Workplace Culture

This Accounting Firm Finally Turned “We Should Give Back” Into a Measurable System

Earmark Team · February 5, 2026 ·

Most accounting firm owners consider themselves generous people. They write checks to local charities, sponsor community events, and encourage employees to volunteer. But ask them to quantify their firm’s charitable impact over the past three years, and most would struggle to produce meaningful numbers.

The irony is, professionals who build careers on measurement and accountability often treat their own charitable giving as an unmeasured afterthought.

Marcus and Rachel Dillon faced this same challenge. As co-leaders of Dillon Business Advisors, they listed “giving back locally and internationally” as part of their vision, along with concrete, measurable goals. However, it became a reminder of good intentions that hadn’t yet become systematic action.

In this 2026 New Year episode of Who’s Really the Boss?, the Dillons skip the typical resolution-setting advice. Instead, they share how they live out their rally cry for the year: “lead change, create impact.” For them, IMPACT actually spells out their firm’s values. And they’ve finally found a way to measure it.

The Control That Creates Commitment

The Dillons knew what they wanted to accomplish. The challenge was finding a mechanism for accountability.

A separate bank account seemed obvious. It would be easy and fast. But Marcus saw the flaw immediately. “We wanted that control mechanism in place as opposed to just setting up an additional bank account that we could redistribute or transfer money back into,” he explains.

Their solution was The DBA Impact Fund, established through the National Christian Foundation in 2025. With a donor-advised fund, once money goes in, it can’t come back out. Those dollars are committed to charitable purposes forever.

This constraint is exactly the point. For firm owners who want to build charitable giving into their operations, a donor-advised fund provides accountability that willpower alone can’t.

The practical benefits extend beyond commitment. Funds can be invested and earn returns while accumulating for larger initiatives. The account works like a checking account when distributing money to approved charities. And because it generates standalone statements, the Dillons can share their giving transparently with their team.

Creating the fund was simple. “It literally took five minutes. I went to NCF’s website to create the fund, connected a bank account, and started transferring money,” Marcus notes. Five minutes to solve a problem that had lingered for years.

The Power of Simple Math

With the fund established, the leadership team, which includes Marcus and Rachel, and their directors, Amy McCarty, MBA, and Lezlie Reeves, CPA, decided how much to give.

They came up with a simple formula: 1% of every dollar invoiced, deposited the first week of each month based on the previous month’s revenue. The formula doesn’t consider collections, net income, or profit after expenses. Just invoice revenue.

“There’s direct accountability and no creative accounting or math involved,” Rachel emphasizes. “There’s no ‘it depends.’ Or I have to wait until I run the calculations.”

Anyone can look at the monthly invoice total, calculate 1%, and know exactly what to deposit. No waiting to close books or opportunity for excuses when margins feel tight.

They chose revenue over a fixed dollar amount for a specific reason. “We tied it to revenue because we believe in growth,” Marcus explains. As the firm grows, so does the giving. The charitable impact scales automatically with business success.

“We started with 1% because it’s easy,” Marcus admitted. They can always give more during strong periods, but the baseline stays constant and predictable.

When they created the fund in mid-2025, they made an initial deposit to “true up” all the invoices from earlier in the year. By 2026, they had a solid foundation ready to deploy.

Making Water Flow: The Team Experience

The Dillons wanted their team to experience generosity firsthand.

For their signature initiative, they selected Living Water International, an organization that drills water wells across Latin America and Africa. Both Marcus and Rachel have participated in Living Water trips. They know people on the board and have seen how it operates.

“We know it is a well-run organization,” Marcus explains. “If we were going to choose any one large charity to use this first season of the DBA Impact Fund, we wanted to go with a safe bet.”

The project spans two years. In 2026, The Impact Fund will purchase a well location in Latin America. In 2027, around 20 people, including team members, spouses, clients, and Collective member firms, will travel to install the well.

The Impact Fund covers all costs, removing financial barriers. “The purchase of the well is not voluntary,” Rachel explains. “That’s happening for the whole team. Going on the trip will be voluntary.”

Marcus calls Living Water trips “entry-level” mission experiences. They have structured itineraries with backup plans, safe accommodations, good food, and often a fun activity on the final day. Her first trip included ziplining on the way to the airport.

Birthday Wishes That Matter

While the well project creates a collective experience, the DBA Impact Birthday Gifts program gives individual team members a voice in the firm’s giving.

On each employee’s birthday, they direct the Impact Fund to donate $1,000 to any approved charity of their choice. The program costs employees nothing and adds to their existing birthday recognition.

