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Woman In Accounting

From Guilt to Grace: How Setting Boundaries Actually Improves Client Service

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You decide to sleep in for once, rolling over in bed to ignore the world and give yourself a much-needed break. Then your phone buzzes with an email notification that makes your blood boil instantly: a one-star Google review from a client who’s furious that you won’t drop everything to take his phone calls.

This exact scenario happened to Nayo Carter-Gray, an Enrolled Agent (EA) who runs her own accounting firm, just a couple of weeks before she joined Nancy McClelland and Questian Telka for a live episode of She Counts recorded at the Scaling New Heights conference. The client in question was part of a client list acquisition, bypassed Carter-Gray’s communication policies from Day One, and demanded immediate callbacks despite her firm’s clear appointment-only structure.

Here’s the kicker: After Carter-Gray crafted a nearly 5,000-word response (thankfully never sent), the client discovered the real problem was a tech issue on his end that had been blocking emails for a week. “He took his review down because he discovered the thing that he was upset about was not even our fault. It was his,” Carter-Gray explains.

The client took down his nasty review, but the damage to the relationship was done. More importantly, Carter-Gray realized this was a blessing in disguise, a clear sign this client wasn’t a good fit for her practice.

This story perfectly captures the tension that accounting professionals face every day: the clash between setting professional boundaries and managing client expectations in a culture that demands instant gratification. During their conversation about boundaries, McClelland, Telka, and Carter-Gray tackled one of the most challenging aspects of running a sustainable practice: protecting your time and energy without sacrificing service quality or damaging client relationships.

Professional boundaries aren’t about saying ‘no’ to clients; they’re about saying ‘yes’ to better service.

From Barriers to Bridges: Reframing the Boundary Mindset

Transforming boundary-setting from a guilt-inducing struggle into a service enhancement tool starts with a simple reframe. As Carter-Gray puts it, “Boundaries aren’t barriers, but bridges to better client relationships.”

This philosophy runs counter to everything most accounting professionals have been conditioned to believe. We’ve been taught good service means being available whenever clients need us; saying ‘no’ makes us difficult; and professional success requires wearing every hat in our practice. But Carter-Gray’s experience tells a different story.

When she initially set up her firm, she was doing exactly what most of us do: trying to handle everything herself. “I was doing all the things, trying to set the appointments, trying to have all the client calls,” she recalls. “I realized I was spending so much time on things clients can do themselves, like schedule an appointment.”

The breakthrough came when she asked why clients had to talk to her to schedule a call with her. “When I call the doctor’s office, the doctor isn’t the one on the phone scheduling a call. It’s usually the front desk admin or a nurse practitioner or somebody lower on the rung,” she explains.

This realization led to restructuring how her firm operates. She implemented scheduling links, started using an answering service, and created clear communication protocols that actually freed her up to focus on the work that truly requires her expertise.

“When I’m talking to you, I wanna just be able to talk to you and not have any distraction,” Carter-Gray explains. This captures the essence of the boundary-as-bridge concept. By protecting her time and attention through clear systems, she creates space to be fully present with clients when they do connect. The boundaries enhance the service rather than diminishing it.

Building Systems That Support Your Boundaries

The magic of effective boundary-setting isn’t the boundaries themselves, but the systems that make those boundaries feel natural and professional rather than defensive or apologetic. Carter-Gray’s approach demonstrates how multiple touchpoints and clear processes can eliminate the need to justify your professional structure.

“I try to do a really good job of explaining it the first time,” Carter-Gray explains, outlining her multi-layered client education process. “In our potential client call, I’ll walk you through the process. It’s at the bottom of our follow-up email, and we reiterate it in our welcome guide.”

This welcome guide serves as a proactive boundary-setting tool. Rather than waiting for conflicts to arise and then having to explain policies defensively, the guide educates clients before issues develop. “It is in the engagement letter as well,” Carter-Gray adds, acknowledging that “people don’t read,” which is why repetition across multiple formats is essential.

Her automation strategies go beyond simple scheduling tools. “You fill out the potential client form. I get an email that tells me all about you, and then we accept it or decline it based on your responses,” she explains. Once accepted, automated emails go out immediately to capitalize on the client’s momentum while setting clear expectations about what comes next.

One practical example of systematic boundary-setting is her approach to business hours. “We’re virtual. That doesn’t mean we’re 24/7. We have business hours. We work Monday through Friday, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM Eastern Standard Time,” she states firmly. But she goes a step further, scheduling emails to send during business hours even when she writes them on weekends.

“I stopped sending emails on weekends because sending an email on a Saturday at seven gives the impression that you’re working,” she explains. “So even though I might be working on Saturday, I schedule the email for Monday morning at 10:00 AM Eastern (or 10:05, so it won’t feel like I’ve scheduled the email).”

Her team structure reinforces these boundaries through shared systems rather than individual heroics. “We use a shared email inbox,” she explains, “so every meeting, every email is seen by the entire team that’s responsible. At any given point, if one of us is out, somebody else can jump in.”

This prevents the single-person bottleneck that destroys boundaries when clients believe only one person can help them. 

Perhaps most importantly, Carter-Gray aligns her systems with her personal energy patterns. “Sales calls are on Monday because I am pumped up for the week,” she shares, demonstrating how boundaries can actually optimize performance when they’re designed around how you naturally work best.

