In this discussion, we have the privilege of featuring Lindsey Oshita, Chief Accounting Officer of the Americas at Franklin Templeton. Lindsey shares her journey to becoming a CAO, beginning her career first at a small local accounting firm during high school, before progressing to Deloitte in San Francisco. Listen in as Lindsey talks about her transition into corporate accounting for the Americas at Franklin Templeton and her role in orchestrating global standards for greater efficiency, unifying finance teams post-acquisition, and navigating challenges of ERP integration amidst org change.
In this riveting discussion, we have the privilege of featuring Lindsey Oshita, Chief Accounting Officer of the Americas at Franklin Templeton. Lindsey shares her journey to becoming a CAO, beginning her career first at a small local accounting firm during high school, before progressing to Deloitte in San Francisco. Listen in as Lindsey talks about her transition into corporate accounting for the Americas at Franklin Templeton and her role in developing a set of global standards to create a shared language of success with cross-functional partners.
Lindsey also sheds light on the challenges faced during an ERP integration following a merger and the massive IT commitment it entailed. She highlights the significance of a chart of accounts and their potential adaptations, along with her team’s successful implementation of Workday at the start of the fiscal year.
Finally, this episode also touches on the crucial role of mentorship and sponsorship in Lindsey's career. She talks about how these elements, along with her father's advice, have helped her continuously grow and add more tools to her toolbox. This conversation is not just about accounting; it's about career growth, mentorship, team integration, and the ability to find humor even in the most challenging situations. Tune in for an enlightening and entertaining discussion.
Key Quotes
Show Notes
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Lindsey: [00:00:00] Thinking through sort of the financial design and sort of that base level, taking extra time for that, right? How you build your hierarchies, how you, how you build your chart of accounts, things like that, that feel really mundane and like you could do later are actually the ways that you're going to set yourself up.
Announcer: Welcome to Controllers Classified, the podcast where we take a deep dive into the dynamic world of controllers, accountants, and finance leaders, and hear how their ever evolving roles are redefining accounting and the future of business. And now, here's your host, Eric Zhou.
Erik: Welcome to Controllers Classified.
I'm your host, Eric Zhou, Chief Accounting Officer at Brex. Today, I'm honored to welcome Lindsay Oshita, the Americas CAO at Franklin Templeton. [00:01:00] Lindsay has spent nearly her entire career working her way up at Franklin Templeton. And as a fun fact, she also used to be one of my main clients when I was at PwC.
The audit must have been okay because she's decided to join us on this show. But welcome, Lindsay. Thank you for
Lindsey: joining. Thanks
Erik: for having me, Eric. Why don't you just kick off by telling us a little bit about Franklin Templeton, and your role there?
Lindsey: So, I've been at Franklin for just under 14 years now. I am responsible for external reporting, and technical accounting, and also now have responsibility for controls, SOCs, external consolidation, and compensation accounting as well as business support for the Americas, so that includes Canada, EUS, and Latin America.
I mean,
Erik: Franklin Templeton, when I thought about my time serving you guys Huge multinational financial institution. You got operations everywhere. The Americas is obviously a big part of that. Tell me about before getting into Franklin, huge public [00:02:00] company, where were you at before, how did you end up in accounting?
Lindsey: I've never met anybody who, like me, decided that they wanted to be an accountant when they were 16. So a little unusual in that regard. I really liked math. And so I decided accounting sounded like a good path for me, and I had an opportunity to work at a really small local accounting firm here in San Francisco when I was 16.
So I worked there over the summers in high school through college. They let me continue working there, and it was a great opportunity for me to see, What in theory accounting was, I did high net worth taxes, audits for nonprofits, and then they're the non, not-for-profit tax returns. So it, they didn't scare me away.
They were wonderful people. And so after college, I, they, they actually encouraged me to go interview at the big four. And so I ended up working in the Deloitte, San Francisco office for six years, focused on [00:03:00] financial services. my dad was.
So, I knew I wanted to be in financial services, tech was, was not for me, but I did try out a whole, a whole slew of, industries when I was at Deloitte and really enjoyed my time and knew it was time for the next step. And I joined Franklin and I guess the rest is a little bit of
Erik: history. Yeah. When you were a client, you were in a core technical accounting role, and I believe you led all of global policy, for accounting policy for Francis.
