Hard Lessons in Financial Integrity and Leadership
Getting It Right
While I was on a break, walking the cold, snowy fields, I’ve been thinking a lot lately.
There’s a lot of talk about consolidation work. Leaders are constantly looking for ways to streamline operations, cut costs, and restructure for efficiency. It’s easy to talk about these things at a high level, but what happens when you’re the one in charge? When you’re the one identifying financial opportunities, closing financial gaps, and making decisions that impact people’s jobs, careers, and lives?
I spent nearly 30 years in corporate finance - This was the work I was known for. I was deeply involved in financial oversight, operational consolidations, and risk management. And let me tell you—this work isn’t just about numbers. It’s about integrity. It is about #Getting It Right.
Because here’s the truth:
💡 Financial integrity is not just an accounting concept—it’s a leadership principle. It requires vigilance, sound judgment, and a commitment to protecting the organization sustainability, the people in it, and your own reputation.
💡 Financial controls only work if people enforce them. The strongest policies in the world mean nothing if managers, accountants, and leaders don’t actively check the details, ask tough questions, and insist on accountability.
💡 Fraud doesn’t always start as fraud. Sometimes, it begins as a small lapse in oversight, a temptation, or a moment of financial desperation—but when no one notices, it grows into something massive.
I’ve seen this firsthand, and I’ve also seen the devastating consequences of financial mismanagement—some deliberate, some accidental, but all preventable.
I want to share four real cases I encountered in my career—cases of fraud, financial mismanagement, and operational failures that reinforce how I think about leadership, integrity, and financial excellence.
These aren’t just cautionary tales. They’re lessons for rising financial leaders, accountants striving for financial leadership, and business professionals who want to raise their organization to operational excellence.
If you want to lead at high levels, understand these stories. Because the culture and tone set in organizations help shape the decisions that are made by you and others—and the consequences that result.
💡Bottom line: Financial integrity only happens when EVERYONE plays their part.
Let’s start with the first case.
Case #1: The “Paper Problem” That Turned Into a Career-Ending Decision
Early in my finance career, I had been in my role for about a year when my new boss, only a week or two on the job, called me.
"I think we have a paper problem. Can you go down to ‘#####’—a metro city—and take a look? I don’t think money is missing—just a paperwork issue."
Now, here was a new leader assuming good financial controls were in place in their sales peer’s organization (where the finance organization resided for this market — There is a lesson here, but let’s save that for another time).
You would expect good financial controls coming into a sophisticated and growing business in a new industry. Going in without casting judgment, having open eyes and an open mind, is incredibly important. What you are looking for are details and facts to help inform you of the truth in the situation.
Notice, there is a sequence to this:
👉 Details → Facts → Truth.
Remember this, as you want to get to the truth of the matter before drawing a conclusion.
So, I planned to stay in the market for two days, knowing that nothing is ever as quick and easy as we like to think.
The Investigation Begins
When I arrived, I did what any financial leader should do: start with the basics.
✅ I pulled reports to compare what the registers said we should have collected.
✅ I called the bank and got the daily cash receipts to see if the deposits matched.
And at first, everything balanced.
Except for one register.
This register was off by five figures. And not just one time—every single day.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t a paperwork problem. This was theft.
Tracing the Theft—One Day at a Time
I started working backward—first checking yesterday’s records, then the previous week’s, then the previous month’s.
The discrepancies never stopped. They went back for months.
After day one, I called my boss and said, "This is serious. I'm going to need help."
I called in one of my best people—let’s call her Lori—and corporate security.
At this point, I hadn’t slept much. When you're knee-deep in a financial crisis, you don’t have time for distractions. I was wearing the same clothes I had on when I arrived.
By day four, the sales leader of that location jokingly said to me:
"Do I need to give you my credit card so you can buy new clothes?"
I remember thinking to myself, "Buddy, I wouldn’t even be here if you had done your job managing this location properly." Of course, not everything we think, we need to say. Words are cheap in those moments.
The Confession: A $76 Theft That Turned Into a Daily Annuity
Finally, corporate security confronted the employee responsible for that register.
Their explanation?
"I took $76 the first day. I waited for someone to call me about the discrepancy, but no one did. So I took more. And then I just kept going."
And where was the money going, you may wonder?
Well, they weren’t even stealing for personal luxury. The money was going to support their drug-dealing boyfriend’s business.
The Consequences: A Life Destroyed
That decision cost them everything:
❌ They lost their job.
❌ They went to trial and were found guilty.
❌ They lost custody of their child.
❌ They were ordered to pay restitution—where we received $50 to $100 a month… for a while.
❌ The company lost a large amount of money.
And all because proper financial controls were not in place and someone the company trusted exploited that fact.
Had the financial leader of that market had their team:
✔️ Monitoring the registers daily,
✔️ Conducting basic reconciliation checks,
✔️ Training store managers to catch discrepancies early,
This could have been stopped before it ever got that far.
This was a hard lesson for the sales leader and financial leader in what happens when leadership fails to enforce financial discipline.
Of course, the financial leader left the business, and the sales leader’s career prospects were cut incredibly short.