“It’s significant enough that it does make an impact,” Marcus explains. “If we were only to do $100, they may not feel that it was as much of an impact.”

The program also helps with recruiting. When future team members ask how the firm celebrates birthdays, the answer now includes something more meaningful than cake in the breakroom.

Your Turn to Measure What Matters

The DBA Impact Fund is unusual in that it approaches charitable giving with the same discipline that firm owners bring to client work.

The framework has three parts:

A donor-advised fund that creates real accountability
A simple 1% revenue calculation that eliminates debate
Team involvement through collective projects and individual choice

“As accountants, dollars are an easy way to measure things,” Marcus observes. “And if you want to put dollars to what you care about, this is one small way to do it.”

The Dillons are transparent about their experiment. “We’re entering into the second calendar year of the funds being there, so it’s still an early experiment,” Marcus acknowledges. “If it fails, we won’t hold back from speaking to the failures.”

For other firm owners considering something similar, you don’t need a perfect plan. You need a mechanism that creates accountability and a calculation simple enough to execute consistently.

What would 1% of your firm’s revenue look like directed toward charitable purposes? How might involving your team—not just as contributors, but as participants—change your firm’s relationship with generosity?

For the full conversation, including more of Marcus’s mission trip stories and the team’s approach to capturing impact, listen to the complete episode.

Rachel and Marcus Dillon, CPA, own a Texas-based, remote client accounting and advisory services firm, Dillon Business Advisors, with a team of 15 professionals. Their latest organization, Collective by DBA, supports and guides accounting firm owners and leaders with firm resources, education, and operational strategy through community, groups, and one-on-one advisory.

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

Earmark Team · February 5, 2026 ·

“I ended up leaving that company by choice because I did not feel comfortable with him still there,” audience member Kimberly shared, her voice steady but carrying the weight of a difficult decision. “I didn’t want to go to court. But if I prevented this from happening to anyone else, that was enough for me to speak up so I could prevent some other young woman from ever going through that again.”

This powerful moment came during Part Two of a special She Counts podcast episode, recorded live on the main stage at the Accounting & Financial Women’s Alliance (AFWA) Women Who Count conference. Hosts Nancy McClelland and Questian Telka called it their best episode yet, bringing together employment attorney Kami Hoskins and HR expert Julie Thiel for an unfiltered two-hour CPE session about sexual harassment in accounting.

“Seeing all those faces in the audience and hearing from women who’ve been directly impacted by sexual harassment, it was everything I hoped it would be,” Nancy reflected. The discussion tackled the issue from multiple angles, including employees facing uncomfortable situations, employers trying to build better cultures, and small business owners managing client relationships.

The Real Goal is to Stop the Behavior, Not Destroy Careers

One revelation from the session was understanding what actually happens when somebody reports harassment. Many women fear reporting because they don’t want to destroy someone’s career or face retaliation.

“The goal of a good investigation is for the behavior to stop,” Kami explained. “It’s not to put the person in the public square and flog them. It’s not to cause them physical harm or to embarrass or shame them. It’s to stop the behavior.”

Sometimes extreme behavior requires termination. But often, intervention works, behavior stops, and everyone moves forward. This reframing matters because reporting helps create a workplace where everyone can do their jobs.

Harassment from clients and vendors matters just as much as harassment from coworkers. Julie emphasized that protection extends beyond your own company walls. “You are protected both within your company and in how you’re interacting with others as well,” she said. The investigation process and standards don’t change because the harasser works elsewhere.

When Nancy asked how many audience members were managers or supervisors, about 80% raised their hands. This matters because supervisors are legally obligated to report harassment they witness or hear about, even if the affected employee hasn’t complained.

“The supervisor can get the message to the Human Resources department,” Kami noted. “It doesn’t have to be the employees themselves. It’s on all of us to make sure that information gets to this function.”

Simple Words That Stop Bad Behavior

The experts shared surprisingly simple strategies for interrupting inappropriate behavior before it escalates. You don’t need a confrontational script or perfect comeback.

“It’s always easier to interrupt bad behaviors when they’re sort of lower level,” Kami explained. When someone makes a weird comment or inappropriate joke, small responses like “What?,” “That was weird,” “Awkward,” or even a pointed look can work.

Julie’s favorite intervention might be the most powerful: “What did you mean by that?”

“Often, people aren’t really thinking deeply about what they’re saying,” Julie explained. “That question gives them a pause to reflect again.”