That's a big job in my view, like, you know, I'll tell the audience, like, I kind of looked up to you, to be frank. Oh, that's nice to hear. Yeah, I mean, I'm a technical accountant at heart, that's probably the most enjoyable parts of my core job at Brex. But now that you're in this CAO role, how has your, how have your responsibilities expanded, and how have you kind of adjusted to that?
Got to roll.
Lindsey: It's interesting. So actually in, in 2019, I took on corporate accounting for the Americas and, and there was, you know, some, some shifting [00:04:00] parts and I actually, for a short period of time, gave up technical accounting and, and even through my time, when I led that group, I always said. You know, I loved it.
It was always interesting, and challenging. For me, the global aspect is actually really what continued to challenge and encourage me to keep at it here at Franklin. Because I got to meet people from all over, you know, I worked with the team in Asia and team in Europe on a variety of things as they came up within the, you know, within the business, right?
How does that impact us? How are we thinking about that and achieving some... Some global standardization and during my time doing technical accounting, I was able to do things like go and meet with the, the SEC and walk them through, you know, as an industry, what our views were on consolidation. I, when I was at Deloitte, I would say I did not expect myself to be such a technical accounting kind of nerd at heart, but when I joined Franklin, you know, it was right when FAS 167 came out and I really [00:05:00] enjoyed.
And this is going to sound very nerdy. I really enjoyed being able to like read the standard start to finish and, and see how it came together and the thought process and the logic around it. You know, in, when you're in public accounting, you don't really have time or opportunity to do, but, but adjusting to that and kind of taking.
Taking what I learned from that and applying it to the sort of controllership role has been good. And I think working with folks and giving, you know, people who maybe came up through really the closed process, which I didn't have direct experience in learning from them, you know, in the day to day, and then also taking what I've learned and help them grow in that way.
I think hopefully they, they will say was beneficial for kind of both sides.
Erik: When I, and I still run aspects of technical accounting at Brex, and I did a lot of the memo reviews when I was at PwC, the audit firm that I was at, you know, when I was at PwC, I always looked at it from a standards [00:06:00] perspective, like GAP, GAP, GAP, like, make sure it's compliant with GAP.
Does this make sense? Now that I'm on this side of the fence, I've realized the goalposts can be pretty wide, and that there can be a lot of diversity in practice. When you were in that technical accounting role, how did you balance that? You know, you guys are a public company too. So you're dealing with investors, you know, what you're reporting goes out to the street.
They judge your stock based on that. How did you think about that?
Lindsey: So it was always sort of looking at what in how we approached it was looking at what the standard setters, like what problem were they trying to solve? What did they feel like needed clarity? And, you know, ultimately also, what do investors look for?
What information are they, are they really trying to understand about the company? And I think that the approach we've always taken is, what is the most useful information for the investor to understand our business and, and What we [00:07:00] do, right? And making sure our disclosures align to that, how we account for things, and also balancing, you know, the, the letter of the law and the operations of it.
So taking what exactly what you said, right? What the standard actually says, and then understanding how do we operationalize that and make sure we are in compliance that we're always thinking about kind of what that rule is and how do we build a process around that.
Erik: Now that you're in your role, it's shifted to like, now that you have, you have to operationalize it too now, right?
Lindsey: Correct. It was, it was a little easier when I was in policy and I didn't have the teams who actually had to do the work of it. And so I think, you know, I have a new perspective. I would say on, you know, what things, you know, materiality when you're an audit, you know, you think about that and, and it's, it's not just, okay, well, individually, but how do we get comfortable?
You know, what are the things that keep me up at night? You know, what are the [00:08:00] things that keep my bosses up at night? But, but yeah, making sure ultimately that we go back to the heart of it and, and that we are compliant. And obviously now I have. You know, so, so also thinking about really from a risk perspective, where are our riskiest areas and making sure we're putting the resources in the right place and, and the sort of brain power to those areas.
