{"id":3923,"date":"2017-12-20T08:56:31","date_gmt":"2017-12-20T13:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/?p=3923"},"modified":"2019-12-18T13:21:01","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T18:21:01","slug":"auditing-around-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/2017\/12\/20\/auditing-around-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Auditing Around the World"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Ashley Hevener ’10 began working for Kearney & Company, based in Arlington, Virginia, after graduation.<\/p><\/div>\n

ON AT LEAST TWO OCCASIONS, Ashley Hevener ’10 has known, deep down, almost instantaneously, where she wanted to be. One was a campus visit to Eastern Mennonite University that changed her already-made plans, and the second has taken her to 21 countries.<\/p>\n

As a high school junior in Kansas, Hevener decided she wanted to go to an East Coast college, and after a week-long excursion to visit different schools, settled on a Boston school. But at the 2005 Mennonite Convention, an EMU recruiter invited her to visit the campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was on campus for three days, and I fell in love with it, the people, the atmosphere,\u201d she said recently. \u201cI called my mom and said, \u2018I\u2019ve got to turn down the Boston offer. I\u2019m going to EMU.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

After graduating from EMU with degrees in accounting and business, Hevener earned a master\u2019s degree in accounting from James Madison University, and had four second-round interviews in D.C. that resulted in job offers. The first interview would have sufficed, however when she left the interview, she again called her mom and said, \u201cI have to work here, or I\u2019ll die.\u201d<\/p>\n

Black and White<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Hevener admits she is prone to hyperbole, but she has always liked unambiguity. She\u2019s a numbers person, after all, something that her satisfaction in accounting coursework brought into focus.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a nerd at heart,\u201d she said. \u201cI really like the puzzle aspect. I like the black and white aspect, that debits equal credits. In class, if I could not get the answer to equal out, then I knew something was wrong. There was no grey area, and for just how I thought, that was the best thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

That made one class particularly challenging, though: auditing. It\u2019s a subject and accounting field that Hevener describes as \u201ctheoretical and hypothetical,\u201d much less black and white, and more grey. Coming out of that class, she said to herself, \u201cI don\u2019t know what that is, but\u00a0I hate it. I never want to do that.\u201d And then her career took her directly there, into auditing. Now, she said, \u201cI love it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grey<\/h3>\n

Hevener is at Kearney & Company, an accounting firm in Alexandria, Virginia, that serves the federal government. She manages six auditing projects for which she travels extensively, working with up to 50 clients in any given year. She is\u00a0\u201calways learning new things,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

As an auditor, Hevener has to get to know the programs she\u2019s examining so that she can understand where risks might exist in their processes, and then develop test procedures around those risks. It\u2019s completely different for each client, she said, although often she can apply what she has learned from working with one client to other situations.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s still the \u201cblack and white\u201d of numbers, but Hevener\u2019s role is to look at the bigger picture \u2013 with the added challenge of being compassionate. \u201cI have to make sure clients are spending federal money in alignment with contractual terms,\u201d she said, but that doesn\u2019t mean she has to embody a \u201cgotcha\u201d accountant stereotype.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a correct way of letting people know they maybe need to change things, to deliver news in a way that allows them to walk away not feeling completely destroyed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Experiences<\/h3>\n

Hevener points to several undergraduate experiences at EMU that especially equipped her for her work, including managing both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s volleyball team.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a planner, a schedule,\u201d she said. \u201cI was balancing a full school load, going\u00a0to practices and games, and on the hook for the coaches and athletics director. I had to make sure that any one of my stakeholders didn\u2019t feel less important than any other. And it was built in to my college life \u2013 I never realized it was happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another draw to EMU for Hevener\u00a0\u2013 for which her appreciation has only grown \u2013 was its cross-cultural program. She spent six weeks one summer in Nigeria, where she wore traditional African clothing, had her hair weaved, and was given a Nigerian name by her host mother. On campus, she was surrounded by people from other countries, or many who had spent significant time living abroad.<\/p>\n

Hevener\u2019s more recent travels for work have been domestic, but past trips to developing countries with coworkers have made her realize the profundity of the cross-cultural program.<\/p>\n

\u201cHalf of them don\u2019t have an appreciation for the experience, and they can\u2019t wait to get back to the United States,\u201d she said, \u201cand the other half are kind of interested in it, but really just walk around in shock and awe.\u201d Seeing her colleagues\u2019 discomfort in foreign settings has made her realize \u201chow many Americans either don\u2019t have\u00a0the opportunity to travel abroad, or choose to ignore that there are that many different cultures. That was something that I definitely picked up at EMU.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boring? Not Quite<\/h3>\n

Hevener knows that the fields of accounting and auditing can sound boring. But she said she gets to work with a lot of different people, and she actually likes going to work. \u201cWhen I look at how many hours I work and the fact that I don\u2019t hate my life,\u201d she said, \u201cI think it speaks a lot to my company.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ON AT LEAST TWO OCCASIONS, Ashley Hevener ’10 has known, deep down, almost instantaneously, where she wanted to be. One was a campus visit to Eastern Mennonite University that changed her already-made plans, and the second has taken her to 21 countries. As a high school junior in Kansas, Hevener decided she wanted to go […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":242,"featured_media":3924,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[941,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fall-winter-2016-17-2","category-magazine","issues-current-issue","issues-fall-winter-2017-18"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/242"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3923"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3981,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3923\/revisions\/3981"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}