Nancy shared a story that showed exactly why these tools matter. At an accounting conference earlier in the year, a woman made an extremely inappropriate sexual comment to a man in front of a group. The comment was so explicit Nancy wouldn’t repeat it on air.

“We were all just stunned,” Nancy recalled. “If a man had said that to a woman, there is just no way they would have gotten away with it. But we were just all so stunned because it was a woman saying it to a man. None of us knew what to say.”

Looking back, “What did you mean by that?” would have been perfect. Instead, Nancy managed only “Awkward,” which, the experts agreed, also works.

Julie noted that conferences pose particular risks. “When people are relaxed and in informal settings, those are often the situations where they make bad decisions.” Her advice is to stay self-aware. Check in with yourself about how you feel and whether anyone seems uncomfortable.

Culture Beats Policy Every Time

The most powerful moment came when another audience member, Katie, shared her experience at a nonprofit healthcare company. Despite being almost all women with male leadership, everyone felt comfortable because of one consistent practice.

“They called it the tone from the top,” Katie explained. “Every single meeting started with a tone at the top, coming from the board members and from the executive leadership.”

Even during days with 13 budget meetings, each one began with acknowledging company values and recognizing someone who exemplified them. This wasn’t performative; it was how the organization operated.

Kami shared why this works. “I don’t think leaders understand how often employees need to hear the message. It’s not something that you can hear once a year or twice a year. Employees need repetition.”

The discussion revealed a critical gap in leadership training in most organizations. “Most leaders get put into leadership positions without any training,” Julie observed. “It’s like, ‘Good luck in the deep end of the pool!’”

Nancy illustrated this with a story from her husband’s job at Microsoft. A colleague discovered he’d been promoted to manager when someone said, “I guess I report to you now.” An email had announced it to his new team, but nobody had told him first.

“You’re taking somebody who’s an introverted software developer who’s very good at technical work, and now he is managing people,” Nancy said. These preparation gaps contribute to cultures where harassment can flourish.

Real Questions, Real Challenges

The audience Q&A highlighted the complex realities women face. An anonymous question asked about an executive who had asked if her “boobs were fake.” She never reported him because of his position.

“Any comments about anyone’s body for any reason are not cool,” Julie responded firmly. Kami added that while a judge or jury determines if something legally constitutes harassment, it’s clearly “problematic behavior that should not have happened.”

For those fearing powerful harassers, Kami noted many employers have anonymous ethics helplines. “Having been on the inside of a legal department, I can tell you a lot of work goes into maintaining anonymity.”

Michelle, a volunteer firefighter, raised another challenge: inadequate investigations in volunteer organizations. She described a situation where someone was falsely accused, and the accused faced immediate threats of expulsion before any investigation.

“That’s why that investigation is so critical,” Kami responded. “We want to do good fact-gathering before we make decisions about what to do next.”

Kimberly asked about the “he said, she said” problem, when harassment happens privately with no witnesses or proof. “How do you prove that?” she asked, describing her own experience reporting someone in power.

“If there’s no reason for me not to believe you, I would still address it,” Julie reassured her. She explained that HR’s job is to remain neutral and hold everyone accountable. Even without proof, strategies exist to ensure behavior doesn’t continue, such as never being alone with that person again, check-ins, and accountability measures.

“If there’s no proof, it’s hard to win in court,” Kami acknowledged. “But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a whole other universe of resolutions available to ensure the behavior stops.”

Resources for Every Organization Size

When Nancy asked about resources for small firms that don’t have an HR department, Julie recommended fractional and outsourced support. Just as firms use fractional CFOs, they can access fractional HR and legal expertise. “Building that relationship can be important,” Julie advised. “This isn’t the kind of stuff you want to guess about.”

For those needing to escalate beyond their employer, resources include:

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) at the federal level
State civil rights divisions
Anonymous ethics helplines within larger companies
Employment attorneys for serious cases

Kami emphasized starting with your employer when possible, but “there’s always opportunities to go outside of the organization.”

Measuring What Matters

For an audience of accounting professionals, Kami offered data-driven accountability. “You can actually look at the data and see if your culture is working for you.”

Key metrics include:

Retention rates
Efficiency metrics
Promotion patterns across genders
Pay equity (“same role, same experience, different comp?”)

“In addition to all the warm and fuzzy stuff,” Kami said, “there are really tactical, measurable metrics organizations can look at to make sure they’re keeping themselves honest.”

Your Voice Is Your Power

The session closed with Questian sharing a quote from Melinda Gates. “Women speaking up for themselves is the strongest force we have to change the world.”

