy filled the silence by sharing how her partner, Mark, travels with her, helps with her neuropathy treatments, and celebrates every win. She offered it as heartbreak, not comparison, knowing how much that support matters and wanting every woman to have it.

Building While Everything’s Still Burning

Questian isn’t waiting for neat closure before rebuilding. She’s emotionally reconstructing while still deciding whether to divorce in the first place. “I don’t think it’s ever like, okay, I have to have this thing done before I start making plans for what comes next.”

Resilience built through years of practice gave her courage. “I will figure it out. I always do,” she said, half-joking that she should stick it on a Post-it above her computer.

Nancy offered her own mental escape hatch for feeling trapped: “I can burn it all down.” Knowing that option exists changes everything. “When I remind myself that’s an option, I realize, ‘oh wait, I want to stay here. I have agency. I’m choosing this.’”

The hosts referenced a Winston Churchill quote that Nancy’s former colleague kept above her desk: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Sometimes forward is the only direction that makes sense.

Nancy led Questian through one final exercise. For 30 seconds, she had Questian imagine the worst-case scenario. Revenue drops. Custody shifts. A soul-crushing job with zero flexibility. Just sit with the fear.

Then she asked, “Is it happening right now?”

No. It wasn’t.

That gap between imagined catastrophe and present reality is where distress tolerance lives. You can picture the worst and survive the picture. The actual worst case is probably unlikely. But even if it happened, you’d survive that, too.

The Practical Moves That Can’t Wait

The hosts distilled their conversation into guidance that comes from someone still in the middle, not reflecting from the other side:

  • Practice radical acceptance like exercise. It’s not a one-time revelation. Catch yourself in the “what if” spiral and redirect to “what now.”
  • Know your earning power and numbers. Always understand exactly where you stand financially. This gives you confidence to act and clarity about actual worst-case scenarios.
  • Don’t outsource your financial awareness. Women in accounting manage everyone else’s money. Make sure you’re managing your own with the same attention.
  • Build contingency plans before crisis hits. Think through “what would I do if…” while you’re calm, not panicking.
  • Lean on your network. Questian named her professional and personal connections as her number-one resource.
  • Take care of your body. Nancy quoted Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata. “Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.” Eat. Exercise. Rest. Connect. It’s infrastructure, not indulgence.

Questian delivered the line that anchored everything: “My marriage ended, but I didn’t. And neither will anyone else.”

Let It All Be True

This conversation is about being honest that sometimes you show up at conferences while reading custody paperwork on the plane. Sometimes you teach others while desperately needing to be taught. Sometimes you grieve and feel relieved in the same moment.

Nancy mentioned she’ll be teaching about vulnerability as strength at Scaling New Heights in June. This episode demonstrated there’s strength in admitting you don’t have it figured out, in asking for gold stars when you need them, and in saying “thank you” when someone calls you emotional because, yes, you are, and it’s your superpower.

As Questian said in closing, “I’m grieving. I’m relieved. I’m scared and I’m strong. And none of that cancels the other. I am just learning to let it all be true.”

If this resonated, whether you’re navigating divorce, rebuilding after upheaval, or holding opposing truths, listen to the full She Counts episode. Nancy and Questian walk through exercises you can do alongside them. Sometimes the most professional thing you can do is admit you’re human.

A Simple Practice to Help Professional Women Stop Feeling Like They Haven’t Accomplished Enough

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When Questian Telka texted Nancy McClelland a photo of her newly framed diploma, she couldn’t help but undercut the moment. “I know it’s not a big deal because everyone has one,” she wrote, “but I never thought that I would actually do it.”

This degree took multiple attempts and years to complete. She’d been chasing the goal and finally crossed the finish line. And her first instinct was to shrink it.

Nancy wasn’t having it. “It’s actually a really big deal,” she fired back. “To say that it’s no big deal is silly. It’s a big deal because everyone else has one and you didn’t.”

That text exchange became the seed for the season two finale of She Counts, the real-talk podcast for women in accounting. Hosts Questian and Nancy brought on Valerie Heckman, accountant community manager at OnPay and keynote speaker, to dig into a concept that started as a single line in Valerie’s presentation at Scaling New Heights and became the thing everyone wanted to talk about afterward: the ta-da list.

Women in Accounting Are Wired to Overlook Their Own Wins

Valerie has spent nearly 15 years working alongside accountants and bookkeepers. She’s not an accountant, but she’s watched the profession long enough to spot patterns that run deep, especially among women.

“Very high internal standards,” Valerie said, naming it plainly. “The goal is getting things done, getting things done right, solving big problems, and staying on top of deadlines.”