The Aftermath: Consolidation and Accountability
After this incident, we consolidated the financial functions under my team.
👉 We consolidated functions, reduced positions, and streamlined processes.
There were many people impacted by the lack of financial controls.
💡Financial controls are security features.
We expect our banks to have cybersecurity features to protect our financial accounts.
As business leaders, we should be ensuring financial controls are in place to protect the six-, seven-, eight-, nine-, and ten-figure amounts that run through our businesses on any given day, week, month, or year.
The consequences for not having controls in place are far greater and have life-altering impacts that can last decades.
👉 Think of the sales leader. Their big-shot dreams—ended when that case was closed.
👉 Think of the cashier. Their $76 theft later cost them everything.
Case #2: The Saleswoman Who Stole Thousands, One Lunch Receipt at a Time
This next case wasn’t as blatant as someone physically taking cash out of a register, but it was still a form of fraud. And what made it more dangerous was that it was hidden in plain sight—small amounts taken systematically over time.
A leader colleague of mine had this saleswoman on their team—let’s call her Amanda.
Amanda was high-energy, always on the move, constantly networking, training retail partners, and bringing in development deals. On paper, she was a top performer. But if you worked with her, you’d know she was scattered.
She was the type of person who was so disorganized that she seemed incapable of deception—but that’s exactly what happened.
Because she was so high-maintenance, she kept getting passed from one executive leader to another and then, ultimately, from one manager to another. And each time, her expenses went unchecked.
How the Fraud Was Caught
One day, her latest boss walked into my office and said:
"I think I already approved this expense voucher. Can you check? I think she might be stealing."
At first, I didn’t believe it.
Amanda was a mess, sure, but a thief?
Still, when someone raises an integrity issue, you take it seriously and you handle it privately.
💡 The fewer people who are involved, the better. You are talking about the integrity of an individual.
So, I dug in and took on the issue to research all her prior expense vouchers to see if there were any issues.
How the Scheme Worked
Amanda had figured out something simple yet effective—submit the same receipts multiple times.
✅ She’d take a client to lunch for a training event and submit the receipt for reimbursement.
✅ A few weeks later, she’d submit the exact same receipt again.
✅ And then again, sometimes months later.
Her expenses weren’t huge—$50 here, $100 there.
But when you submit the same expenses over and over, those amounts add up fast.
And because she kept getting reassigned to different managers, no one noticed the pattern.
It wasn’t until she had a manager who actually reviewed and approved her expense report that the fraud was exposed.
The Outcome: A Career Destroyed Over a Few Thousand Dollars
By the time we caught it, she had stolen over $3,000.
As expected, she was terminated, although I don’t recall if criminal charges were brought forth. If I cannot recall, I assume they were not.
And the worst part?
The theft could have been prevented if any of her previous managers had taken a closer look at her expense reports.
While we cannot easily see someone whose principles are compromised, we can have good controls in place to stop things from happening.
Key Lesson: Financial Controls Only Work When People Enforce Them
This case reinforced something important:
💡 Business managers, accountants, and finance leaders have a duty to do their part and actually do the assignment given to them.
💡Financial integrity is not just a finance function. It is a whole-of-organization function.
We all deal with expense reimbursements as part of our business practices.
Here are some basic things we can all do to improve financial controls:
✔️ Limit business charges on personal cards. When personal cards are used, it’s harder to track and easier to submit the same expense multiple times.
✔️ Limit the amount that can be placed on a corporate card.
✔️ Limit who has corporate cards. These are keys to the bank—even if an expense isn’t approved, the funds are already out the door.
✔️ Set clear timelines for submission. If expenses sit around for six months before being submitted, it’s harder to manage financial safety.
✔️ Use skip-level reports. If someone else approves your employee’s expense voucher, the system should require you as the supervisor to review it.
💡 Financial fraud isn’t always dramatic.
Sometimes, it’s just someone exploiting a system that no one is watching.
I suspect there are many scenarios where people exploit the system.
There are not many Enron cases, but I suspect the dollar amounts lost in businesses and society each year are far greater than Enron when you add up all the small exploitations.
This gets to personal integrity, financial fidelity, and doing the right thing.
We should all be doing the right thing, whether someone is looking or not.
The reality is someone is always looking—first you and then, trust me, someone else.
💡 Leading with integrity is a high form of nobility and personal sovereignty.
As business owners, shareholders, and leaders, people with personal integrity are worth a GREAT DEAL—as these cases demonstrate.
Case #3: The Employee Who Used a Corporate Card to Pay for Bartending School
This case happened within my own organization—which made it even more unfortunate, as I prided myself and my team as being examples of good leadership.
Clearly, our multi-step interviewing approach, which included interviewing the prior leader, missed a candidate who had joined our team just six months prior to this incident. [There’s another story here for another time.]
We had hired someone into our finance group—let’s call her Sarah.
She came in from an administrative role in another department, and while she was handling data reporting functions for my team, she was not supposed to be dealing with payments.