Julie’s admission resonated throughout the room. “I was 50 learning how to find my voice, and I am still finding my voice at 55.” Finding your voice is an ongoing practice that gets stronger with use.

For women in accounting firms, corporations, or running their own practices, these insights offer a path forward. Not just policies on paper, but real cultural change that makes speaking up safe and normal.

Listen to both parts of this special She Counts episode to hear the full conversation, including more audience questions and expert guidance. Follow She Counts on LinkedIn to join the conversation about creating workplaces where women don’t have to choose between their safety and their careers.

Because as Kimberly’s story reminds us, no woman should have to leave a job she loves to escape harassment. It’s time to change the culture, not just the policy.

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

Earmark Team · February 2, 2026 ·

An HR expert with decades of experience found herself doing something she never expected: hiding from a retiree who kept asking for hugs. Despite her master’s degree in human resources and years of training others on harassment prevention, she went along with the unwanted contact until she caught herself actively avoiding him in the building.

“What is going on here?” Julie Thiel finally asked herself.

Julie shared this moment of clarity during a live recording of the She Counts podcast at the AFWA Women Who Count conference in Mesa, Arizona. Over 100 women in accounting filled the main stage room to tackle one of the profession’s most uncomfortable topics with Julie, hosts Questian Telka and Nancy McClelland, and employment attorney Kami Hoskins.

As the first of a two-part podcast series recorded live at the session shows, knowing every policy and law doesn’t protect you from freezing when harassment actually happens.

The Gap Between Knowledge and Action

Julie’s credentials should have been enough. She has a psychology degree, a Master’s in HR and years of experience conducting investigations and leading training sessions. She knew all the best practices.

None of it helped when the retiree walked past her office.

“Julie, can I get a hug?” seemed harmless at first so she said yes. He visited periodically, always stopping by with the same request. She kept agreeing.

Then she noticed her own troubling behavior.

“Anytime I saw him coming into the building, I would start going the other way,” Julie told the audience. “I found myself in a position where I felt uncomfortable hugging him. I didn’t want to hug him anymore.”

The woman who’d trained countless others was doing exactly what she’d tell them not to do: complying with unwanted contact, then avoiding the person instead of addressing it.

“I want you to know that we’re all in the same boat when it comes to this topic,” she said.

The session proved her point in real time. While Julie shared her story, Nancy had a sudden realization.

“It happened to me earlier today,” Nancy admitted. “Somebody said something really inappropriate related to the fact that we were going to be talking about this topic on the stage, and I laughed.”

She paused, processing the irony of laughing off harassment while preparing to discuss harassment prevention.

“I’m going to go back to that person and say, ‘hey, you know what? I shouldn’t have laughed there because that was a really good opportunity for me to teach you that it’s not okay to say things like that.’”

If experts freeze and laugh off inappropriate comments, what’s really happening? It stems from how deeply women are conditioned to keep everyone comfortable—often at their own expense.

Why We’re Conditioned to Comply

The disconnect between knowledge and action isn’t personal failure. It’s social programming that starts before anyone enters the workforce.

“We’re so conditioned to smile and laugh it off,” Questian observed. “To overlook things that bother us in order to de-escalate.”

Women learn early to smooth things over and prioritize others’ comfort. By the time we enter professional environments, these responses are automatic. They kick in before we register something is wrong.

Julie acknowledged that comfort levels vary. “I’m sure some people would think, ‘No big deal. I’m happy to hug him.’ But for me, I had to pay attention to that inner pause.”

That “inner pause” is the moment something feels off before our conditioning overrides it. Learning to recognize and trust that pause is where real work begins.

Kami reframed the challenge. “This stuff takes practice. It’s not a muscle we’re going to have overnight. The more you do it, the stronger your muscle gets and the easier it gets.”

She emphasized self-compassion. “We need to have a little grace and forgiveness for ourselves. If we sometimes laugh because we felt unsafe or needed to de-escalate a situation, that’s okay. Just keep practicing.”

The audience’s responses confirmed how much work remains. When asked how they’d feel about speaking up if they experienced or witnessed harassment, their word cloud was revealing. “Uncomfortable” dominated the screen, followed by scared, hesitant, and nervous.

But some responded with “confident” and “empowered,” proof that building this muscle is possible. Unexpectedly, “empathy” and “responsibility” also appeared, suggesting women felt duty to speak up for others even when speaking for themselves felt impossible.

Understanding the Spectrum of Harassment

Sexual harassment ranges from uncomfortable requests to explicit threats. Understanding this spectrum helps us recognize harassment even when it doesn’t match our mental image.