That’s what makes accountants exceptional. “I think that can also come with a lot of focus on what’s left undone,” Valerie said, pointing out the shadow side. “Your brain is always managing, ‘Okay, we got this thing done, but now we’ve got to do this.’”

Nancy recognized herself immediately. “You just described my brain when I go to bed at night. I don’t go, ‘Oh, look at everything I did today.’ I go to bed and think, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t get this, that, and the other done today.'”

Then there’s the self-effacing reflex Valerie has heard countless times. “Oh, well, this is just what I do. I’m here to help. It was nothing.”

The problem compounds over time. When you only focus on what’s undone, Valerie explained, “We get very critical of ourselves. We start comparing ourselves to others. We start doubting ourselves.”

She spoke from personal experience. Before discovering the ta-da list, Valerie was burnt out, although she didn’t fully recognize it then. “I was on that constant hamster wheel of getting things done, but not necessarily feeling like I accomplished anything.” She’d write everything on post-it notes, stick them on the wall, and tear them down as she completed tasks. But every day brought more post-its. The wall was never clear.

“This is not a cure for burnout,” Valerie was careful to add. “I don’t want to sound like a Pollyanna or suggest we’re fine if we just focus on the good things. Absolutely not.” But it can be one tool in your toolbox.

What is a Ta-Da List?

The concept came from Gretchen Rubin’s podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin, where it was mentioned almost in passing. A ta-da list runs alongside your to-do list but captures the opposite: what you got done, plus anything that enriched your life.

“You still need to-do lists,” Valerie emphasized. “Sometimes people get confused. They think I’m saying don’t keep a to-do list. No.” The ta-da list is the complement that captures what the to-do list doesn’t show you.

To prove the concept works, Valerie asked the hosts to name three ta-da moments from the past week.

Nancy had one instantly. She’d repotted two plants in her garden. Questian struggled. “Three things? That’s, uh…” The difficulty was the point. When she finally landed on something, it was huge. She and Nancy received their trademark for She Counts that week, after nearly a year of applications and responses.

“Circle the one you’re most excited about,” Valerie instructed. Nancy deliberately chose the smallest, the plants. “Because the small things are the big things,” she explained.

Valerie validated the choice immediately. “That’s such a great example because it’s something you did for yourself. Those are the most important things to celebrate. You actually stopped the busyness of life and did something for your own enjoyment.”

For Valerie, keeping a ta-da list in her planner with pen and paper made things tangible. But she’s seen people use voice recordings, photos, or digital notes. The method matters less than consistency.

What shifted for her went beyond feeling better. She felt more grounded, more capable. She started recognizing effort, not just outcomes. But the most surprising discovery was what was missing. Personal goals she’d been announcing every January but never pursuing became impossible to ignore. Speaking on more stages was one of them, and the gap in her data pushed her toward that Scaling New Heights keynote.

The list isn’t just a nightly ritual either. “On a bad day, I can look back at the ta-da list and be like, I’ve been there before. I’ve done this before. I am capable.”

Nancy was floored. “So you’re not just making this list before you go to bed. You’re going back and looking at these lists when you’re having a bad day.”

That’s the resilience piece. It’s documented proof of your own competence, waiting for exactly when self-doubt shows up loudest.

The Magic of Sharing Your Ta-Da’s

The practice transforms when you let other people in on it.

An accountant named Nancy Jacobson approached Valerie at an event with a story that made her tear up. Jacobson started doing ta-da moments with her son at dinnertime. “I ask my son about his day and what his ta-da moments are. Then I share mine and we talk about it as a family. It’s made us closer.”

There’s also Ali Szymanski’s story. Nancy’s right-hand woman at The Dancing Accountant emailed Nancy when she completed her first wage reconciliation. “I know this is silly, but…” she’d written. It wasn’t silly. It was a ta-da moment worth celebrating.

Valerie suggested teams open meetings by asking, “What’s one good thing that happened in the last week?” One group she worked with realized they always jumped straight into tasks, everyone already overwhelmed before the first agenda item.

The conversation turned to something that made everyone laugh: gold stars. “We grew up being very motivated by gold stars and scratch-and-sniff stickers,” Valerie said. We don’t have to stop giving them to ourselves just because we’re grown ups.

Nancy had proof this works. During a weight loss journey, she used an actual sticker chart with foil stars. Her husband Mark offered to make an Excel version. She told him that was nice, but she needed real stars on real paper. She lost 20 pounds and kept most of it off for over a decade.

But celebration doesn’t mean ignoring struggle. “Gratitude doesn’t have to cancel out your struggle,” Nancy said. “It doesn’t mean you are not also struggling.” You can be drowning in a software transition during tax season and celebrate that someone helped you at 10 p.m. on Zoom. You can be exhausted and notice that your repotted plants look beautiful.

