Spotlight: Elizabeth Lainhart, Audit and Assurance Manager
Elizabeth moderating Williams Adley’s session on Women Leading in DoD at PDI 2023 in St. Louis
Williams Adley’s greatest asset is our people, and our firm’s remarkable growth over the last few years has been driven by our phenomenal team of experts who support our clients every day. Elizabeth Lainhart, Audit and Assurance Manager, is one such professional. Since joining Williams Adley in 2018, Elizabeth has made tremendous contributions to our success and firmly established herself as an up-and-coming leader. Whether she is leading large and complex engagements for clients like DFAS, moderating sessions at SDFM PDI, or cultivating Williams Adley’s next generation of talent, Elizabeth consistently plays a valuable role for our team and for our clients.
Today, we are pleased to interview Elizabeth as a Future Leader of the firm and offer a close look into not only her strategies for success, but also her vision for navigating the future.
Q: In 2023, you won the AGA PDT Young Professionals Scholarship, and you are a participant in Williams Adley’s Future Leaders Program. What do you feel has been most instrumental in setting you on this path for success? And as a future leader, what do you believe will be most important for navigating the future of financial management for our government clients?
A: Being hungry and loud has definitely driven my success, and that’s not just my pregnancy talking. The AGA PDT Young Professionals Scholarship is not something someone told me to do, it took time to apply, conviction to earn it, and sacrifices to make it happen once I won. I had to purposefully choose at every turn that this opportunity was something important to me and worth the additional energy and time it took. I was hesitantly supported throughout the process by family, friends and my management team. Everyone was so proud of me and made it known that they would support me if I chose to accept—but hesitant on the additional stress it would take on top of the international travel for client work, being an engagement lead on a high-profile client as a Supervisor, and chasing a manager promotion. This only made me hungrier. Participating, and I mean fully participating beyond just what was required to obtain the scholarship, has given me opportunities few professionals my age have gotten to experience. Little things like casual conversations with the AGA National President while volunteering and breaking down the raffle station at PDI. Beyond networking, it has given me practice and confidence in speaking to executives and allowed me to build my brand in who I want to be as a young professional.
Elizabeth accepting the AGA PDT Young Professionals Scholarship at PDT 2023 in Orlando.
It was a similar case in being selected to participate in the WA Future Leaders Program. This is where being (respectfully) loud came in. I started at Williams Adley in June 2018. I won the Partners award in 2019. By 2020, there was not a Partner that did not know me closely, or a manager who did not know my name regardless of what department they were in. I volunteered for every opportunity that came up, I was vocal in department-wide and, just as importantly, company-wide meetings and events. I created relationships and specifically a mentorship with our Managing Partner, Kola Isiaq, long before the Williams Adley Future Leaders Program was formalized with the kickoff in 2022, which I believe solidified my spot in that inaugural year. After being in the program two years and having such specialized coaching to work out my career plan, I cannot be more of an advocate for making yourself known and heard, as I will benefit from it for the rest of my career. I always tell people that especially at Williams Adley, what you put in you will get back ten-fold. I continuously showed my interest in and dedication to growing and was met every time in figuring out a way to make that happen.
For navigating the future of financial management, I believe being able to keep up with ever-changing guidance and technology will be most important.
Q: Are there any strategies you might have for keeping up with new guidance and technology efficiently? Any new kinds of technology or guidance coming down the pipeline that you predict will be especially critical to adapt to? Or maybe a way of approaching work/engagements that makes it easier to respond to unpredictable changes?
A: I think when an unpredictable change happens, or even predictable changes like new guidance, it is essential to take the time at the beginning to identify the potential impact that the change has on your operations. You can then dedicate resources to align with the impact the change could have in order to help ensure the change is addressed efficiently.
Q: You’ve also moderated one of our highly popular SDFM PDI sessions on Women Leaders in DoD. What has been most rewarding about collaborating with other talented women in the DoD space? And what advice do you have for other young women who are interested in pursuing similar opportunities?
A: Experiencing influential executive-level individuals from the DoD in a relaxed setting where we are working together to create content. It was extremely empowering to not only hear their stories, but also be an integral part of bringing that to an audience of hundreds of people who benefitted from it. The DoD space in general can be overwhelming for a young professional, and so can the level of professionalism required in almost all interactions. Being able to get behind the scenes of the typical formalities was a breath of fresh air that gave me the confidence that I still use today in gauging different client needs and communication preferences, whether DoD or civilian.