Here’s her professional out-of-office template:

“Dear Client, from [start date] to [end date], I’ll be taking some much-needed time off. For urgent matters, please contact [colleagues]. I value our partnership and assure you that all tasks will be handled with the same dedication and efficiency.”

No lengthy explanations. No apologies. Just clear, professional communication about availability.

Overcoming Guilt and the People-Pleasing Trap

The most sophisticated boundary systems in the world will crumble without addressing the psychological patterns that make saying “no” feel impossible in the first place. For many accounting professionals, the real battle is with the internal voice that whispers… we’re being difficult, selfish, or unprofessional when we protect our time and energy.

“If you feel guilty about all of the things, then you will never feel good about all of the things,” Carter-Gray points out. This guilt cycle creates a destructive pattern where professionals overcommit to avoid disappointing others, then build resentment toward the very clients they’re trying to serve.

“Sometimes you have to take your guilt and say, ‘Why am I feeling guilty about this? Is it because I’m not able to do this? Or is it because I don’t want to do this?’” Carter-Gray challenges. “When you realize it’s something you don’t want to do, the answer’s no.”

The power of “no is a complete sentence” prevents the resentment that destroys service quality. “I don’t wanna resent you, I wanna be able to enjoy whatever relationship that we have,” Carter-Gray explains. “Every time I see you, I don’t wanna be like, oh, let me avoid this girl.”

The oxygen mask principle flight attendants teach is a perfect parallel for professional service: “You gotta take care of your mask first before you help others,” Carter-Gray reminds us. This isn’t selfishness; it’s sustainability.

Even the language patterns that reinforce guilt need conscious attention. Telka recognizes herself as an over-apologizer, a common pattern among women in professional settings. Carter-Gray offers a simple but powerful reframe: “Instead of being sorry for something, thank the other person for their patience. So instead of, ‘oh, I’m sorry I’m late,’ say ‘thank you for your patience. You waited for me.’ Really I should be saying… let’s honor, let’s celebrate that.”

The deeper principle at work here challenges the entire culture of instant availability that pervades professional services. “Don’t apologize for taking personal time. We are humans. We are not robots. We are not made to work 24/7,” Carter-Gray states firmly. “If you worked for someone else and your hours were nine to five and they asked you to come in at seven, you would be pissed. So you work for yourself, but you don’t set up these same rules for yourself?”

Carter-Gray’s favorite saying captures this mindset: “Not your monkey, not your circus.” In other words, you don’t have to jump into every chaotic situation just because you have the skills to help.

Small Steps to Start Today

For conflict-averse accounting professionals who want to start practicing boundary setting, Carter-Gray suggests beginning with low-stakes changes:

  • Email auto-responders. “You can set your emails now to have a responder that says ‘Thank you so much for your email. We will get back to you within 48 business hours.’ It takes a little pressure off of you to respond immediately.”
  • Virtual assistants or chatbots. These can help take over some of the communication functionality that currently pulls you away from client work.
  • Clear communication about availability. Be proactive about telling clients when you’ll be unavailable, giving them time to prepare mentally.
  • Provide alternatives. When you can’t help directly, offer other solutions. As McClelland points out, this might mean saying, “I’m not available to help with that. However, I have an amazing team that I’ve invested a lot of my time and energy into training. And they will take really great care of you.”

The key is being proactive rather than reactive.

Your Path to Sustainable Service Excellence

Professional boundaries aren’t about becoming the difficult accountant who never helps anyone; they’re about becoming the professional who helps the right clients exceptionally well. The most sustainable practitioners don’t say “yes” to everything. They create frameworks that protect their ability to serve authentically.

This approach offers a roadmap for any accounting professional ready to move beyond the exhausting cycle of over-commitment and resentment and gives them permission to prioritize sustainability without guilt. 

Take the first step by choosing one small boundary to implement this week. Maybe it’s an email auto-responder that sets response time expectations. Perhaps it’s scheduling your weekend emails to send during business hours. Or it could be as simple as switching your language from “I’m sorry I’m late” to “Thank you for your patience.”

Listen to the full episode of the The Counts podcast featuring Nayo Carter–Gray for more advice on setting boundaries to become sustainable, focused, and authentically present. 

You can follow Nayo Carter-Gray on social media @NayoCarterGray and learn more about her work at upcoming conferences, including Bridging the Gap, NAEA’s Tax Summit, and Intuit Connect. She also serves on the board of the Accounting Cornerstone Foundation, which provides scholarships for first-time conference attendees in the accounting profession.

When Your Time-Blocking Superpower Becomes Your Kryptonite

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“I’m proud of my time-blocking superpower,” Nancy McClelland admitted during a recent episode of She Counts. Co-host Questian Telka nodded in recognition. They both lived by elaborate color-coded calendars that managed every minute of their days.

But their guest, burnout coach and CPA Lynnette Oss Connell, was about to challenge everything they thought they knew about professional efficiency. What followed was one of the most honest conversations about burnout you’ll hear in the accounting profession.

Nancy and Questian were upfront about why they brought in an expert. “This is something where we both feel completely lost,” McClelland explained. “We don’t have advice for others because we’re both struggling with burnout ourselves, at times sort of teetering on the edge.”

