Happy National Women’s History Month! Windham Brannon marks the occasion by spotlighting some of our female leadership. Windham Brannon proudly affirms that 57% of our employee base and more than half of our leadership team is female. We support several different women-based and women-owned organizations including: Commercial Real Estate Women, Women’s Global Leadership Summit, Women in Pensions Network, Accounting & Financial Women’s Alliance, Kate’s Club, American Women’s Society of Certified Public Accountants.
Assurance Principal Maggie Wise shares her perspective below. Maggie began her career at Windham Brannon and is known for her expertise serving clients in many industries, including manufacturing & distribution, technology, restaurant & franchise, not-for-profit, and employee benefit plans.
Related | Five pioneering women in accounting you should know
Everyone has a story about how they decided to enter their career field. What made you want to pursue accounting? Did you always know or did you discover it in school?
Maggie Wise: I always thought I’d be a kindergarten teacher. Always. But somewhere around my senior year of high school, when selecting colleges, I thought about business school and chose a college that offered a great degree with either major (GO DAWGS!). I took business and education classes and ended up not hating my accounting class. Everyone around me hated the entry-level accounting classes, but I stuck around and ultimately decided on it as a major. I never loved accounting in school, ever. When I graduated, I even told my parents I was going to try it out but wasn’t sold on being an accountant. It wasn’t until I first started at WB as an intern that I just fell in love with all things auditing and knew I had selected the right career path.
How has public accounting evolved since you entered the workforce?
Maggie Wise: Public accounting firms focus on performing quality audits and being efficient. Dedication to quality at WB has never wavered, and we continue to evolve and learn as the standards are ever-changing. The most dynamic changes have occurred, however, through the efficiency of our audits. As the technology industry has exploded over the last 15 years, public accounting firms have been forced to respond to keep up with competitors. WB, in particular, has created internal in-task forces, participates in external research groups, attends global conferences, consults with industry experts, etc. to ensure we stay current with everything that’s available to us and fully understand how these new tools can aid us in performing the audits more efficiently. As much as you may wish for a “groundhog day,” it doesn’t exist in public accounting. Today’s audit looks different than yesterday’s audit and its been a welcome challenge trying to keep up!
What has helped you get to where you are, and what advice would you share with people who are interested in following a similar path?
Maggie Wise: Two answers- investment in people and personal responsibility. So many individuals have made an investment in my career. These come in the form of opportunities on engagements, one-on-one professional coaching, access to global conferences and research sources, and most importantly, their time to teach me “how.” I’ve made every effort along the way to pay it forward to everyone else I’ve worked with, as that’s the best way to show how grateful I am for this investment.
The second part of this is a personal responsibility. Without self-motivation to pass the CPA exam, learn new accounting standards, understand a complex transaction, to perform quality A+ work, or to just get continuously get better, all of this investment would mean nothing. You must push yourself daily to do the hard things- those things that you just don’t want to do because they are time-consuming or maybe you just don’t think you understand it fully. Do those things first, get them out of the way and take pride in your work so that you push yourself to be the best version of you.
What are common misconceptions people have about accountants that you’d like to address?
Maggie Wise: The biggest misconception people have about auditors is that our role or responsibility is to be punitive. Finding accounting adjustments or identifying internal control matters is something that happens on almost every engagement. I always welcome the opportunity to use those ‘findings’ as discussion points with clients to understand how these issues occurred and how they can make adjustments in the future. My favorite quote is from Maya Angelou (and Oprah repeats it often): “When you know better, do better.” We are also educators. We have an obligation to educate our clients along the way so that when they know better, they do better and everyone benefits… and THAT is one of my favorite parts of the job.