Erik: For the audience, Franklin Templeton is a, is a September 30th year end. So your year end is coming up, 10K time. Yeah. What, what's on your roadmap leading into year end and potentially even going into next year, if you've already thought about.
Lindsey: We, we do and, and you know, I think over the last, especially over the last few years, we have acquired quite a number of companies.
And you know, I think every year what we try to do is look at. What we disclose and, and taking a fresh look at, at how we describe things, you know, what we're saying out in, you know, with the SEC and out in the public and, and making [00:09:00] sure we're, we take a fresh look at that, right? So just because we've always described, described something a certain way, you know, it, it, we definitely look at.
Look at that every year as we lead up to the the 10k process and we work really closely with you know our investor relations teams and and make sure that all the documents that are moving together during sort of the Preparation phase and Eric, I know you probably deal with this You know that they all sort of jive together and that it's really telling a cohesive story And describing what's happening in the business appropriately.
And then, you know, planning for the future. We, we recently announced that, that we entered into an agreement to purchase Putnam investments. And so, you know, that will be a big one for us for, for next year. And I think that that will take up a good chunk of, of our time. And again, you know, every time we approach an acquisition, each one is unique and different, but making sure we, we approach it and, and look at the strengths.[00:10:00]
of the teams coming together, you know, when we did the like Mason deal back in 2020, you know, I think I have truly benefited from my colleagues that came over from that group. They have a different perspective, obviously, everyone has their own experience. And I think we're a stronger organization for kind of having that collaboration of, of, of thoughts come together.
Erik: And tell me a little bit about. I mean, so you're going to buy Putnam, or you've already entered into a definitive agreement to buy Putnam. You had a huge transaction a few years ago with Legg Mason, right? You acquired Legg Mason. What, what, tell me about that integration with that team, because I think they're based out of Baltimore, right?
And you guys are kind of West Coast based in San Francisco. So like, tell me about that. I think it was during the pandemic too, that... That must have been difficult trying to organize it all. And what lessons are you going to take from that into Putnam going into this upcoming
Lindsey: year? So they are based in the East Coast and I tell folks my days start [00:11:00] a little earlier.
Their days go a little longer. Everyone just kind of, you know, adjusts to working on both coasts. It was, we announced that deal right before, you know, really pandemic, you know, all the lockdowns. So it was interesting. Normally during an acquisition, especially of that size, you would have people getting together, sitting in a room, hashing things out, you know, spending a few days together.
We didn't have that benefit, but we all got really used to, you You know, teams and, and being on video, my teams prior to that had all been, all my direct reports were outside of San Mateo. So I had sort of already gotten used to that, but working from home, I actually think we achieved a ton because of the pandemic, you know, folks weren't going out, they weren't, you know, vacationing.
They did take some vacations, but you know, people just kind of sat down and got through it. But, you know, we really. Especially within finance, I think we merged the two teams. So it wasn't [00:12:00] a our way or their way. You know, the, the, the message from, from management, which I think is, was. Well received and, and really needed was you take sort of view A and view B and maybe come up with view C as you two, you know, as the two groups talk together.
And I think we've been really successful in that and sort of merging. The cultures were fairly similar, so that was, that was helpful. But, you know, we had sort of also taken an opportunity to re look at how we had organized finance. And so we, we also redesigned. And so we now have, you know, sort of centers of excellence, folks who specialize in certain areas like leases or revenue recognition, which I think give, give different opportunities to folks than sort of your typical corporate accounting structure.
Erik: Was that different than how Franklin was organized before? Like, like, what was it like before in terms of Looking at those kinds of areas versus where you're at now after the merger.
Lindsey: So we historically had been [00:13:00] really kind of entity focused. And so there were folks who, who focused on broker dealers. I know that that's what, you know, when you're your time with, with us, Eric, you know, so we still have specialists in certain areas, broker dealers, et cetera.
But, and then like leases, for example, or revenue recognition, when I was sitting in the policy side, it was. It was training and educating a whole slew of folks from around the world on, on what it means, what our policy, it was and is, and how they should implement that. And, and now it's, we have sort of a central revenue team who, who we work with, my policy team works with closely on those technical issues, but it is very focused.