Lynnette, known as “the Burnout Bestie,” built and sold her own successful CAS practice before becoming a coach for accountants struggling with chronic stress. Her story reveals why our greatest professional strengths often become our biggest vulnerabilities (and what we can do about it).

The Efficiency Trap: Engineering Your Own Over-functioning

Lynnette’s story starts exactly where many of us find ourselves. She had what looked like the perfect setup: a thriving firm, organized systems, and the ability to juggle multiple roles with precision.

“I had engineered a life of my own over-functioning,” she explains. Her elaborate time-blocked calendar enabled her to serve as a firm owner, CFO of several companies, and soccer team manager for her kids. When other parents marveled at her ability to manage it all, she’d think, “I just time block—it’s a superpower, right?”

But here’s the problem she discovered: despite all her backup plans and support systems, everything still required her to function as the central hub. “I thought I had done all the right things,” she recalls. “My mom is my backup with the kids, I have a neighbor who’s a backup, and I have employees with tasks. But at the end of the day, all of those systems relied on me to keep them going.”

The most deceptive part? By traditional metrics, Lynnette had achieved work-life balance. She worked only 3.5 hours per day running her successful firm. But those remaining hours weren’t filled with rest. They were packed with equally demanding caregiving responsibilities.

“I’m working the rest of the time, too,” she explains. “Your family work is work, too.”

This led to her biggest realization: she had trained herself to override her feelings “like a light switch.” Whenever she felt resistance or exhaustion, she would do what she calls an “analytical assessment” by asking herself, ”Does this feeling serve my goals?” If not, she would simply shut it off and continue with her perfectly planned schedule.

Energy Auditing: The Game-Changer You Haven’t Tried

This is where Lynnette introduced the concept of energy-blocking.

While we’ve mastered scheduling when we do things, we’ve completely ignored whether those things give us life or drain it. The energy audit reveals what’s really happening within each role we play.

“Within your role, are you balanced?” Lynnette asks. “There needs to beintentionality around what gives you life. Am I pouring out and receiving in?”

This isn’t about achieving a perfect 50-50 balance in every task. It’s about recognizing that some aspects of our work energize us while others deplete us, and being deliberate about maintaining that balance over time.

The efficiency trap is particularly seductive for women in accounting because our profession rewards exactness and the ability to manage complex systems. But what we’re actually doing is creating increasingly sophisticated ways to make ourselves indispensable and irreplaceable when everything falls apart.

Community vs. Connection: The Support System You Truly Need

Lynnette’s next revelation cuts deeper. “I have community,” she explains. I have friends, I have work friends, and I have family who cares about me deeply. But what I didn’t have was conversations around what happens when life gets lifey.”

The problem isn’t a lack of people in our lives. It’s that we prioritize efficiency over intimacy in relationships. We collect connections like productivity tools: broadly and systematically, but without the deep investment required for them to support us when our systems fail.

This lesson became crystal clear during Lynnette’s son’s medical emergency. After spending all night in the hospital, she found herself at 8 a.m. in the parking lot, calling a client to explain why she couldn’t make their regular appointment.

When her client—a father himself—learned what was happening, his response stunned her: “Get off the phone right now. I don’t want to hear from you for a week. Why did you even call me?”

He wasn’t upset at her absence. He was upset that she even thought she needed to work while her child was in the hospital.

“I was living in this tunnel where I was holding myself to these impossibly high standards,” Lynnette reflects. By failing to give people credit for basic human decency, she created a world where no one was allowed to show up for her.

The solution requires what Lynnette calls “controlled vulnerability”—sharing appropriately about where you’re struggling and observing how people respond. This creates a sense of “who your community really is, who you can go to, and who has the capacity for it.”

Why Women Burn Out Differently: The Biology Behind the Breakdown

When Nancy mentioned that many of her high-performing female friends have been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, and panic disorders, Lynnette’s response was both validating and alarming: “The research shows that those are all symptoms of burnout.”

The biological differences in how women and men respond to stress explain why traditional burnout advice often fails us. While men typically experience “fight-or-flight” responses dominated by testosterone and cortisol, women’s stress responses are dominated by oxytocin, creating “tend-and-befriend” behaviors.

“Women feel threatened, and so we nurture,” Lynnette explains, referencing research from “Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle” by sisters Emily Nagoski, PhD, and Amelia Nagoski, DMA. When accounting deadlines loom or client crises emerge, instead of getting forceful as male colleagues might, we internalize the pressure and respond by taking on more responsibility.

“Women don’t tend to get forceful or demonstrative in our stress until several more notches down the burnout journey,” Lynnette notes. “We instead internalize.”

By the time anyone recognizes we’re in trouble, we’ve already done significant damage to our nervous systems. The three warning signs to watch for are:

  1. Emotional exhaustion. Bone-deep depletion from constantly nurturing others while your own needs go unmet.
  2. Depersonalization. Suddenly resenting work you once loved because you’re running on fumes.
  3. Lack of accomplishment. Feeling like no matter how efficiently you work, you’re always behind.

“I could be hugely efficient for hours on end and leave the day and be like, darn it, I feel like I didn’t get ahead,” Lynnette recalls.

Building Prevention and Recovery Plans That Actually Work

The solution isn’t just better time management; it’s creating systems that work with women’s biology, not against it.

