Ep. 51: Dr. Kelly Richmond Pope - Fraud, Film, and Lifelong Learning

Dr. Kelly Richmond Pope is an Associate Professor in the School
of Accountancy and Management Information Systems at DePaul
University in Chicago, Illinois where she teaches financial,
managerial and forensic accounting. Kelly’s research on
organizational misconduct culminated into directing and producing
the award-winning documentary, All the Queen’s Horses, in 2017
which streamed on Netflix from July 2018-2019. In 2018, Pope
became a TED speaker with her impactful and timely TED Talk
entitled ‘How whistle-blowers shape history.’ Her research has
been published in the Behavioral Research in Accounting,
Auditing: A Journal of Theory & Practice, Journal of Business
Ethics, The CPA Journal and WebCPA. She holds a Ph.D. in
accounting from Virginia Tech and is a licensed CPA. In this
episode of Count Me In, Kelly summarizes all her above
experiences and shares an insightful perspective on how
accounting, and accounting education, can effectively combine her
passions for fraud, film, and lifelong learning. Her general
curiosity and involvement in various topics enables her to peak
the interest of and engage her students on a regular basis. To
hear about how you may be able to weave your passions together
and enhance your learning in the area of accounting, download and
listen to this episode now!



Contact Kelly:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-richmond-pope-cpa-83689a5/

Kelly's Website: www.kellyrichmondpope.com
TED Talk:
https://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_richmond_pope_how_whistle_blowers_shape_history/up-next

All the Queen's Horses:
https://www.allthequeenshorsesfilm.com/
Red Flag Mania: www.redflagmania.com


FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:05)


Welcome back to Count Me In, IMAs podcast about all things
affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam
Larson, and I will be previewing episode 51 of our series for
you. In this episode, Mitch spoke with Dr. Kelly Richmond Pope
and associate professor in the school of accountancy and
management information systems at DePaul university in Chicago,
Illinois. Mitch asked Kelly about her various passions and how
she works to combine them all in her accounting classes. Kelly is
an education innovator who is an extremely engaging and
thoughtful speaker. So at this time I'd like to bring you episode
51 of count me in with Dr. Kelly Richmond Pope. 


 


Mitch: (00:48)


So based on your LinkedIn and some other podcasts I've listened
to you contribute to, I know you've said in the past, your
passions are fraud, film, and lifelong learning. So to kind of
start and we'll talk about fraud first, what is it about that and
ethics that makes you so passionate? 


 


Kelly: (01:06)


Okay. Well, I think what makes me so passionate about fraud as a
subject area is that any of us can find ourselves either engaged
in one or victimized by one. And so it doesn't discriminate. And
so I think it's not a situation where it's them. It could be any
of us. And so I think the, the fact that anybody could be
involved in one is really what fascinates me about them. And I
think if you look at the trend of popular culture with the number
of shows about crime and fraud, I think other people would agree
that it is a very addictive type discipline. And I think it's so
addictive because it's so applicable to all of us. So that's
really what fuels my fascination. 


 


Mitch: (02:02)


And I completely agree with you. It really does draw you in all
these movies and television shows. I know another part of, you
know, or the main part really of what you do is teaching. And I'm
just curious how you kind of weave this idea of this fascination
and passion for fraud into the classroom. 


 


Kelly: (02:20)


Well, I think what is really important about accounting as a
discipline is accounting is the backbone of everything or money
or the ability to account for money correctly. And so regardless
of what the fraud scenario is, there's always a money story and
there's always a financial impact. So the person that can
understand that and explain that to the lay person is the most
powerful person in the room. So I use fraud as a way to really
invigorated my accounting classes and my accounting students so
they can understand the power that they're learning. Because I
think that fraud and ethics is the absence of accounting done,
right? And so really helping students and even adult learners or
corporate learners understand the power of this information is
important. And I think the fraud stories are so powerful, but
there's always a money story in every case. And so if we can
better understand that, then it makes for a more enriching
learning experience, whether that's the classroom, whether that's
a CPE session, whether that's a training workshop. So I use that
really as part of my secret sauce, if you will, when I'm doing a
presentation. 


 


Mitch: (03:46)


And then I suppose the next step is where we can start to weave
in that second piece of your passion triangle, if you want to
call it and film. So in addition to just basic fraud and ethics
curriculum and your accounting courses, you know, how do you go
about working in film and media? Are there any specific examples
you'd like to share? 


 


Kelly: (04:06)


Well, I had a crazy idea about six years ago that I could create
my own film. And so I did, I enrolled in a film fellowship
program with Kartemquin films, which is a film collaborative
based in Chicago. And I learned the business and the creative
aspect of filmmaking and I want it to bring that type of
storytelling into the accounting discipline because I think that
stories are a way that we communicate and a way that we learn a
lot of information. And I wanted to create my own. So I did this
six month film fellowship program and out of that was the birth
of my documentary, called All The Queen's Sources and All The
Queen's Sources streamed on Netflix for a year from 27, 2018 to
2019. And I'm, it now lives on iTunes, Amazon, Google play direct
TV, YouTube. And it actually was the number one documentary on
iTunes, Amazon, YouTube, direct TV on it's first debut two week
debut, weeks on that platform. But I think it shows the power of
a great story, but I'm teaching accounting through that, through
the story. So that's how it really merged the two. I didn't
always want to be in the situation where I was relying on another
filmmaker to hit the key points that I wanted to hit. So I just
said, you know what, I can do it myself. And I think it's really
important when someone from our profession makes a film because
we have, we're going to go about a film and the way that an
accountant needs to pull out these key key topics, which is very
different than a traditional filmmaker may pull out key topics.
So I think film and accounting go hand in hand. 


 


Mitch: (06:03)


That's really interesting and I can certainly appreciate the
perspective of knowing the steps to go through the process and
convey the right message through the story. But everything you
just said leads perfectly into step three, which is lifelong
learning. You already talked about, you know, learning how ...