Kami emphasized the word “unwelcome.”

“Is the behavior unwelcome? If it’s unwelcome, it’s probably a problem,” she explained. “It doesn’t matter whether someone intended harm or whether others would be bothered. What matters is whether the behavior is unwelcome to you.”

The session’s two stories illustrated this spectrum perfectly.

Julie’s experience involved a retiree with no power over her employment. His hug requests started casually without explicit threats. No quid pro quo existed, yet the unwelcome behavior affected her enough that she avoided parts of her workplace.

A listener’s submitted story painted a darker picture. Her supervisor at a large accounting firm repeatedly asked her to lunch, then dinner, then begged her to spend time outside work. During layoff discussions, he made it explicit: “I have feelings for you. I want you to go out with me. I can help make sure you don’t get laid off.”

“That is a very different kind of sexual harassment than what Julie shared with us,” Nancy said, noting the contrast. I don’t know that I would have heard Julie’s story and thought, that’s sexual harassment.”

Both involved unwelcome behavior. Both deserved addressing. But they fall into different legal categories.

“The story you shared is an example of quid pro quo harassment, Latin meaning ‘something for something,’” Kami explained. “That’s when a person in a supervisory capacity conditions employment on being subjected to sexual harassment.”

This legal distinction matters for understanding options, but shouldn’t determine whether you speak up. Behavior can violate company policy without necessarily creating a legal claim.

“It doesn’t mean we should keep it to ourselves,” Kami emphasized. “We should still share that information and give our employer the opportunity to correct the behavior.”

What the Numbers Tell Us

The session’s polling data was sobering. While 37% of women nationally report experiencing sexual harassment according to McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2024, the accounting professionals in the room showed higher rates.

About 44% had personally experienced sexual harassment. Another 31% knew someone who had. Only about 20% had neither experienced it nor knew anyone who had.

“Ours was closer to 50%,” Nancy observed, noting the accounting profession appeared to exceed national averages.

Whether from self-selection or something specific about accounting, these numbers demand attention. They represent colleagues, partners, and sometimes ourselves.

Building Strength for Next Time

Traditional training rarely acknowledges that knowing the right answer and doing it in real time are different skills. Knowledge doesn’t equal action, our conditioning runs deep, and harassment exists on a spectrum where “unwelcome” is the standard that matters. Most importantly, boundary-setting is a muscle requiring practice, not perfection.

For women in accounting, these insights matter. We’re not failing because we don’t know policies. We’re struggling because we haven’t practiced the skills in real situations.

The goal isn’t perfection; it’s shrinking the gap between what we know and what we do. It’s making “uncomfortable” smaller on that word cloud while “confident” and “empowered” grow.

This conversation continues in part two, with practical reporting strategies, what actually happens when you go to HR, and navigating harassment as employees, employers, and business owners.

Listen to the full episode and return for part two. These women are building the roadmap we all need.

Resources for those experiencing harassment:

National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-4673
National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233
National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: 988

From Stuck to Strategic: How Top CPA Firms Break Free from Endless Problem Loops

Earmark Team · January 15, 2026 ·

Picture a CPA firm owner sitting across from the same colleague at the same conference, one year later, complaining about the exact same problems: the same staffing issues, same client complaints, and same technology frustrations. Marcus Dillon sees this scene too often, and it breaks his heart. “One of the most disappointing things to me,” he shares on the latest episode of Who’s Really the Boss?, “is whenever you have a conversation with somebody a year later and they’re in the same exact place they were when you previously talked to them.”

But in a packed ballroom at Hotel Vin in Grapevine, Texas, 105 accounting professionals gathered this October to make sure they’d never be that person stuck in an endless loop of unaddressed challenges. Over two and a half days in October 2025, firm owners, leaders, and carefully selected team members came together for Gather 2025, an event that offered CPE credits but delivered something far more valuable than continuing education.

About two-thirds of attendees were firm owners and leaders, while the remaining third were team members positioned to create ripple effects back in their firms. “You want to bring a team member who can learn and take part in table discussions, but then also take what they’ve heard and learned back to others on your team,” Marcus explained.

From Growth to Excellence: A New Chapter in Leadership

After a year focused on “the goal is growth, not comfort,” Marcus introduced a new rally cry for 2026 that signals a shift in how successful firms approach leadership: “Lead Change, Create Impact.” This evolution is more than a tagline change; it marks a maturity in thinking about what drives firm success.