Your Ta-Da List Starts Tonight

Valerie’s keynote slogan crystallized the whole concept: “Less to-do’s, more ta-da’s.”

If your days are so packed with tasks that there’s no room for anything worth celebrating, something needs to come off the list. As Valerie put it, “Mick Jagger does not tune his own guitars. What are the things that only I can do?”

Here’s what you can do starting today:

  • Write down three things tonight. What did you accomplish or what enriched your life today? If you can only think of one, that’s fine. The difficulty means you need this.
  • Circle the smallest one. The little things are the big things, whether that’s repotting plants, calling difficult clients, or making it to the airport on time.
  • Keep old lists. On bad days, they’re proof of your competence.
  • Notice what’s missing. The gaps reveal goals you keep announcing but never pursue.
  • Share your ta-da’s. Text a friend. Open team meetings with wins. Say names out loud when people help you.
  • Make room for more. Eliminate, automate, delegate. Create space for things worth celebrating.

For women in a profession that measures value in accuracy and completed tasks, learning to see (and say out loud) what’s going right is an act of resistance against the voice that says “it’s nothing.”

It’s not nothing. Frame the diploma. Put the gold star on the chart. Ta-da!

Listen to the full episode to hear Valerie’s live exercise and the Marge Piercy poem that closed the show. Then head to the She Counts LinkedIn page and share something you celebrate that might seem silly to others.

Why Women in Accounting Keep Losing Credit for Their Own Ideas

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Nancy McClelland is sitting at her desk when a WhatsApp message lights up her phone. It’s a screenshot from her friend Dymond with a simple question, “Aren’t those your slides?”

They are. A live QB Power Hour session was using the distinctive slide deck Nancy used for three-plus years of 1099 presentations, the one she built, refined season after season, and shared with co-presenters last year. She wasn’t even invited to the session. She later learned presenters were making edits to her slides even five minutes before going live.

“The heat just came up to my head and my face, and it felt like it exploded out the top of my head,” Nancy says, describing her physical reaction on a recent episode of She Counts, the real-talk podcast for women in accounting she co-hosts with Questian Telka. “I got a little shaky and I was just furious.”

This moment became the catalyst for a candid discussion of how women’s intellectual work gets absorbed, reused, and reattributed in the accounting profession, and what if anything we can do about it.

When Credit Disappears, So Does Opportunity

When your slides show up in someone else’s presentation or someone repeats your idea in a meeting as if it were their own, it’s not just about bruised feelings. It’s a systematic pattern affecting women’s advancement in accounting.

“When credit is taken away, it doesn’t just affect that one person,” Nancy explains. “If we don’t enforce these boundaries, it affects all of us.”

The impact goes beyond individual harm. As Questian points out, it “prevents diversity of thought” because when people repeatedly lose credit for their work, they stop creating and contributing. The entire profession loses out on those perspectives.

Nancy isn’t early in her career or insecure. She’s a recognized expert in 1099 compliance who’s been writing for MSN and speaking on the topic for four years. If it can happen to her, it can happen to anyone. And it does, repeatedly, from barely perceptible “borrowing” to blatant theft.

The Full Spectrum of “Borrowed” Ideas

Credit theft ranges from literally reusing your slide deck to repeating your idea without reference, seconds after you said it in a meeting. Understanding that spectrum matters because most of the harm lives in the gray areas where it’s hardest to call out.

Nancy’s QB Power Hour story falls at the blatant end. Last year, she co-hosted an episode with Rich Kane, volunteering her existing deck for the session. This year, the same session ran with her slides but without her. When Jennifer Dymond and Sharrin Fuller recognized the slides, they called it out in the live chat. Nancy fired off an email, deliberately replying to the original thread where she’d shared the deck to make the paper trail unmistakable.

Dan DeLong, the host, responded quickly and apologetically. He said it hadn’t occurred to him that reusing the slides was a problem. He’d just grabbed last year’s deck and asked Rich to update it.

“I named plagiarism and he responded with process failure,” Nancy says. That gap between how women name harm and how it gets institutionally reframed is crucial. As Questian points out, “You can plagiarize work without it being intentional.”

But this wasn’t Nancy’s first experience with credit theft. Earlier in her speaking career, she applied to present at the National Society of Accountants for Cooperatives conference. To add “credibility,” they paired her with their head of education as co-presenter.

