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 a focus on forensic accounting for her firm, May & Company, in Vicksburg, MS. With white collar crime growing significantly, and given updated technologies and a booming economy, she works in a competitive field to help clients face what is sometimes a grave reality.

Looking Beyond the Numbers
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 lead to matters of fraud.

"The CFE has been very helpful because it allows me to provide added value to the traditional audit client," she says. "I spent a lot of time learning about their system so that the management letters are much more inclusive with recommendations that are user-friendly and valuable. 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."

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

"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."

Ingram also is a big proponent of continuing education (she has taught the AICPA course on fraud prevention, detection and audit eight times), and feels that extensive training mixed with preparation, like any of the specialties designations or accreditations, is a basic requirement for successful outcomes. Ingram recalls the time she was blind sighted by a client who had committed fraud.

"Often, the traditional auditor doesn't look at 100 percent of any situation because we are trained to see only what is necessary and what we are engaged to do," she says. "It took someone to question the quality of work and what we did as auditors to make me wake up and realize that I not only wanted to protect myself and the firm, but that we have to be educated on how to do our jobs better."

Raising Awareness
Ingram has done an excellent job in marrying her CPA/CFE skills in business with the needs of her local community, and is very involved in many efforts, including the Vicksburg Economic Development Foundation. The Foundation is an organization that works with existing businesses and also recruits and encourages businesses to move to the area, working with the company to help them with the labor force, tax structures and other relocation matters. In 2000, she will become the first female chairman the group has ever had.

"We are working to bring different factions of the business community together to determine how we can expand general membership of the organization to be more representative of the community," she says. "The bottom line is that everyone has to change with the times, and this is like forensic accounting. People who have done something day in and day out have to think differently to get results-quicker!"

One of the recent accomplishments with her firm also involved the community when the firm implemented a toll-free "fraud and abuse hotline," where employees can 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. The service is offered to businesses for a subscription fee, and options can be tailored to any business or organization.

"Unfortunately, within a company, internal auditors and upper management usually are not the ones detecting fraud. Co-workers are the ones that notice life style and personality changes or other red flags that usually accompanying a fraudulent act. So the hotline gives all employees the ability to report potential mishaps or something unusual," says Ingram. "We started the service in 1998 and hope to see it grow in popularity and use."

Anyone who has questions for Ingram may contact her at dingram@maycpa.com, or visit the Web site at www.maycpa.com.