“We’ve had a very large growth year,” Marcus reflects. “We added a couple of director level positions, did a couple of acquisitions, and continue to grow Collective by DBA very intentionally. So now we’re going into a season of refinement and then excellence.”

This natural progression, from growth to refinement and excellence, mirrors a cycle that successful firms navigate intentionally. But growth isn’t just about numbers. As Rachel emphasizes, when they adopted their previous rally cry, “We’re really thinking about growth personally and professionally, of what does it look like to delegate to someone else? What does it look like to upskill and learn that next new thing, or say yes to something we don’t feel we have the skill set for?”

Rachel shares a particularly striking insight she heard recently from author Ruth Chou Simons, “You don’t have to be blooming to be growing.” Sometimes the most critical development happens underground, in the roots and foundation of a firm’s culture. These invisible victories, such as saying no to wrong opportunities, developing team members’ skills, or refining internal processes, often matter more than year-end revenue numbers.

The data from Gather 2025 validates this approach. While participating firms showed revenue increases, the standout statistic was a 10% decrease in owner production hours. For an industry where firm owners routinely work 2,000+ hours annually in production, this reduction shows genuine progress. As Marcus points out, this matters enormously for succession planning. “If there was a firm owner working over 2000 hours per year, as a buyer, you probably have to hire two people to replace that outgoing owner.”

The Four P’s Framework: Your Roadmap Through Change

Change doesn’t fail because people resist it, but because leaders haven’t provided the clarity teams need to embrace it. The Four P’s Framework, which Marcus discovered through his C12 leadership group, transforms vague announcements into actionable roadmaps.

“We used to talk about change and how we communicate change to the team,” Marcus recalls. The standard three questions (What’s changing? What’s staying the same? How does this impact me?) weren’t enough. The Four P’s provide a complete structure:

Purpose answers “Why are we changing?” But “the lens that you answer that question through should be your mission, vision and values,” Marcus emphasizes. “You’re not changing your mission vision values based on a change. You’re seeing the change through the lens of those mission vision values.”
Picture addresses “What does success look like?” Marcus admits this is his personal weakness. “You have to paint a great picture of what it looks like on the other side of this change and what it looks like going through this change.” Teams need to visualize both the journey and the destination.
Plan tackles “How do we get there?” This includes specific milestones. “You’ll know when you’re 20%, 50%, or 80% there and you can celebrate and then maybe push or sprint to that next threshold,” Marcus explains.
Part clarifies “What is my role?” This component “helps foster ownership, provide clarity” by making it crystal clear how each person contributes.

The framework came to life during DBA’s recent acquisitions. Purpose aligned with their mission of “impacting others and creating a great place to work.” Picture showed “a fully integrated team under one brand, serving very similar clients in very similar ways.” Plan mapped out specific 30-day and 90-day milestones. And each team member received a clearly defined part. Some continued with existing clients, others mentor new colleagues, and others take ownership of new relationships.

Rachel’s reflection provides crucial context. “We have not always done it this way. We communicated the change, but rarely thought through all four parts.” The difference is dramatic. “You as the leader will not be in it on your own, trying to drag people along,” she notes. “You will have people who step into their role and know what it looks like to be successful.”

Solving Problems Together: The Power of Collective Intelligence

While firm owners tackled KPIs and succession planning in one room, team members gathered in another for a revolutionary session called “Borrow a Brain, Share a Solution.” With over 24 anonymously-submitted real firm challenges, participants tackled everything from lead generation to remote team connectivity to AI adoption.

“Even staff members had great ideas for lead generation,” Rachel observes. “It’s not always up to the leader to solve every challenge in the firm.”

The structured approach went beyond brainstorming. Teams identified questions needing answers, developed solutions, assigned implementation responsibilities, and specified necessary tools. They documented all frameworks and made them available through the Collective Community Resource Center, creating a permanent library of tested solutions for the 300+ team members now on the platform.

Angel Sabino, Jr., Dillon Business Advisor’s Director of Technology, demonstrated exactly how firms could build their own AI agents using Microsoft Copilot. “He built this AI agent for internal DBA team members to ask questions,” Marcus explains. “What’s our PTO policy look like? What firm holidays exist? What do I need to do to get this approved?” The agent pulls answers from the firm’s knowledge base, providing instant, accurate responses.

“He can also break it down into simple enough terms and pictures,” Rachel notes. This wasn’t about showcasing technology for its own sake, but solving the real challenge of making standard operating procedures accessible and useful.

The case study sessions added another dimension. Firm owners could submit data anonymously and pose specific questions to peers. Marcus calculated the value. “I did quick math. It was about $20,000 per hour in that room.” But the true value transcended hourly rates. It was about getting honest feedback from people who “truly care about you without having a vested interest.”