And so you, you get the good, a different perspective, right? They then look at it across the globe, across multiple gaps, and so they, they get the opportunity, all of the folks in each individual team, to really dig in, understand, and, and build up some of their technical knowledge in that regard.
Erik: Do you think you'll lose out on some of [00:14:00] the, you know, because sometimes some of these statutory audits and statutory financials, they're giving a holistic view of just that entity, and you don't need to bring in everything from around the globe.
Do you still have those folks that look after those entities and are responsible for the holistic view of that particular business?
Lindsey: We do. We do. So, so that is really kind of some, you know, part of my team overseeing business support and, and the CAO office, if you will, for the Americas. It's business support, it's regulatory and statutory financials, and, and my counterparts in Asia and Europe do the same.
So they are heavily involved with the business, can then take the, the books and records. Build the financials, tell that story similarly to the board or to the regulators in those jurisdictions. So I think we've been able to kind of manage the best of both sides. You get that specialty and then have folks who are more connected with the business.
And then the other piece to that is actually then we have an opportunity for folks to rotate through. So the teams and we have [00:15:00] Quite a large team in Hyderabad out in India that they get an opportunity to see those different things and, and build their career, not just linearly, but, you know, they can move to different teams, learn something new, and, and, and grow in that way and, and continue to build their career.
Erik: So speaking of Hyderabad, actually, I think, I think that's an interesting segue. You know, I have outsourced personnel also, I use Genpact, we have a team of about seven folks, they do a lot of our daily cash reconciliations, AP processing, work that I think, you know, it's bookkeeper level work. We have those folks do it.
We decided to outsource that because it was easier on us because it's only seven folks, I guess like for you, how do you think about for Franklin and now you're monitoring kind of like this operational team in India? Yeah. Bringing it in house, and maybe that decision was made a while ago, but like, do you see the benefits of that?
Is there any thought of like taking it out, outsourced again? Like, how do you think about that?
Lindsey: No. So we definitely [00:16:00] made a decision early to invest in India. We also have a group in Poland and to build that team. I think we have seen the benefit of having that. We were such a large organization that it is significantly larger than a seven person team.
And, and I think for us, it's. It's, it's been great to see some of the folks that we hired when we first, you know, opened the campus really move up through the ranks, become leaders in their respective area. And so for us, we, we see the benefit we we've invested in those folks and, you know, really see them as part of the future leadership team here at Franklin.
So, so the, the question does come up, you know, we, we definitely believe they are part of the team. They're part of sort of the Franklin family. And have seen definite benefits out of that.
Erik: Makes sense. All right, going back to the merger. Well, there's the before and then there's the after. So after the merger, now that you're actually officially reporting as a [00:17:00] combined unit, what changed about your operation?
Like, like, what were the most difficult parts of making sure things? Continue to run smoothly post merger or did you kind of still run two different ships and then we're still working on it
Lindsey: So we closed the deal two months before our year end. So I would say that first year end was It was our first year end during the pandemic, so everyone was working from home.
It was a little more, there was more stress in the system, I would say. You know, we, we did maintain, you know, their, their system. And that has really then, we, we took the opportunity to, Integrate that over time and, and to be thoughtful about that, sort of concurrently, we also had looked at our, you know, financial system and decided to also make a change.
So there were a lot of things in flight. And so we took the opportunity to say, what's the best path and how do we get there together? And so
Erik: there was change during that time.
Lindsey: Correct. Yeah, it was, it was after, but, but it was sort of [00:18:00] in flight at that time.
Erik: And then, and then LEG was also on a different ERP?
Correct. Wow. So you had migrations for two different ERP systems into a new one, basically, because of the merger. I guess I, I don't know how to think, . , I mean, there's a little bit of, also the data would've had to come. I mean, I don't know how historicals would've worked, but like that must've been a huge it commitment.
Like, I'm just thinking through the, the manpower. It
Lindsey: was, yeah, it was, and, and you know, I think we, we implemented, so we are now on Workday and, and we implemented that at the start of this fiscal year. But obviously that was a huge lift over the last. You know, year, year and a half, and there's still pieces that are coming together as, as we've moved.