“I want everyone to respond to the stressors in their life, instead of reacting to the stressors in their life,” Lynnette explains. When you’re reacting, you’re putting out fires with a heightened stress response. When you’re responding, you’re coming from a grounded state, approaching challenges as a capable person with options.

Prevention strategies include:

  • Energy audits to balance life-giving and life-draining activities
  • Deep community relationships that provide practical support
  • Regular exercise that metabolizes stress hormones and adrenaline
  • Quiet practices that help you reconnect with what actually serves you

But equally important is having a recovery plan. “You don’t just take a break and go back to ground zero,” Lynnette warns. “You need to heal from burnout, because it’s a whole body experience.”

Recovery means knowing exactly who to call for different types of support, having scripts prepared for difficult conversations, and allowing yourself to scale back without shame.

The most profound insight is reframing resilience. Instead of viewing recovery as returning to who you were before, Lynnette challenges us to see it as “traveling through change in a way that honors who you’re becoming.”

The Bottom Line: Sustainable Success Starts with Honest Assessment

If you recognize yourself in this conversation—the proud efficiency expert, the person everyone counts on, the one who’s engineered elaborate systems of over-functioning—you’re not alone.

The question isn’t whether you’ll eventually hit the wall. It’s whether you’ll recognize the warning signs soon enough to choose your own path forward.

Start with an energy audit of your current roles. Which activities energize you? Which drain you? Begin shifting that balance deliberately. Practice giving people credit for their capacity to show up for you. Build movement into your routine as essential medicine for your nervous system.

Most importantly, challenge the metrics by which you measure success. The goal isn’t to eliminate efficiency—it’s to become efficiently sustainable and build systems that preserve the system builder.

Listen to the full episode to hear more of Lynnette’s story, including the difficult decision to sell her firm and her husband’s role in recognizing their diverging paths. You’ll also get practical scripts for difficult conversations and deeper insights into building the kind of community that can actually support you through crisis.

What does burnout look like to you? Share your experiences in the comments on the She Counts LinkedIn page. Your story might be exactly what another woman in accounting needs to hear.

Find Lynnette Oss Connell at burnoutbestie.com and follow her on LinkedIn and Instagram for practical burnout prevention tips.

When Personal Crisis Collides With Tax Deadlines

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Picture this: You’re standing in a hospital room, staring at a laptop screen that won’t stop wobbling before your eyes. You haven’t been able to sit down or lie down for weeks—not for a single moment—because every time you try, your body erupts in seizures. Your mind is foggy from pain and exhaustion, yet you’re desperately trying to work because you run your own accounting firm, and clients are depending on you.

This isn’t fiction. This was Nancy McClelland’s reality for 107 consecutive days in 2017.

This stark image opens a raw conversation from the She Counts podcast episode “How to Make Business Happen When Life Happens,” in which hosts Nancy McClelland and Questian Telka strip away the professional veneer to reveal what really happens when personal crises collide with accounting deadlines. Their stories shed light on circumstances many women in our profession face but rarely discuss openly.

Nancy’s medical crisis began in July 2017 when her lifelong spinal condition suddenly worsened. “I ended up having seizures on my left leg every time I would sit down or lie down. It was absolutely horrible. I wanted to die,” she recalls. Standing became her only option for work, eating, and even during sleepless nights for over three months.

Telka’s story is equally harrowing. Her son, who has a rare chromosomal abnormality, was hospitalized for a month last year and nearly died from complications unrelated to his syndrome. “It just nearly broke me,” she admits. 

Why We Suffer in Silence

The numbers tell a sobering story about how women in accounting handle personal crises. According to Accounting Today’s 2022 survey, 41% of female CPAs who experienced personal loss delayed taking time off because they didn’t want to appear weak. Even more telling? A staggering 76% later regretted not stepping back sooner.

This reluctance to seek help stems from several deeply ingrained patterns in our profession. First is what Telka calls the “suck it up” mentality. “I always had the mindset—I’m actually kind of ashamed to admit it—but I always had the mindset that we have to suck it up,” she reflects. “When something’s hard, you have to push through and keep going.”

But this approach has its limits. When her son was fighting for his life, Telka reached a breaking point: “I was like, you know what? There is no more suck it up. I cannot suck it up.”

The perfectionism that drives professional success can be particularly toxic during personal crises. Research from the International Journal of Accounting and Finance found that 68% of female accountants feel they’re expected never to make mistakes. This creates what experts call “socially prescribed perfectionism,” a known predictor of burnout.

As McClelland points out, “We have that expectation of ourselves without having it of others.”

Adding to the isolation is the fact that many struggles remain imperceptible. McClelland looked completely normal to observers—she was standing, after all. “You never know what someone is going through,” she realized. “My horrible situation was actually invisible to many people.”

McClelland’s therapist offered a reframe that changed everything about how she approaches difficult times: “Doing your best doesn’t mean the platonic ideal of your best. It means the best you can do under the circumstances.” Now she communicates this directly: “I let people know that I really am doing the best I can. I’m simply not in a situation to do more, but when I am, they’ll get that version of my best.”

The Power of Community Support

The most resilient accounting professionals understand that the path through personal crises isn’t paved with increased isolation but with strategic vulnerability and authentic community connections.