Putting It All Into Practice

The event’s structure reinforced its practical focus. After sessions on everything from KPIs to AI implementation, the final afternoon wasn’t filled with more presentations. Instead, teams and firm friends gathered to process what they’d learned and create action plans. “What did you hear? What are you going to work on?” became the guiding questions as DBA and Collective team members wove through conversations offering support.

The result? As one attendee shared with Rachel, “This is the first time I’m leaving feeling confident about what I’m going to do and not feeling overwhelmed and defeated that I’m not doing enough.”

Even the venue contributed to the experience. The Hotel Vin’s European-style food hall offered variety without leaving the building, while The Baked Bear ice cream truck (featuring customizable cookie ice cream sandwiches) provided a sweet networking opportunity in perfect October Texas weather.

Your Next Step Forward

For Collective by DBA members ready to continue this journey, Recharge 2026 awaits in Mexico (April 22-25) at an all-inclusive, adults-only Marriott resort. “We’re going international,” Rachel announces, promising two days of CPE, karaoke, collaborative dinners, and the option to extend your stay. Given that the group will occupy over 50% of the boutique hotel, spaces are limited.

But you don’t need to wait for an event to start implementing these insights. The frameworks, tools, and collaborative approaches shared at Gather 2025 offer immediate value for any firm ready to move beyond the cycle of unsolved problems.

Listen to Rachel and Marcus Dillon’s full conversation to discover how two leaders who’ve “been in this game since 2011” learned to stop dragging people through change and started leading them toward impact.

As Marcus reminds us, when you look back at your biggest wins, you won’t remember the change itself. You’ll remember the people who journeyed alongside you. The question is, will you be remembered as someone who helped others navigate change, or as someone who kept showing up with the same unsolved problems? The choice (and the tools to succeed) are yours.

Stop Fighting the Same Audit Battles Year After Year

Earmark Team · January 8, 2026 ·

Those recurring review comments that keep popping up across your team? Sam Mansour, CPA, did the math and it should make every audit firm leader pay attention. When you multiply these small inefficiencies across your entire practice, they balloon into 1,000 hours of wasted time annually. That’s half a full-time position lost to preventable mistakes, year after year.

In this episode of Audit Smarter, hosts Sam and Abdullah Mansour explore how firms can transform their most frustrating pain points into powerful improvements. Rather than treating each mistake as an isolated problem, Sam shares a systematic approach that turns recurring challenges into opportunities for growth.

The Hidden Cost of Repeated Mistakes

Sam starts with a simple example: a staff member who keeps forgetting to include references from cash testing leads back to supporting check registers. It seems minor until you realize this same mistake is happening across multiple team members, multiple engagements, and multiple years.

“Without reflection, mistakes repeat,” Sam emphasizes. “Without capturing what we’ve learned, we’re almost guaranteed that they’re going to repeat themselves.”

The math becomes staggering when you look across an entire firm. Sam breaks it down. “Let’s say they’re 15-minute issues. If you multiply that by 1,000, now it’s starting to take a lot of time. Because it’s not just one person, but multiple people doing it across multiple engagements.” With an average person working 2,080 hours per year, those 1,000 hours of wasted time equal half a position.

What’s particularly frustrating is that these aren’t random, one-off errors. “Very rarely is it just this one person making this one mistake and you’re never going to see that mistake ever again from different team members,” Sam explains. “People tend to make similar mistakes.”

From Personal Notes to Firm-Wide Knowledge

Sam’s solution is simply to create a lessons-learned log. At the most basic level, this might be a Word document where a preparer titles a section “Cash” and documents specific review comments they receive.

“When you go and test that section again, you need to review your own work,” Sam explains. “You complete this testing in that cash section. Next, you need to realize, okay, I commonly forget to make the reference back from what I see in this lead schedule.”

But personal documentation is just the beginning. Abdullah suggests using OneNote for better organization. “OneNote helps organize it so that you can have one folder for one client,” he explains. “And then you can have several different pages essentially underneath that. So just organizes it a lot better. It’s like a file structure on a network.”

The real power comes when firms turn these individual insights into searchable, firm-wide resources. Sam shares his own recurring challenge with farm audits. “Every year I get into those work papers, I’ll be like, oh shoot, how did those journal entries work? What was that again? Because I only tested like one or two of these a year.”

