Ep. 177: Dr. Anton Lewis - DE&I in Accounting

Connect with Dr. Lewis


Full Transcript:
Mitch: (00:05)
Welcome back to Count Me In. IMA's podcast about all things
affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Mitch
Roshong, and you are listening to episode number 177 of our
series. Today's conversation features Dr. Anton Lewis, an
associate professor of accounting at Valparaiso University, whose
research investigates the experience of black accountants in the
profession and promotes equitable racial representation. In his
conversation with my co-host Adam, Dr. Lewis talks about DE&I
in accounting, common flaws relating to diversity equity and
inclusion in the workplace, as well as what can be done and what
he is already doing to advance and improve equitable
representation across the industry. Keep listening as we head
over to the conversation now. 
 
Adam: (00:59)
So Anton, historically conversation about race and the workplace,
particularly within accounting simply have not happened. Now,
there have been great achievements in DE&I, but there's still
much room for improvement in our industry. Why do you think that
is? 
 
Anton: (01:16)
Adam, If I had to really give you an answer to that, I actually
think it is because we in society and in particular US society
have a great deal of problems talking about the subject of race
and racial representation. It's almost a taboo subject in many
ways. So the problem is we know we have poor representation
currently. We know we've historically had poor representation,
but nobody really wants to talk about why that is because race
and racism are sticky, unpleasant subjects to talk about. And
part of what seems to be my life's cause now is a core trying to
provoke a conversation around this area, which is not polarizing,
which is almost impossible to do by definition. But to my mind,
if we can't have a conversation about race, racism, why we have
poor black representation in our accounting profession and have
had historically, and, you know, if we can't have this
conversation and it be at two polar opposite ends to this, but
yet still respect each other, each one another's views, we will
not actually significantly change the situation. We will not deal
with this problem effectively. And to my mind, that has kind of
been the status quo for quite some time. 
 
Adam: (02:58)
Yeah, that makes sense. I think I've seen that as well, but as we
specifically like focus in on accounting, as you kind of did
there at the end, you are often the only person of color in a
predominantly white workplace day in and day out, you know, how
have you handled that and what have you done to advance the way
that is perceived or how you feel about it? 
 
Anton: (03:18)
It's tricky, isn't it? There are those critical theorists,
critical race theorists among others who talk about this
environmental microaggression that occurs being the only black
person in an accounting organization or any other organization
that when you step foot in the building of which you work and you
are one of the three people out of 500 that work there without
anybody saying anything without anybody saying you don't belong,
you feel it in the very walls of the institution you're in, and
it can be a quite effective way of pushing those of difference
out of the doors in terms of how one deals with that. It's
difficult. the entire reason why I look at the area of race and
racism and where I'm originally from, from Britain as you may
hear in my accent when I was a jobing accountant, so to speak,
that would happen to me all the time. 
 
Anton: (04:25)
And it's the reason that I began to look at this subject topic,
cause I always wanted to know, well, why am I the only one there?
And as I was experiencing this, I really wanted to have other
people of color, other black people, other black professionals,
ironically, to talk about this, to say, I'm not going mad. Am I,
are you having this feeling as well? And the truth of the matter
if they just weren't there and it becomes a circular problem,
right? What am I doing to try to change this? Because I'm an
accounting professor. One of the things I try to do is encourage
now I'm here in the United States, as many African Americans as
many black accountants as I can into profession with more
numbers, it kind of gets rid of that feeling of being alone. But
unfortunately it's still a very difficult process. 
 
Anton: (05:17)
Another thing that I've tried to do is write more publicly in
things like the CPA journal. I've tried to increase my social
media presence. I've tried to reach out with my own podcast,
Counting Black and White Beans as an idea to be able to be used
as a resource to allow those black accountants who feel isolated,
who are feeling a little bit lost, let them know that this is not
unusual, that this is actually quite common, whether it's in the
United Kingdom or the United States, and for them to have a
feeling of kinship, of a kindred kind of effect for one of a
better word kind of saying you're in, we're in this together. And
so I'm afraid to say, Adam, if you're looking for an absolute
definite answer as to how does one deal with the isolation often
of being one of the few black people within an accounting
environment, I can't give you any firm answers to that. I suspect
it's as difficult to deal with today. As I found it decades
ago, 
 
Adam: (06:27)
I'd imagine it is, it's not easy being underrepresented in any
profession. But for the black accountant, there has to be various
stereotypes that are there tales. Can you explain how or why
these stereotypes exist and what impact that misinformation
has? 
 
Anton: (06:42)
Yeah. And again, these stereotypes exist in our profession and
other professions as well. Because we, in my opinion, and many
others live in a racialized environment, you know, we, our
racialized views of those who are different from ourselves, don't
stop at the doors of the organizations that we work in. Some of
the traditional stereotypes that black accountants often have to
deal with that I've found in my research and many other's is one
would be of being angry. If you are a black male accountant, and
I should be clear here, there are different stereotypes often for
black women accountants and black male accountants. So for black
male accountants, anger is often an issue. So, you know, if one
is out on an audit and you find something has come up and you're
in the middle of a meeting with your team to try to address this
issue and tempers become a little bit frayed. 
 
Anton: (07:54)
If you are the black accountant, you understand clearly that you
cannot be passionate like your white colleagues, because that is
seen as being angry and unprofessional and unbecoming, that
latitude is not afforded to you. And of course it makes it
difficult in terms of impression management. Once we come around
and look at performance evaluations and it may come up that you
are unprofessional, angry, you scare inverted clients. On the
polar opposite, perhaps would be the experience that many black
women professionals have of being seen as the Sapphire, this
steely hard unemotional unempathetic professional that is cold
sometimes also can be angry in that negative way. But the idea
here is that she is not a team player. She is overbearing she's
quintessentially, anti feminine or unfeminine, if you like in
this setting and be it with just these two examples of
stereotypes that you mentioned that are often prevalent to the
black accounting or black professional experience, whether it's
being too angry, if you are a black male accountant or being
positioned as Sapphire as a black woman accountant, both
positionalities for wont of bette...