Communication becomes your lifeline, but it requires balance. “Communicate clearly. Communicate honestly,” McClelland emphasizes. You don’t need to share every detail, but transparency about facing challenges builds trust rather than eroding it. “Transparency sets realistic expectations for your availability or temporary performance shifts,” she explains. “And it lets them know this isn’t forever.”

McClelland offers a helpful script she learned from burnout expert Lynnette Oss Connell, for those tentative to divulge details: “That’s all I’m comfortable sharing at the moment. But if you’re open to it, I may want to share more later.” This approach shows trust while gently establishing boundaries.

The fear that sharing struggles will damage professional relationships often proves unfounded. As Oss Connell told McClelland, “We underestimate how much our work family cares about us.” When Telka’s son was hospitalized, she witnessed this firsthand: “So many people came forward and sent gift cards to us.”

McClelland experienced this support through a local colleague who took over her tax clients during her medical crisis. Even more touching was Mindy Luebke from Bookkeeping Buds, who immediately offered to take any work off McClelland’s plate with no questions asked. “She was just like: ‘What do you need right now? Give it to me. I will do it. I will figure it out. We’ll deal with the specifics later,’” McClelland remembers. “It still sticks in my mind as the number-one kindest moment in my entire life.”

The most effective support comes from taking initiative rather than asking “What can I do?” As Telka explains, “When you’re going through something like that, it is so difficult to tell people what you need, and everyone’s asking.” Instead, think about what you would need and simply do it—send DoorDash gift cards, take over upcoming deliverables, or handle routine tasks.

McClelland beautifully illustrates this through a Jewish tradition of praying when hearing ambulance sirens. “If you were that person inside the ambulance and you knew that everyone within the sound of your siren, even strangers, were wishing you well, how much strength would that give you to hold on until you got to the hospital?”

Practical Crisis Management Strategies

When trauma strikes and decision-making becomes nearly impossible, having systems in place can mean the difference between business survival and collapse. The key is building these systems before you need them.

Start with triage thinking, borrowing from emergency medicine to categorize every task. First, identify your “stop the bleeding” priorities: payroll, critical tax deadlines, and regulatory filings. These need to happen regardless of personal circumstances.

Next, distinguish between what truly matters and what feels urgent. “I keep saying, ‘Oh, I’ve got to put together my speaker kit,’” McClelland reflects. “No, I don’t have to. I don’t have to do that today. It can wait.”

The choice becomes simple for everything else: delegate it or drop it. Nancy’s crisis forced her to give away clients who weren’t ideal fits anyway, including ministerial tax work she’d taken on early in her career but wasn’t passionate about. What felt like a loss became strategic clarity.

The challenge is what McClelland calls the “will problem.” A will is a document that, the moment you need it… is exactly when it’s too late to make it. That’s why building systems during normal times is crucial. Lean hard on standard operating procedures, task management tools, saved email templates, and automated processes like invoice reminders.

Decision fatigue compounds every crisis. When you’re already making countless decisions about medical care or family logistics, having to decide how to respond to each client email becomes overwhelming. But with systems in place, you can operate on autopilot when needed.

McClelland learned this lesson the hard way in 2017, but was better prepared when facing another family medical emergency earlier this year. Having her husband added as a bank signatory, documenting processes her team could follow, and automated client communications meant she could focus on family without watching her business crumble.

Resources and Next Steps

For those wanting to explore crisis preparation more deeply, McClelland and Telka recommend Dawn Brolin’s new book,”The Elevation of Empathy. ” This book explores how empathy and compassion—often seen as weaknesses in male-dominated business environments—actually create healthier company cultures and stronger leadership. Oss Connell also shares resources for crisis prevention and recovery on Instagram. And Jennifer Dymond and Karen McConomy have developed a “Business Backup Plan Bootcamp” that walks attendees step-by-step through the creation of an actionable contingency plan.

The hosts want to continue this conversation with real stories from listeners. They’re asking women in accounting to share on the She Counts LinkedIn page about times when they had to keep working through rough personal periods. What helped most? What do you wish someone had said or done during that time?

Your Permission to Be Human

Perhaps the most important message from Nancy and Questian’s conversation is this: you have permission to break, to ask for help, and to admit when circumstances exceed your capacity. As McClelland puts it, “The good and the bad coexist. They do not cancel each other out.” You can appreciate moments of joy and success even more deeply because you understand the contrast.

True professional strength is about building authentic relationships, implementing smart systems, and having the courage to be your real, imperfect, resilient human self.

The future of accounting isn’t about creating invulnerable professionals. It’s about building communities where no one has to face their worst moments alone.

Listen to the complete She Counts episode to hear every detail of McClelland and Telka’s journeys, including specific communication scripts and concrete strategies for building support networks before you need them.

Women in Accounting Need Mentors Who See Their Potential Before They Do

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“We see in others what we fail to see in ourselves.”

This simple but powerful insight came from a coffee conversation between two accounting colleagues. One was sharing her frustrations about advancing in a male-dominated leadership environment. The other pointed out strengths that were completely invisible to their owner: clear communication, authentic presence, and natural insight.

This conversation sparked a recent episode of the She Counts podcast, where hosts Questian Telka and Nancy McClelland dive into why mentorship is critical for women in accounting.