The solution is to create what Sam calls “a trail of breadcrumbs,” detailed guidance that lives outside the formal audit documentation. This might include written instructions, screenshots of calculations, or even “record video of yourself talking about it.”

By organizing these resources into categories like planning, fieldwork, and wrap-up, firms create an institutional memory that helps everyone, but especially new team members who can access years of accumulated wisdom before their first engagement.

Post-Engagement Debriefs Can’t Be Optional

Sam acknowledges the common perception of post-engagement debriefs as just administrative work. Teams finish one audit and want to jump straight into the next, treating reflection as a luxury they can’t afford.

But Sam insists these debriefs are critical. Structure these meetings by asking three essential questions: What worked? What didn’t work? Where did we get stuck?

Timing matters enormously. “If you wait six months to ask what worked and what didn’t work during busy season, it’s difficult to recall all those little instances,” Sam explains.

The solution is to make debriefs mandatory. “Don’t make it an optional thing,” Sam insists. “We need to sit down, discuss, and reflect.”

These insights then translate into concrete improvements. Sam provides specific examples of how to use what you learn:

Update templates. Add conditional formatting that turns cells green when correct values are entered, creating visual confirmation that eliminates data entry errors.
Improve checklists. Sam says people like to complain about adding more things to the checklist. His response is practical: “We should continue to add things to the checklist until we stop missing them.”
Document compensating controls. In smaller environments where proper segregation of duties isn’t possible, teams often miss compensating controls. Sam’s solution is to put a header in the template that says Compensating Controls. Highlight that section in yellow, and force auditors to fill it out when they’re in the field.

Getting Your Team to Actually Buy In

“They’re filling out more paperwork. Their checklists are becoming longer, their templates are becoming longer. They’re asked to do more work. People get frustrated,” Sam says, acknowledging the pushback firms encounter.

The key to overcoming resistance is to explain the “why” behind every change. Using the compensating controls example, Sam shows how to frame it. Explain why smaller clients need these controls, how missing this documentation puts the firm at risk, and why this has emerged as a firm-wide trend.

Most importantly, show the math. “Yes, it takes an extra 15 minutes to fill out this work paper,” Sam quantifies, “but on the back end it costs us, on average, an hour. So we’re saving 45 minutes and we’ve improved our audit quality.”

Recognition matters too. “Recognize people who help us improve as a firm,” Sam emphasizes. When you publicly acknowledge team members who contribute ideas, it shows everyone that the firm values continuous improvement.

The payoff is clear when teams understand the bigger picture. “Improvement is easier to embrace when it’s linked to wins, not just extra tasks,” Sam explains. The wins include reduced hours, better documentation, less stress during peer reviews, and becoming better auditors overall.

Building a Culture Where Every Audit Makes You Stronger

The ultimate transformation happens when learning becomes part of your firm’s DNA. “We do work and then we reflect on that. What did we do good? What did we do bad? What needs to improve? What needs to change?” Sam describes. “We take those lessons learned and then we implement change in the firm. Now it’s an upgrade.”

This creates a powerful shift in how teams approach their work. “Eventually it becomes so ingrained in people that they go out into the field with that mentality from the very beginning,” Sam observes. “If you know you’re going to have that conversation, the next audit you go out on, you don’t want come to the next meeting and say, oh shoot, we missed this.”

The benefits extend beyond efficiency. Sam notes that when professionals evaluate career moves, they ask themselves if working at a firm will enhance their resume. “It’s really important to have a culture of learning, to have a culture of enhancing and moving forward,” he emphasizes.

Perhaps most remarkably, this approach transforms the audit environment itself. “I have found audit environments like that are much less stressful to be in because everyone’s just so ahead of the game and so proactive,” Sam reflects.

Some might think this vision sounds unrealistic, but Sam addresses this directly. “For a lot of audit firms listening to this, they’re thinking this is an unrealistic dream. But it’s very realistic if the people in the firm buy into this idea.”

Over time, Sam promises, “your audit methodology becomes smarter, more efficient and more resilient because now you’re not just digging holes and going home. You’re you’re thinking it through.”

Turn Your Next Review Comment Into Progress

The difference between firms that fight the same battles year after year and those that continuously improve isn’t talent or resources. It’s the discipline to capture, analyze, and act on lessons learned.

Sam’s framework shows every review comment, debrief insight, and team suggestion can strengthen your entire firm. When you transform individual experiences into institutional knowledge, optional debriefs into mandatory investments, and isolated improvements into a learning culture, each audit makes your firm stronger.

Ready to stop losing productivity to preventable mistakes? Listen to the full episode for detailed frameworks and additional examples.