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...