AICPA

All of us are taught to learn from our own mistakes...but do we really learn from someone else's mistakes? Donna Ingram thinks so.

Ingram is a CPA and CFE — Certified Fraud Examiner — who has capitalized on the specialty accreditation to carve a niche for her own career as well as to focus on forensic accounting for her firm, May & Company, in Vicksburg, MS. With white-collar crime growing significantly, and given updated technologies, she works in a competitive field to help clients face what is sometimes a grave reality.

Looking Beyond the Numbers

In addition to earning CPA certification, Ingram received her CFE in 1992 from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners and is one of 25,000 accredited accountants, auditors, attorneys, criminologists, and others who are in the business of going beyond the traditional audit function to help their clients implement fraud prevention and detection measures. Specifically, the CFE addresses risk and specific concerns that could eventually uncover instances of fraud.

"If we can help people to take those blinders off and see where they are vulnerable, we can protect their business and assets a lot better," says Donna.

Ingram takes the audit one step further, too, for her clients who require an audit for comfort but don't have to have one for external purposes, like SEC reporting. Instead of performing the traditional audit, she tailors an audit to evaluate fraud risk factors and other areas that are of concern to management. Working in the fraud arena involves change and motivating the clients to see beyond their noses.

Ingram realizes that sometimes the creative thinking required by her specialty overcomes the limitations of "by the book" procedures. "The client must realize that just because the company may have been doing something the same way for 20 years, there could eventually be exposure," she says. "I learn more from practical experiences and other people's mistakes than from any textbook, and we are helpful to our clients because we understand the numbers side, as well as the systems component."

Raising Awareness

One of the recent accomplishments of her firm also involved the community when the firm implemented a toll-free "fraud and abuse hotline," where employees could call a phone set up at May & Company to anonymously report potential cases of fraud, discrimination, sexual harassment, or other problems within their own companies.

"Unfortunately, within a company, internal auditors and upper management usually are not the ones detecting fraud. Coworkers are the ones that notice lifestyle and personality changes or other red flags that usually accompany a fraudulent act. So the hotline gives all employees the ability to report potential mishaps or something unusual," says Ingram.