How the Scheme Worked
Once Sarah was in our department, she used her corporate card for personal and fraudulent expenses towards the end of her time in my organization:
✅ Personal home utility bills
✅ Personal grocery bills
✅ And, incredibly, a $900 payment for bartending school
Not only was she submitting these fraudulent expenses—she was also approving them.
Because she had access to her former boss’s credentials, she would log in as them and approve her own transactions. This was a clear violation of company policy by the leader and the matter should have been handled with the severity the violation created.
Why It Took Time to Catch Her
The company actually had a built-in financial control that should have caught this—a skip-level report that flagged transactions for higher review.
But here’s the problem:
💡 This control only works if the direct supervisor actually reviews the report and questions the charges.
Her manager did question the Sarah regarding the charges on the skip-level reports, however they believed the reasoning given by Sarah that the utility bills were for business purposes and that she was still helping her former boss on those matters. All not true.
Then, my direct report went on vacation, and suddenly, Sarah was reporting directly to me.
And within a few days, I knew I had a problem; but I did not know the extent of the issue.
She was showing up very late for work, taking too long to get things done, and operating as if she were in her first few days on the job.
This was odd, considering she had been working for the team for six months.
I called her into my office and said:
"You have a great job here. You should know far more about your role and responsibilities given how long you have been here than you actually do. What is going on here?"
The next day, she quit and sent a long, detailed letter explaining that she realized her job was important, but she wanted to step down so that someone else could do it better.
I remember thinking, "Maybe I was too tough on her."
But that afternoon, my accounts payable manager walked into my office and said:
"We have a problem."
I realized: I was the one who got had here. She quit because she knew she was about to get caught.
She had stolen several thousand dollars, and the last transaction that sealed the deal—her bartending school tuition.
Case #4: Cyber Fraud From a Familiar Email
This last case is a cautionary tale for every business dealing with external payments.
One of the company vendors had a meaningful check headed their way. Instead, it was sent to a fraudulent bank account.
How It Happened
Hackers infiltrated the vendor’s email server and saw that a large payment was about to take place.
So, they sent an email from the vendor’s real account to a group in the field, saying:
📩 "We’ve changed our bank. Please update our account information before processing the payment."
Since the email looked legitimate, the field team updated the banking details and sent the money.
A few days later, the real vendor realized they had been hacked and sent out a warning:
📩 "If you received an email in the last few days, please ignore it. Our email was compromised."
But by then?
💰 The money was already gone.
How Could This Have Been Prevented?
The field team followed standard payment procedures.
Their mistake? They trusted the email without verifying.
This was not their fault. They didn’t know what they didn’t know.
But the organization should have had stronger safeguards in place.
To prevent this type of fraud, here’s what I still use today on personal transfers:
✔️ Require multiple verification steps before setting up a new vendor or changing bank accounts.
✔️ Do not share banking information via email—use secure platforms instead.
✔️ Require verbal confirmation for all banking updates—no exceptions.
✔️ Implement a test deposit process. Before sending large amounts of money, the receiving party must confirm a small deposit and verify the exact amount.
💡 The key to cybersecurity isn’t just technology—it’s process discipline.
Fraudsters know that businesses rely on email for vendor communications.
That’s exactly why they target email accounts.
The Bigger Lesson: Cybersecurity is a Finance Issue, Not Just an IT Issue
Many organizations think cybersecurity is the responsibility of the IT department.
💡 That’s a mistake.
This case shows that fraudsters aren’t hacking systems just for fun. They’re coming after money.
And, the people who approve transactions, make payments, and authorize fund transfers—are their primary targets.
💡 Your IT team can put up firewalls, encryption, and multi-factor authentication. But if your payers do not have strong payment verification protocols, the money is still at risk.
What Do All These Cases Tell Future Leaders in Finance and Business?
If you’re a rising financial professional, accountant, or business leader looking to move up the ranks, here’s what you need to know:
1️⃣ Financial leadership isn’t just about knowing numbers. It’s about understanding how fraud happens, spotting risks, and enforcing financial integrity.
2️⃣ People steal for many reasons. Sometimes, they’re desperate. Sometimes, they think they can get away with it. Sometimes, they justify it in their mind.
3️⃣ You have to assume mistakes will happen—even in good teams.
💡 Your job is to put the right financial controls in place to make fraud nearly impossible.
The cases I dealt with were about:
🚨 Employees in bad situations or where they made bad choices.
🚨 Leaders who ignored warning signs.
🚨 Systems that were too easy to exploit.
Final Thought: Financial Integrity Is a Business Essential
💡 This work—consolidation, financial oversight, fraud prevention, operational excellence—isn’t just about saving money.
💡 Assume problems exist. Find them. Fix them. Build better systems.
💡If you can implement the right controls, ask the right questions, and enforce financial integrity, you won’t just be good at finance. You’ll be a leader that will be highly valued and compensated for that integrity.
There’s a common saying:
“Manage company money like it’s your own.”
But here’s the reality—you don’t want people managing company money like it’s their own.
Some people are terrible at managing their own money.
Instead, you want people managing company money like their career, reputation, and future depend on it….because it does.
Until next time, keep building financial flexibility and freedom to Embrace Any Future!
Sincerely,
Rachel