Nancy created everything, including slides, research, citations, and examples. When presentation day arrived, her co-presenter had her sit at a table beside the podium while he stood at the podium for the entire session. At one point, he gestured to the screen and said, “When I prepared this slide…”

“I just swung toward him and looked up and my jaw dropped,” Nancy recalls. She wanted to correct the record but wondered, “How much of this do I say out-loud? I don’t know how it’s gonna reflect on me.”

The session was popular enough to warrant a journal article, but only if Nancy listed him as co-author. She refused, offering instead to properly cite his prior article that inspired her research. The publication was denied entirely.

“The lesson I took away from that is you can have exposure or you can have ownership, but you can’t have both,” Nancy says.

Questian’s experiences with credit theft have been on the subtler end of the spectrum. She regularly shares ideas in meetings only to have someone repeat them moments later and receive the credit. “It’s happened to me so much in my life that I’ve just gotten used to it,” she admits. Recently, her partner witnessed it happen multiple times in a single social setting and was stunned.

Then there are the gray areas. After She Counts launched, Questian noticed another female podcaster using specific language and ideas from their episodes. It happened at least three times, but rather than confront it, Questian stopped watching that person’s content. “I have this fear of calling out and hurting someone’s professional reputation,” she explains.

“When is it theft and when is it overlap?” Nancy asks. That’s the question at the center of most situations. The blatant cases are easy to identify, but most credit erosion happens where you know something is off but can’t quite prove it.

Why Credit Systematically Drifts Away from Women

If these were isolated incidents, the solution would be simple. But women often don’t receive credit for their ideas because of deeply embedded biases and hierarchies that operate even when everyone has good intentions.

Nancy discusses the Matilda effect, a term for the systematic under-crediting of women in science. The examples are staggering: Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray crystallography was central to understanding DNA’s structure, but the Nobel Prize went to James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins. Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered the first radio pulsars as a graduate student, but the Nobel went to her supervisor. Lise Meitner’s work was key to understanding nuclear fission, but Otto Hahn got the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

“This kind of thing has been happening so much and for so long in science that they actually have a name for it,” Nancy explains.

In accounting, the angle is different but equally problematic. “So much of our work is process, systems, teaching, and translation,” Nancy notes. “Those kinds of things are generally more likely to be reused without attribution. They’re more likely to be absorbed rather than credited, even though they’re highly valuable for our profession.”

Higher-status individuals are disproportionately credited as sources of ideas, regardless of who introduced them. As Nancy explains, “Men are often assumed to be the owner of knowledge and women, the contributors.”

Questian adds another layer, referencing Vanessa Van Edwards’ research on competence versus warmth. “If you are perceived as too warm, you can then be perceived as less competent, even though you are often still highly competent,” she explains. People who are naturally collaborative are especially vulnerable. The very qualities that make you a great colleague make you easy to overlook.

There’s also source confusion. People remember ideas better than where they heard them. Nancy’s experience with Jason Staats illustrates this. She’d discussed her Ask a CPA community with him, specifically about bridging tensions between bookkeepers and tax professionals, and shared her community plans in a class he taught. Weeks later, he posted about the exact topic without attribution. When multiple people tagged Nancy in the comments and she emailed him, Jason explained he’d forgotten the connection.

The consequences are real. And women who claim their credit are evaluated more negatively than men exhibiting the same behavior. “I don’t want people to think I’m a bitch,” Nancy admits, “but that’s how I feel like I am viewed.”

The Power of Collective Action

What works most effectively to combat idea theft is having someone else see it and say something.

Dymond and Sharrin called out Nancy’s slides in the live chat. Multiple community members tagged Nancy when Jason posted about her topic. Nicole Davis reached out directly to address a perceived overlap. Her partner pointed out that Questian had just made the same point. In every case where things went right, it was collective action.

“When we speak up for each other, two things happen,” Nancy explains. “We make it safer for someone else to name harm, and we actually retrain our nervous systems to recognize that just because something is uncomfortable and we speak out about it, it doesn’t mean we’re overreacting.”

The hosts offer practical strategies:

  • Say names out loud. When discussing ideas, credit the source. For example, Nancy notes Debra Kilsheimer is the one who told her about the Matilda Effect.
  • Men have a specific role. When someone repeats an idea in a meeting, men can simply say, “That’s what Questian just told us.” It requires attention, not heroism.
  • Address it directly when it happens to you. Nancy emailed using the original thread where she’d shared her slides, making the trail clear. “We’ve gotta say these things out-loud because maybe there’s a misunderstanding,” she explains.
  • Speak up when you see it happening to others. Reduce someone else’s risk by lending your voice. Tag creators in comments. Mention names in chat.
  • Handle misunderstandings with grace. Nicole provides the model. She spoke up when she thought her work had been borrowed. Nancy explained the timeline, shared evidence, and Nicole graciously acknowledged the misunderstanding. They agreed to co-present on the topic later that year. 