The Hidden Crisis in Accounting Leadership

The numbers tell a troubling story. Men and women enter the accounting profession at roughly equal rates: about 50/50. But women hold only 19% of partner positions in CPA firms nationwide. 

As Nancy points out, some major accounting firms are completely scrapping their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs (while others are doubling down on them). “Think about what the future of leadership in those companies is going to look like,” she says.

The reality is that this leadership gap isn’t about qualifications. When Questian worked at a Big Four firm early in her career, seeing a female chairperson of the board felt “unbelievable,” not because the woman wasn’t qualified, but because such representation was so rare.

Even more troubling are the explicit barriers that still exist. One colleague shared how she was promised a partner position when she joined a firm. After years of working toward that goal, the position went to a male colleague instead. When she had her first child, firm leadership told her she “wouldn’t want to be in a leadership role now anyway, because she was a mom.”

This kind of thinking—illegal as it is—shows the deeper assumptions that still limit women’s advancement.

Civil rights leader Marian Wright Edelman said it best: “You can’t be what you can’t see.” When leadership representation is so skewed, it creates a visibility problem. Women entering the profession may limit their own ambitions simply because they haven’t seen enough examples of women successfully reaching senior leadership roles.

The Science Behind Seeing Potential

The power of mentorship isn’t mysterious; it’s grounded in neuroscience that explains why outside perspective can literally change how we see ourselves.

As women, we’re often taught to fixate on our shortcomings rather than our strengths. “It is so common for us to focus on looking at our negatives,” Questian explains, “that we are often not paying enough attention to what our good traits are, and all of the positives that we bring to the table.”

Nancy admits she struggles with this, too. “If I’m naturally good at something, I don’t really take credit for it. I don’t think there’s anything impressive about this. It just is.”

This is where the science gets fascinating. Mirror neurons make it possible for us to learn something without doing it ourselves. When we watch someone teaching on stage or demonstrating a skill, “the audience can actually learn that thing as if they were doing it themselves,” Nancy explains.

In mentorship relationships, this means we can observe behaviors in our mentors and begin to see those possibilities for ourselves. When Nancy saw women like Claudia Hill speaking at accounting conferences, her immediate reaction was “me too. That’s a thing I’d like to do.”

When we receive positive feedback from someone we trust, our brains release dopamine. This reinforces the behavior that created the praise in the first place. “Getting a positive affirmation from it makes you much more inclined to continue to repeat it,” Questian says.

This creates a positive cycle where confidence builds on itself, leading to more confident behaviors that generate more positive responses.

This science helps explain Questian’s remarkable transformation. She went from someone who “could hardly get on a zoom call” to confidently delivering webinars and speaking at conferences. When Nancy pushed her to take a Theater of Public Speaking class, she wasn’t just suggesting skill-building; she was recommending a way to rewire her brain around public speaking anxiety.

Even today, Nancy provides the outside perspective that catches limiting thoughts before they take hold. When Questian says something like, “I’m going to submit this topic to Intuit Connect, but I’m sure they won’t take it,” Nancy immediately calls it out: “Is that your lizard-brain trying to protect you from rejection?”

Finding Your Mentors

Understanding the science is one thing. Actually building these relationships is another. The good news is that mentorship opportunities exist everywhere… if you know where to look.

But first, you need to get clear about what you actually need. As mentor Gaynor Meilke told Nancy, “How are you going to get to where you want to be if you don’t know what that is?”

Sometimes you need technical guidance. Sometimes confidence building. Sometimes a roadmap for advancement. Sometimes just someone who understands your challenges.

Questian never had a formal mentorship program. Instead, she’s found value in informal relationships with people who share similar values and communication styles.

Conferences are gold mines for mentorship connections. Both hosts trace pivotal moments to conference encounters. LinkedIn, Facebook groups, mastermind communities, and even your current workplace all offer potential mentor relationships.

The step that stops many people is actually asking for help. “You have to ask them,” Questian emphasizes. “What’s the worst they can say? No.”

Questian learned this when she persistently pursued Nancy as a mentor, even after initial hesitation. Sometimes the answer is no. But often, people who seem unreachable are willing to help if you show genuine interest.

Mentorship doesn’t depend on traditional hierarchies either. Nancy’s relationship with Melissa Miller Furgeson shows peer mentorship in action. “I feel so comfortable being able to go to her and say, I have no clue what I’m doing, and she’ll be like, here’s a Loom.”

Questian notes that mentors can even be younger than you. She considers Krista Marina Apardian from Theater of Public Speaking a mentor despite Apardian being younger, recognizing her as “an incredible speaker” with valuable expertise.

Different life phases need different types of mentorship. When Nancy needed encouragement to pursue tax preparation, Theresa Briggs saw potential Nancy couldn’t recognize. She gave Nancy a CCH Master Tax Guide with an inspirational inscription Nancy still treasures.

When Nancy needed business operation skills, Clare Karchmar taught her to “come to me with solutions, not problems.” This lesson fundamentally changed how Nancy approached professional challenges. Karchmar even gave Nancy a name badge that said “Hello, I’m: Shocked” to help break the habit of expressing surprise instead of focusing on solutions.

Recognizing Bad Mentorship

Not all mentorship relationships are helpful. Recognizing warning signs protects you from relationships that could harm your career.