Leg was actually on workday, but a different instance. So, so, you know, there were learning things for us, not being on workday, having that come up. But, but again, I think taking the opportunity to look at both processes, you know, how they did it. Knowing what they knew [00:19:00] and had learned, what did we do, and we were previously on PeopleSoft, how we thought we should build it.
And again, it was sort of a, this is how we did it, this is how they did it. In the old system, you know, if we had a clean sheet of paper and knowing what we knew, knowing what we know now. What would we do? And, you know, there, there continues, I would say, to be learnings over that and, you know, with any ERP implementation, things change and as you settle into the system, there are aspects to that that, you know, you continually refine and I think that's also been a really big part of the, the culture of the sort of combined organization is how do we make things more efficient?
You know, how do we think about things differently? And work differently to, to be smarter with our resources and, and, you know, thoughtful in that way.
Erik: And how long were you guys on PeopleSoft before?
Lindsey: I want to say 20 years. Okay.
Erik: Yeah. [00:20:00] So I kind of like, I'm hearing this story and I'm thinking that's actually a great sequence of events.
Yes. Because I feel like if you didn't have the Workday implementation already lined up, you know, now you're bringing in whatever Legg was doing onto PeopleSoft. Or, or maybe you move your stuff onto their instance of Workday, however you want to design it. But now that you are combining two big companies, like given that you were already implementing Workday, you're giving yourself a green field.
Like you can almost re imagine, like to your point, right? All these processes that you may have had had for 20 years, right? Because someone made the decision on how to do fixed assets 20 years ago. And people saw it and people just roll it forward year after year. Now with the new implementation and with the merger, it sounds like a whole lot of work, but it feels like the ROI setting yourselves up for the next 20 years.
It is immense.
Lindsey: Yeah. And, and so, you know, we kicked off, [00:21:00] I want to say quickly in 2021, the full workday kind of project. And we were really ambitious in what we, we thought the timeline was to implement, you know, and, and looked at all the risks and decided start of the fiscal for 2023 was the best timing, but, but yeah, it was sort of.
Full, full, full, full speed ahead, really.
Erik: Any tips for like, what to look out for in such a big project?
Lindsey: I would say thinking through sort of the financial design and sort of that base level, taking extra time for that, right? How you build your hierarchies. How you, how do you build your chart of accounts?
Things like that, that feel really mundane and like you could do later, are actually the ways that you're going to set yourself up. To have all the other work streams go more efficiently if you're really thoughtful in, in that aspect of it. So we had a whole team [00:22:00] dedicated to that. You know, I think that would be as sort of as you implement once you decide, you know, what system you're going to use.
That is really the key that unlocks so much. For our listeners,
Erik: can you just, what's so important about the chart of accounts? Like what, what do you mean by... Isn't it just a set of numbers? You start with one, you go to a million. Like what's the, what's the big deal? Like what, like what? No,
Lindsey: and Eric, I don't recall if this happened when you were there, but we actually, you know, over the years, when you have a chart of accounts, people add to it and you know, it might be used initially for one thing, very specific.
It could be regional specific that then gets morphed over time. And then people don't really remember what it was initially set up for. So years ago, and this was even before we even had an inkling of. Workday are changing. We had gone through, and it was an idea that came from one of the supervisors and managers in our team in Canada.
She had the idea, [00:23:00] we really need to go through and revamp this, right? Look at how we're using it globally. And so we set up a committee and it was a two year project to really solicit feedback from every region. How are people using the accounts, making sure we were comfortable where that landed in our, in our.
Ledger, and also thinking through how the process worked and, and do we need a expense and liability one for one mapping, or should we be pulling those, you know, aggregating that and have a true reconciliation. So questions that, and, and I think it was good. I was sitting in policy at the time because you're removed from the, the day to day operations.
So you can challenge people to think about it differently. And, and, you know, Sometimes it was, well, this is how PeopleSoft works, this is how the system works, you have to do it this way. And so, taking all of that, learning that we did, and a lot of the revamping and cleanup, and then taking it that step further.