The episode closes with three essential questions:

  1. Where are you sharing work that represents your expertise?
  2. Who benefits when your name is removed?
  3. What would change if you treated your ideas as assets instead of favors?

Your Name Belongs on Your Work

Credit theft in accounting isn’t about villains. It’s about a system where biases and expectations consistently funnel attribution away from women, even recognized experts, and even when people have good intentions.

The same number of women enter the accounting profession as men, but they don’t make Partner at the same rate. So the systematic erasure of women’s intellectual contributions isn’t minor. Every uncredited slide deck, repeated idea, or template passed around without attribution chips away at professional capital women need to advance.

Nancy closes with a quote from Virginia Woolf: “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.”

In accounting, it doesn’t have to stay that way.

Listen to the full episode of She Counts and share your own story on the She Counts LinkedIn page. Have you ever had your work passed off as someone else’s? The more we name it, the harder it becomes to ignore.

Hidden Screens, Tax-Season Tequila Deliveries, And Other Things Only Women In Accounting Would Believe

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At 37, Questian Telka sat across from a male colleague who asked her something she’ll never forget: “How does it feel to be a woman and be past your prime?”

She looked him dead in the eye. “Past my prime? I haven’t even gotten close to hitting my prime yet.”

Seven years later, on her 44th birthday, the day this episode of She Counts aired, Questian’s confidence proved prophetic. Her experience, revenue, and boundaries are thriving like never before. As she puts it with perfect accounting humor, “I know in accounting, assets depreciate with age, but I prefer to think of myself as an asset whose value compounds over time.”

Welcome to a special birthday episode of She Counts, the real-talk podcast where hosts Nancy McClelland, CPA, and Questian Telka, EA, tackle heavy topics like imposter syndrome, glass ceilings, sexual harassment, burnout, and pricing disparities. But they also know their community needs something lighter. Tax season is brutal, politics are exhausting, and everyone is tired.

So they crowdsourced stories from women across the profession with one simple prompt: “You know you’re a woman in accounting when…”

The responses poured in, and they range from hilarious to infuriating. But they’re all relatable. These are funny stories to share over drinks, but also proof that the absurd experiences uniting women in this profession aren’t anomalies. They’re the norm. And when we finally start talking about them, we realize we’re not alone. In fact, we never were, and laughter might just be our best survival tool.

Conference Survival: A Full-Contact Sport

If you want to understand what it’s really like being a woman in accounting, skip the spreadsheets. Watch us pack for a conference.

Questian calls herself a “minimalist,” which made Nancy burst out laughing. “I love that you think of yourself as a minimalist,” Nancy said, remembering the first time she visited Questian’s hotel room at their very first conference together, the Bookkeeping Buds retreat. “There was stuff everywhere. There’s literally no physical space in this room that does not have something of yours on it.”

Questian’s conference arsenal includes a clothing steamer and multiple shoe options (conference shoes, dinner shoes, and, especially in Las Vegas, dancing shoes). She has a full makeup setup and safety pins. “Inevitably, somebody at the conference is like, ‘I need X, Y, Z.’ And I’m like, ‘I have it. What do you need?'” she explains. “I have safety pins. I come prepared.”

Nancy operates differently. Severe back issues mean she refuses to carry more than a carry-on. Her solution is a handwritten chart mapping every conference day, every event, every outfit, and every pair of shoes, all strategically planned for maximum reuse. “I am obsessed with having absolutely everything I need and not one thing more,” she says.

Except costumes. Nancy always packs costumes.

She has a piñata costume, which she wore in a photo with Leslie Odom Jr., who “did not say a word about it. He just smiled.” She also has a watermelon costume and an aerobics costume for leading conference rooms through “She Works Hard for the Money.” As she puts it, “Costumes are the one exception.”

The shoe situation deserves its own category. Lynda Artesani brings an entire extra suitcase filled with just shoes. Her conference bestie Matthew Fulton carries it for her. “Yep, that’s me. That’s my job. That’s why they call me the conference husband,” Matthew jokes.

Then there’s the survival kit problem. Conference rooms are either arctic or tropical, with no middle ground. Nancy brings handmade ponchos from her best friend, a fiber artist. Questian brings pashminas. In fact, it’s a good idea to have both a pashmina scarf AND a battery-operated fan in your conference bag. Because venue temperature control is, as the hosts put it, “unhinged.”