Nancy shares a cautionary tale about approaching a leader for help with overwhelming work challenges. The leader’s solution was to make herbal tea and suggested yoga. “That would not have happened to a man.”

Warning signs include mentors who seem more interested in making themselves look good than developing you; those who take credit for your work; or anyone whose treatment feels patronizing.

Nancy advises, “If something happens that would never happen to a man… this is not your person.”

Being a Mentor Yourself

The mentorship relationship works both ways. Even as Nancy mentors Questian, she continues seeking mentorship for her own challenges.

“I am going to be turning 53 years old in a couple of days, and I am still in need of mentorship,” Nancy says. “We need to both have and be mentors at every stage of our lives.”

This eliminates the pressure to wait until you’re “qualified enough” to help others. Your current struggles and experiences are valuable to someone a few steps behind you in that area of life.

Some women hesitate to mentor because of imposter syndrome. “What do I have to offer?” is a common thought. But as Nancy points out, “Sometimes it’s your mistakes and your failures and your experiences that make you a more valuable mentor.”

When women support each other through mentorship, they create visibility that makes ambition feel achievable for the next generation. This gradually shifts from initially seeing a female leader as “unbelievable” to it eventually feeling normal.

Moving Forward

The accounting profession’s leadership gender gap at least partially stems from the absence of mentors who can see and nurture potential before women recognize it themselves.

As Marianne Williamson reminds us, “When you let your light shine, you unconsciously give others permission to do the same.”

Building mentorship relationships is about creating the visibility and support systems that will help other women recognize and develop their potential, too.

Listen to the full episode and join the conversation on the She Counts Podcast LinkedIn page. The hosts want to know how firms and businesses can build good mentorship cultures and what mentorship experiences have worked for you. Share your thoughts and experiences to help build a stronger community of women supporting women in accounting.

Whether you’re seeking mentorship or stepping up to mentor someone else, remember that these relationships have the power to transform the profession. The accounting industry’s future depends on women supporting women, and that future starts with the mentorship relationships we build today.

Women in Accounting Are Finally Done Pretending They Have It All Figured Out

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“Can we be friends?”

It was a simple message sent through a professional Slack channel—the direct approach that might work perfectly in elementary school but feels surprisingly vulnerable in the polished accounting world. Questian Telka had been watching Nancy McClelland’s posts in their Bookkeeping Buds community, thinking she seemed smart and funny, and decided to reach out.

Nancy’s response was swift and brutally honest: “No, I don’t have time for that.”

Looking back, Nancy admits she still can’t believe she said that. But it was a perfectly professional answer, the kind that protects busy women behind walls of efficiency. Yet it also captured something deeper about how women in accounting often navigate their careers, maintaining protective barriers even when craving authentic connections.

That initial rejection might have ended the story there, but Questian’s persistence paid off. Their eventual friendship became the foundation for “She Counts,” a new podcast where Nancy and Questian create the space they both desperately needed when starting their accounting careers. 

In their inaugural episode, they share how two very different paths through the accounting world led to the same realization: the conversations they needed most were the ones no one was having.

Two Different Paths, Same Destination

While both women ended up in accounting, their journeys couldn’t have been more different.

Nancy’s path was anything but traditional. With an undergraduate degree in music education from the University of Michigan, she started teaching music theory and managing finances at the Ann Arbor School for the Performing Arts. They were using Quicken—not even QuickBooks—to run their finances, and Nancy discovered a stack of uncashed checks in a drawer that had been sitting there for an entire semester.

“I found this big stack of uncashed undeposited checks in the drawer when I first started, and they just decided they would collect checks for the whole semester and then deposit them at the end of the semester,” Nancy recalls with a laugh.

From there, she worked at a world-famous violin-making studio, where she met Teresa Briggs, a tax preparer who became an unexpected mentor. “That woman saw in me what I had no idea about, which was that I needed to become a tax professional,” Nancy explains. Teresa gave her a CCH Master Tax Guide as a going-away gift—a moment that completely changed Nancy’s career trajectory.

After moving to Chicago, Nancy accidentally started her firm while trying to temp during wedding planning and caring for her mother, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Twenty-five years later, she runs The Dancing Accountant, focusing on hyper-local small businesses in her neighborhood.

Questian’s journey was marked by persistence and significant life challenges. It took her three attempts to finish college—something she struggled to share because of the shame she felt around it. “It took me three attempts to finish school before I finally graduated, and it’s not because I was a bad student because I actually had really good grades,” she explains. “But life kept getting in the way, and at the time I also had undiagnosed ADHD.”

She eventually worked in a non-client-facing role at a Big Four firm for ten years, then moved to a nonprofit as director of finance and accounting. But everything changed when her second son was born with a rare chromosomal abnormality. After six weeks in the NICU and eight surgeries before age two, Questian realized she needed the flexibility to be present for her family.

“When he was born, I expected we would see negative things. People would stare or say negative things. But what I really saw was the good in people,” she reflects. “It completely changed my view and made me want to lean more into nonprofit work and specifically disability advocacy.”

That experience also opened her up to having deeper conversations with other women, eventually leading to her recognition that so many women in accounting were struggling with similar challenges.

The Masks We All Wear

Despite their different backgrounds, both women discovered they were dealing with the same fundamental issue: professional isolation. But it showed up differently for each of them.