[00:24:00] Understanding how the system works, and we went with Workday, how that works, and how we can make it work for what we want, in a way that gives us data. More readily to how we would analyze it, how we would talk to our CFO, how we would talk to the street about that. How do we slice and dice it, and making sure the operations then balanced with that.
And then even small things like you run out of numbers. So yes, you start with one and go down, but if you only have ten, that's a very small window of things that you I think what you're
Erik: saying is like, and this is how I did my chart of accounts, like my first digit, I call it the major class. So if it's a 4, it denotes if it's an asset, a liability, equity, account, etc.
The second two digits may denote the subsidiary it's related to. The fourth digit may be location, you know, each number in a 10 digit string or what have you denotes something about what the account is attributable to. [00:25:00]
Lindsey: And then it helps, you know, folks as they get used to those new numberings, it's like, Oh, okay.
It's, it's in the, you know, 1000. Okay. I know that's an asset. I know that's cash and kind of the same for companies because we are such a global organization. How many numbers do you really need? Do you have more than a hundred number, you know, a hundred entities in a given region? So kind of similar. We, we do, you know, first digit is.
is the Americas, which, which then included, you know, Latin America, Canada, and, and organized it that way. And then for us, we have to consolidate quite a, quite a number of our products just as a result of some seed that we put in. So where do we put that in, in the, in the numbering scheme? How did, how does that get organized?
So little things like that, that, that help from my perspective, at least, as we, as we structured it, so that way we could group things. That's how we think about them as an organization and giving us enough space [00:26:00] to continue growing. so then, you don't have that you only have 3 digits and once you, once you're past, you know, the 100s, you then have to go to an 800s and so then, you're, you know, your regions are in a couple different places.
I want to go back
Erik: to a comment you had about having one expense account for every liability count or vise versa. huh. And I, I went through this. When I was designing the CEO, the chart of accounts at Brex. Yeah. And yeah, we had one for everything. We had, I wanted to do like one account, like we have different advertising and marketing expense accounts, right?
So we have one for sales and promotional giveaways, one for outdoor ads, one for something else, blah, blah, blah. Right, right. And then I had an AP account for each one. And then I was like, Oh, let's have also an accrued liability account for each one. And I think I, I mean, I, I kind of look back at it and we, we now have consolidated, but it, it like very quickly, it fell overboard.
Cause it's just too much. It's too much for like my folks in India that are doing all the AP invoicing. [00:27:00] It's too much, you know what I mean? So. Did you guys get to the same conclusion? I'm curious.
Lindsey: I think part of it is because I sat in the technical side. To me, it was, well, when I look at it, you know, at the ledger, when I get a report, well, to me it made sense that we would have, okay, marketing, you know, here's all of our marketing accrual, all in one place, to use your example.
And I think the operations team, you know, really the accountants, It was a shift in how they thought. I think now, especially with Workday, there's some other capabilities and categories that we can use. And so we've definitely leveraged that. And so it's, okay, what's the right level? You know, your account level, that's that aggregate number, but you have sort of for us spend categories.
So you can break it down if someone were to need that level of detail. But, you know, when, when we send a report to a CA, our corporate CAO. She doesn't need necessarily all that level of [00:28:00] detail and so it's, it's aggregated at the, at the right level. So we moved away. We, we definitely, and, and probably we were, I was one of the folks who pushed and challenged folks to, to aggregate and think about.
What, you know, what really needs to be a count versus sort of that subledger
Erik: detail. So one thing that we we haven't touched upon and I'm just curious about it. You spent, you know, a number of years at Deloitte, made your way to Franklin, worked your way up. I mean, I still, I think I still look up to you.
It's pretty cool. Yeah, tell me about during that whole journey. Was mentorship or sponsorship for you? Have you done that for others? Did you receive that? I'm assuming so, that's, I mean, that's what got me to where I am in some ways, but how does that work at Franklin?
Lindsey: So you know, we have, I would say, a number of different avenues for that.
So at Deloitte, you know, definitely, and I think public accounting is really good at structuring that. You have a counselor, [00:29:00] you know, you get assigned certain people who, who officially are your, you know, sort of advocates, and over time that may change and you, you obviously develop relationships. For me, you know.