Despite the need for survival gear, conferences are where magic happens in the most unexpected places. Questian met her romantic partner in the Starbucks line at an accounting conference. Nancy met Misty Megia, founder of Theatre of Public Speaking, when Doug Sleeter literally dragged her down a hallway to join a secret flash mob that would “interrupt” the opening keynote, which Misty actually choreographed herself.

Ellen Oliver nailed what matters most when she said, “You know you’re a woman in accounting when you finally get to meet your internet friends in real life.”

These conference moments create the connective tissue of a community that might only see each other a few times a year. But the real gymnastics happen when you try to schedule your actual life around the profession’s demands.

When the Universe Ignores Your Busy Season Calendar

Questian’s first son was due on Christmas Day. Perfect timing, she thought, not for the holiday, but for the tax benefit. “Who wouldn’t?” she laughs. Plus, as an EA who doesn’t do taxes, her busiest month is January with 1099s, year-end closes, and grant reporting. A December baby would’ve been ideal.

The baby had other plans. He arrived two weeks late, smack in the middle of January chaos. “I was really annoyed,” Questian admits. Fortunately, January’s birthstone is garnet, which is her favorite. She had a ring made to commemorate it.

Not everyone gets thwarted by nature. Dr. Jackie Meyer, CPA, planned both her children’s births before busy season, and it worked. When people asked if she was timing it for the tax deduction, she said no. She was timing it so she could be in the office during tax season. Robina Bennion pulled off the same feat. When her grandmother warned, “You can’t plan your whole life,” Robina shot back, “Oh yeah, grandma, watch me.”

Then there’s Jean Zick, who walked to work nine months pregnant in a late-90s blizzard because wires had to be faxed. A client needed something, so she went. Nancy’s response captures what we’re all thinking: “Thank goodness for today’s remote workforce.”

The emotional toll runs deeper than logistics. Every January, Questian says, “I want to quit accounting.” She’s joking, but she’s also not. “I eventually get over it, but every year I’m like, I need to change careers.”

Nancy shared a meme that rewrites the old rhyme about days in months. “30 days hath September, April, June, and November. All the rest have 31, except for January, which has 426,913.” If you’ve lived through January in accounting, you know that number might be low.

The hosts voiced something every woman in the profession has felt when they said, “You’ve cried over something that had nothing to do with accounting. But it was definitely about accounting.” That breakdown over a spilled coffee during 1099 season? Yeah, that wasn’t about the coffee.

Some stories make you laugh until you realize they shouldn’t be funny at all.

The Absurd, The Infuriating, and The Too Real

Gail Perry, editor-in-chief of CPA Practice Advisor, shared a story that starts unbelievably and gets worse. She was her firm’s multi-state tax expert. A client came in with multi-state issues. She was the obvious choice for the meeting. Except the client insisted on working with a man.

The firm’s solution was to set up a physical screen in the conference room. Gail sat behind it, hidden, listening and taking notes while feeding information to a male colleague who pretended to have her expertise. They joked she was the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. “At the time, we just thought he was a jerk,” Gail said. Nancy and Questian insist they “would have said no.”

The wardrobe calculations alone could fill a spreadsheet. One listener pointed out the mental drain of deciding what to wear. Is this too tight? Too casual? Will this invite the wrong attention? Questian added that a male colleague recently observed how much time women spend getting “presentation ready.” That’s time men use to actually advance their careers. “This was a man saying this to me,” she noted.

Another listener treats clothing as armor and calls her quarter-zip her protection for meetings with clients who try to look at her chest. She even has a custom field in her CRM to tag problem clients, like men who’ve leered or made passes. “You cannot make this stuff up,” Nancy said.

Another submission was blunt: “You know you’re a woman in accounting when your client texts you late at night trying to sleep with you.”

Not every story stings. Dawn Slokan was at her daughter’s dance competition, convinced she kept seeing ads for Avalara, the tax software. Why would a tax company sponsor a dance event? Turns out it was a skincare brand. Her brain just couldn’t leave work at work.

The takeout metrics tell their own story. Terr Saracino’s local restaurants know it’s tax season by the volume of orders alone. Nancy’s favorite pizza place once taped two plastic containers to her delivery box. Inside each was a shot of tequila. “They knew it was us and they knew it was tax season.”

The conversation shifted when they addressed their most-requested topic: menopause and perimenopause. Nancy went through early menopause around 40. Her doctor dismissed it, saying, “You’re too young” and put her on birth control instead. 

Questian shared that most doctors receive about one month of (optional) menopause training. For something affecting over half the population!

Building Community Through Shared Experience

The hosts introduced Shawn Simmons, Nancy’s best friend since college and a professor of communication design at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. At 54, after eight years navigating her own health journey with limited support, Shawn is using her sabbatical to research how design and fiber arts can help women find community around menopause.