When Questian started her firm five years ago, she had “no accounting colleagues or friends” to turn to when challenges came up. “There were several times where I had problems that I needed to solve, and I didn’t have anyone to ask. And so then I started questioning, do I really have enough knowledge to be doing this? Do I have what it takes to run this business?”

Nancy’s experience was shaped by what she calls “loads of displaced confidence”—raised by parents who told her she could do anything. But underneath that confidence was a different kind of struggle. “I knew that I was just stabbing in the dark at a lot of it, and I didn’t have anyone to talk to about the fact that I was just making it up as I went along.”

She knew some people in accounting, but they were mostly men, and some were “really judgy and self-important,” which made her feel small, wrong, angry, and defensive. So she did what many women do: “I just put a mask on and pretended that I had it all figured out. And wearing that mask, it was actually really isolating.”

Both had breakthroughs when they found community. For Questian, it was joining Bookkeeping Buds, where she could finally connect with other women who understood her challenges. “It wasn’t until I found community that I finally began to find my stride,” she says.

The Invisible Challenges No One Talks About

Through their friendship and conversations with other women in accounting, Nancy and Questian realized that women face challenges often invisible to their male colleagues.

“Women really have some specific challenges that, quite honestly, men don’t have to deal with. And for the most part, don’t necessarily understand what those challenges are that we’re facing,” Questian explains.

These challenges can feel invisible sometimes. Nancy mentions one many women will recognize: “It turns out that having a favorite place to cry in the office is a thing, and men are shocked when they find out that we all had our safe place to go when we had to cry in the office. It’s real.”

“It’s not about excluding men,” Questian clarifies. “It’s about making space where women can stop filtering and just be themselves.”

Creating the Conversations We Need

Their vision for “She Counts” came from recognizing that the needed conversations were already happening in scattered, private moments. “It’s like a parallel to our WhatsApp groups and our Slack groups of female colleagues that we’ve met along the way, or the conversations that we have when getting together at conferences or meeting for coffee,” Nancy explains.

What makes their approach different is their commitment to authenticity over expertise. “We are not going to be preaching,” Nancy emphasizes. “This is not about that because we are not pretending that we’ve got it all figured out.”

Their approach deliberately avoids toxic positivity. “The good and the bad, they coexist, right? They don’t cancel each other out,” Nancy explains. “If you’re acknowledging the good in your life and you’re acknowledging the bad in your life, then you start to recognize, oh gosh, we’re just humans trying to figure this out.”

They’ve already identified over 50 topics they want to cover, including “Start with No” (about learning to say no before convincing yourself to say yes), “How to make business happen when life happens,” “Do it anyway” (about facing fear), and “I engage in too much negative self-talk like a stupid idiot” (yes, that’s the actual title—see what they did there?).

The podcast won’t feature guests every episode. Instead, it’s topic-driven; they want listener input on what to discuss. “We really want to hear from all of you what ideas you have, what topics you would like to discuss,” Questian says.

Building Community Beyond Individual Success

What they’re creating goes beyond just another professional development resource. It’s about shifting from isolation to community, from pretending to have it all figured out to admitting we are all work in progress.

Nancy captures this perfectly when describing a conversation with a colleague: “I’m not happy that you’re struggling with this, too, but I’m also glad that it’s not just me.” That sentiment—wishing others didn’t have to struggle while finding relief in shared experience—is exactly why authentic professional community matters.

Their philosophy, borrowed from friend Shirley Koss, is “go where you’re celebrated, not where you’re tolerated.” Rather than enduring professional environments that don’t support them, they encourage women to actively seek and create spaces where authenticity is valued.

“If you’ve ever felt like you’re the only one, you’re not. And you shouldn’t have to figure this all out alone,” Questian states. This isn’t just their tagline—it’s their mission.

The podcast is supported by sponsors who understand this mission: Forwardly, Ignition, and Keeper. Nancy gives special recognition to Ignition, where she was a Top 50 Women in Accounting awardee. Their new grant program for past awardees helped make this podcast possible.

Where We Go From Here

Nancy and Questian’s journey from that initial “No, I don’t have time for that” to launching “She Counts” proves something important: the conversations women in accounting need most aren’t happening in formal training sessions or networking events. They’re happening in coffee shops, text messages, and Zoom calls between women who understand each other’s reality.

Now, they’re making those conversations accessible to everyone who needs them. Their next episode is called “She Believed in Me Before I Did,” and it’s about mentorship and the people who see potential in us before we see it ourselves.

“It’s not just you count or I count. It’s “She Counts.” It’s like the voices of women in accounting, working together to try to figure it out and to try to be better than we already are,” Nancy explains.

For women in accounting who have felt alone in their professional struggles, this podcast represents both validation and hope. It’s proof that the challenges are real, shared, and manageable when approached with community support and honest conversation.

The question now isn’t whether you have time for authentic professional community—it’s whether you can afford not to make time for it. Because, as Nancy and Questian discovered, the right conversations don’t just change individual careers. They transform entire professions.

Ready to join the conversation? Follow She Counts on LinkedIn, subscribe to the podcast, and help them brainstorm topics for future episodes. After all, this isn’t just their podcast—it belongs to every woman in accounting who’s ready to stop figuring it out alone.