I've always taken the approach, and probably because I worked in a small office, that, you know, I have found... Sort of mentors, if you will, in different aspects, right? So, to me, it doesn't, it doesn't always have to be somebody that's higher in the organization. You can learn from anybody, right? So, it could be that, you know, I look to, you know, an accountant level person because they have this experience and that.
You know, knowledge, and so, hey, I need to grow in that area, you know, so, so how do I connect with those folks? But, but I definitely have had great sponsors and, and mentors in my career at Franklin, you know. My former boss, my current boss, you know, they are, I'm open with them. I have those conversations about what [00:30:00] I want out of my career, you know, where I want to go, things that are interesting.
I've, I've been lucky that, that they've offered me things that continue to challenge me and grow. So it's not like I've, I've needed to really seek that out. And then, you know, Franklin also has. Various programs that the, you know, have us as part participate in, strategic leaders where you officially ask somebody to be, to be a sponsor, if you will.
And for me, I, you know, reached out to somebody from Lag Mason. So somebody who I hadn't didn't have quite that same, you know,
So, I think, I've been really lucky in that it's happened. And then, you know, sort of outside of work, my, my, my dad actually had worked in, in Internal audit at Wells Fargo for quite a number of years and one of his, he always describes him as his best boss. He ended up moving up the ranks. He actually had also come from, I believe, [00:31:00] Deloitte.
But, you know, he has always been a great mentor for me. You know, when things have come up, if I, if I need to bounce something off of him, he's always been willing to, to talk to me and he, he moved into a number of different operations and it moved around in his career. And I think the, the best advice he gave me as I was thinking about things, as I was thinking about leaving Deloitte was, you know, find things that, it doesn't necessarily have to be a change in role or a change in title, but it has to be something that you're continuing to grow.
Add a new tool to your tool belt or toolbox, right? And for me, for whatever reason, that really stuck. Because it's easy to say, you know, I think I'm going to go to that company, I want to do X, Y, or Z. And he would always challenge me as I was thinking about things, you know, between Deloitte and here. Well, is that gonna give you a different experience?
Is that going to continue your path to grow and, and will you add anything? Or are you just [00:32:00] redoing what you've already done? And it's a, for me it was a great perspective and, and I've kind of continued to think about that through my career.
Erik: Yeah, I, I think, and you've probably seen the articles. You know, the accounting profession isn't getting as many new entrants as it once was every year.
Maybe they're all becoming software engineers. I think the community aspect of our profession, of our profession is extremely important. The mentorship that we can provide to others, the mentorship, frankly, that I'm still receiving from many others. It's one of the highlights of, of, of the work. I think, you know, it's one of those jobs where...
In theory, to your point, the more you work, you age like a fine wine, like, the more experience you get, the more tools you get, like, you know, it's, it's one of those kinds of professions. So, that's great. I love hearing kind of like, that whole story about your, your own, your own mentorship and sponsorship and opportunities you've been given.
Maybe to close out, I have just one more [00:33:00] question. We end each of these podcasts with something fun. So, do you have an accounting joke to share with our audience? I actually
Lindsey: have two, and so one you'll probably appreciate from your time in public accounting and it was, it's, why did the accountant cross the road?
No idea. Because they looked in the files and did what they did last year.
Oh, that's so good. So, and then the other one. So, an accountant is having a hard time sleeping, goes to see their doctor. It says, Doc, I just can't get to sleep at night. And the doctor says, well, have you tried counting sheep? And, and the accountant replies, well, that's the problem. At some point I make a mistake.
And then I spent three hours trying to figure out what went wrong, which that one, I was like, oh yeah, we've, we've all been there, right? It's the one thing.
Erik: For the non accountant listeners, if we have any on this [00:34:00] show, so long, we might never hear from you again.
Lindsey: They're like, oh yeah, that's too much.
Erik: No, it's good. That's really, it really touches, touches me. No, that's good. Lindsay, thank you very much for joining us on Controllers Classified. Honored that you joined us today and just thank you. Yeah, great. No,
Lindsey: thank you, Eric. I appreciate it. Thanks for tuning
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