“I had trouble finding people to talk to about it,” Shawn explained. “I didn’t have a lot of resources. So I decided to use graphic design and art to help people like me find a community and be able to talk about their experiences.”

She created a survey asking women 16 and older where they currently find support and where they wish they could. Shawn’s research revealed the awareness gap. When she called about hormone replacement therapy options, the women at both her insurance and pharmaceutical companies didn’t know what HRT was.

These Stories Aren’t Bugs. They’re Features

The episode makes crystal clear these are shared experiences. The woman next to you at the conference, behind the screen feeding answers, in the Starbucks line, or whose pizza place knows her tequila preference has her own version of your story.

When we speak these stories out loud, they transform from private frustrations into collective evidence that this profession still has work to do. But more importantly, they prove women in accounting have been doing that work all along with humor, creativity, and an impressive collection of conference survival gear.

The hosts ended with a quote from Betty White that captures the spirit perfectly. “It’s your outlook on life that counts. If you take yourself lightly and don’t take yourself too seriously, pretty soon you can find the humor in our everyday lives. And sometimes it can be a lifesaver.”

In accounting, humor is standard equipment. Right there with the pashmina and the battery-powered fan.

Listen to the full episode of She Counts, then head to the She Counts LinkedIn page to share your own “You know you’re a woman in accounting when…” moment. You’re not the only one. You never were. And now we have the stories to prove it.

Your Shoulder Isn’t Distracting Anyone, But Worrying About It Hurts Your Performance

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In 2018, EY told 30 of its female executives “women’s brains absorb information like pancakes soak up syrup, so it’s hard for them to focus.” Men’s brains, apparently, are more like waffles—better at focusing because information “collects in each little waffle square.”

This was a half-day professional development workshop called “Power, Presence and Purpose” that happened just seven years ago.

When an article about this training resurfaced in a WhatsApp group of accounting professionals, it sparked exactly the conversation the profession needs to have. Nancy McClelland and Questian Telka, hosts of She Counts, the real-talk podcast for women in accounting, dove into this issue in their latest episode, unpacking where these expectations come from and what they really cost women professionally.

When Your Body Becomes Everyone Else’s Business

The message starts early and never really stops. Women’s bodies are problems to be managed, and managing male reactions is somehow their responsibility.

“I was told I couldn’t wear spaghetti strap tank tops to school because it would be too distracting for the boys,” Questian recalls of her middle school days.

That expectation followed her straight into adulthood. Her mother, trying to prepare her for professional success, advised, “In a man’s world, you have to learn to cover your body and cut your hair and make yourself blend in with male colleagues. Think pantsuits, and not the colorful, fun kind.”

The EY training took this messaging to new extremes. The 55-page presentation included a score sheet where participants rated themselves on “masculine” versus “feminine” traits. According to the training, masculine meant “acts like a leader,” “athletic,” “aggressive,” and “independent.” Feminine traits included “eager to soothe hurt feelings,” “shy,” “understanding,” “loves children,” and “cheerful.”

“So this makes sense,” Nancy says with pointed sarcasm. “Men don’t love children, and they’re not understanding. And women don’t act like leaders, and they’re not independent.”

But the advice went far beyond stereotypes. Women were told not to “flaunt their bodies” because “sexuality scrambles the brain.” They were instructed to “speak briefly because they often ramble and miss the point.” Most jaw-dropping of all was the advice not to directly confront male colleagues in meetings and to avoid sitting directly across from them, as it might make the men feel threatened.

“If that was required, I would be fired immediately,” Questian laughs. “I’m not going to last very long.”

“For the men listening, you’re not responsible for how women dress,” Nancy says, cutting to the heart of it. “You’re responsible for your behavior and your professionalism.”

The Hidden Tax on Women’s Brains

This constant self-monitoring is exhausting and actively undermines performance. Questian points to objectification theory, developed by researchers Fredrickson and Roberts, which shows that when women constantly monitor their appearance, it creates self-objectification.

“A 2020 review of that research found that this constant body monitoring actually reduces your cognitive performance,” she explains.

Nancy knows this firsthand. At a recent conference, wearing a black-and-gray sweater dress instead of her usual colorful attire, she found herself worrying, “People are going to be like, ‘What’s up, Nancy? ‘” How come you’re not colorful today?’

The irony wasn’t lost on her. After years of worrying about standing out too much, she was now anxious about blending in. Either way, that mental energy was stolen from the work itself.

“When I feel like my insides and outsides line up, I stop the constant self-objectification,” Nancy explains. “My brain focuses on doing the work instead of being busy watching itself.”

The research backs this up. McKinsey’s 2023 Women in the Workplace report and Catalyst’s work on emotional tax show that women—especially women of color—must maintain constant vigilance at work, scanning for bias and managing others’ reactions. That’s energy they can’t use for actual leadership.

The double bind makes it worse. “It’s this impossible tightrope of looking good, but not too good at work,” Questian says. “Don’t be too much, but don’t be too little.”

The problem persists today. At a recent conference, Questian learned that men were standing around discussing a female colleague’s clothing and body. The woman was, by any standard, appropriately dressed.

“What I found disturbing was the standing around discussing a woman and her attire and her body,” Questian says. “It’s a responsibility to behave and be professional, regardless of what she was doing or how she was dressing. Just don’t engage in those conversations.”

Finding Your Way Back to Yourself

Both hosts have wrestled with these pressures personally, though they’re quick to acknowledge the privilege that comes with running their own firms.

Nancy’s transformation is striking. For over a decade, she wore almost exclusively black, gray, brown, and white. As someone who regularly spoke to C-suite executives and boards, she wanted to be taken seriously.

Then a friend noticed the disconnect. “You’re one of the most colorful personalities that I know, and your exterior doesn’t match your interior,” she said, giving Nancy a colorful necklace.

“I was so scared the first time I wore that necklace,” Nancy admits. “Because I was like, oh, everybody’s gonna notice me. And I wanted to be noticed for my accomplishments.”

But when Nancy started dressing more authentically, her clients in Chicago’s quirky Logan Square neighborhood, where she runs a hyperlocal firm, actually trusted her more.

“Wearing a traditional black suit said ‘professional in an office.’ It didn’t say ‘You get me,'” she explains.

Questian takes a different approach, embracing how she wants to dress regardless of others’ opinions. “Some people will like me for it. Some people will not like me for it. And if it’s not appropriate, maybe that’s not the space I’m meant to be in.”

She’s pushed boundaries her entire career. Fifteen years ago at a Big Four firm where pantyhose were required in the dress code, she simply never wore them. She was never disciplined. The rule existed more to police than to serve any real purpose.

“For us to be able to say, ‘I’m doing this, and I feel comfortable’, it’s a little unfair,” Nancy acknowledges, recognizing that many women face real consequences for dress code violations.

Rewriting the Rules

The solution requires individual choices and systemic change. For women navigating these waters, the hosts offer three essential questions:

  • Can I move in it? Is it comfortable and functional for your workday?
  • Will I be thinking about it during the day? Will it create mental distraction?
  • Does it feel like me? Does it align with who you are?

Questian adds deeper considerations, like what makes you feel confident? How do you want to show up as a leader? What environments make you feel seen and safe?

Here’s what firm leaders can do better:

  • Involve employees in creating policies through genuine collaboration, not top-down mandates.
  • Shift from appearance to function. What does the work require? Are there safety needs? What are client expectations?
  • Redefine professionalism around respect, results, and competence, not clothing choices.

Nancy shares a perfect example of functional requirements. “I was working on a client project that turned out to be in the middle of a rail yard, and I was walking across this rail yard in a business suit with a skirt and high heels. That is a safety issue.”

For male colleagues who want to be allies, the ask is simple but powerful. When the conversation shifts to a woman’s appearance, redirect it. “Let’s stay focused on her work” or “She’s an excellent leader” doesn’t have to be dramatic. It just has to happen.

“If this woman heard the conversation you were having,” Questian asks, “would it be a conversation you would be proud of?”

The Real Bottom Line

EY paid a $100,000 fine and created a half-million-dollar scholarship fund for women and underrepresented minorities after their training came to light. But an independent review two years later showed things hadn’t improved much. Policy changes without culture change aren’t enough.

“Professionalism should be built around respect and results and competence,” Questian emphasizes, not around policing women’s bodies or managing men’s reactions.

 “The solution is communication,” Nancy says, bringing the conversation home. “Have employees participate in dress code conversations. Create a safe space where people can put their two cents in and build something off of that.”

As the hosts wrap up, they invite listeners to join the conversation on the She Counts Podcast LinkedIn page. What’s the most ridiculous dress code rule you’ve ever been given?

Questian closes with a modified quote from Yves Saint Laurent: “What is most important in your attire is the woman who’s wearing it.”

The mental energy women spend managing their appearance isn’t just unfair; it’s a measurable drain on the talent and leadership the accounting profession desperately needs. When firms finally stop asking women to dress to accommodate others’ discomfort and start defining professionalism by actual professional behavior, everyone wins.

Listen to the full episode above to hear Nancy and Questian’s complete conversation about pancakes, power suits, and why personal autonomy at work shouldn’t be negotiable.