Women Leading in DoD: Cementing a Path
Left to right: Elizabeth Lainhart, AAA Manager; Audrey Davis, DFAS Director; Mobola Kadiri, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Financial Operations); Anne McAndrew, OUSD(C) Deputy Comptroller for Program/Budget
My advice for other young women is to become comfortable with the uncomfortable, but also ask for help when needed. Moderating this session was not something I thought I was ready for, and I was extremely nervous. I knew that my Partners and Managers believed in me, but I still struggled leading up to it. I am thankful that I felt comfortable asking for help. I had one of my Partners join me for the first call with the panelists to help calm my nerves, and ended up leading most of the call anyway! But her willingness to join and just seeing her little bubble on Teams is what gave me that comfort and strength to do it. My other Partner told me that saying “Good Afternoon” into the microphone in the room full of hundreds of people would be the hardest part of the entire session, and when that moment came and I felt the relief, I knew that being uncomfortable is always okay when you are so comfortably supported.
Q: You are currently the manager over our DFAS WCF Audit and led a session on Transitioning to the Defense Agencies Initiative at PDI this year. What has been most challenging about work in the government audit environment, and how did you overcome this challenge? What has been the most important lesson learned?
A: I think the most challenging part about the audit environment is adapting to change. During any major change, whether that be a change on the client’s end with a new financial system or processes, or a major guidance change, feeling like you are starting over can often be the biggest challenge. I was the engagement lead for this type of change with the DFAS WCF Financial Statement Audit during their transition from an in-house designed legacy system used for over 30 years to a brand-new financial system that was not specifically designed for a Working Capital Fund. I am also alongside our entire industry this year in adapting to the new lease guidance for FY 2024.
The challenge with these types of changes is that you may have spent years learning the ins and outs of something and finally feel confident in understanding it—this is the year that you are going to find extra efficiencies! Then BOOM! A major change and you feel like you are learning everything, including new challenges, from the ground up, and in most cases at the same time as your client. This is a time-consuming and at times frustrating experience to get through. I was lucky to go through this with such an organized client in the DoD space, as the preparation on both the auditor and auditee side started long before the 2023 implementation. We overcame it with the client in overcommunicating. We held many discussions prior to transition on what would be important for them to document along the way and what major changes we should expect or start considering. We were able to do a partial implementation for just one part of the system and test that in the year prior to the full implementation. Another successful adaption we made was identifying and discussing with the contracting officers early on that we would need to adjust the timeline and resources to perform the audit for that year. This allowed us to start our audit earlier so that we would have additional time during our planning and internal control phases to feel comfortable in gaining a thorough and accurate understanding of the new processes. It also gave us the resources to have sufficient team members to perform this work and avoid any misunderstandings of processes and potential errors missed later on. So I think overall communication and planning was our most important lesson learned.
Q: Can you provide any specific ways or a specific example for how you will carry this lesson learned on to future engagements? How has going through this experience affected how you go about beginning other engagements to provide clients with the most valuable and efficient services possible?
Transitioning to DAI: The DFAS WCF Auditor Experience
Left to right: Elizabeth Lainhart, AAA Manager; Rosie Tinsley, DFAS CFO; Aaron J. Harding, DSCA COO and CFO; Kola Isiaq, Williams Adley Managing Partner
A: I think my big take away for both how I operate on other engagements and what I try to share with clients is to not underestimate the value of time spent ensuring the auditors have an accurate understanding of the processes or particular situation or transaction. Things can unnecessarily get out of hand very fast if that knowledge sharing (and confirming!) doesn't happen during the first few phases of the audit or as things happen in real-time during testing. It can lead to erroneous results and wasted time on both sides. Being able to stop, take a step back and ask DFAS if we can hop on a call so that I can reiterate and confirm my understanding of the situation in case there is something I am looking at incorrectly or have a piece of the puzzle missing that they didn't realize they needed to provide, has saved us many headaches.
Q: Your expertise encompasses a wide variety of audit work, and you are currently working on our financial statement audit for USAID OIG. What are you looking forward to the most about this audit? What do you believe is the biggest value-add that Williams Adley can bring to USAID OIG and similar clients on this kind of audit?
A: I was most looking forward to the exciting international travel for this audit, not only to experience it myself but also to see other team members and newer staff get the opportunity since we haven’t had very many since COVID.
Also, not only do I really enjoy the travel aspect myself, travel for audits can also be an important part of the audit process. It allows us to conduct comprehensive and accurate walkthroughs of the client's processes and systems. Additionally, physical presence is essential for certain audit procedures, particularly asset and inventory reviews. Being on-site enables us to physically verify the existence and condition of assets, conduct inventory counts, and assess the appropriateness of valuation methods. These procedures are fundamental to ensuring the accuracy and reliability of financial statements, and they simply cannot be performed with the same level of assurance through remote means.
I think the biggest value-add we can bring to the USAID OIG and similar, large new clients is the attention of a small firm but the quality of a large one.
At larger firms, clients often experience a cycle of resources moving on and off engagements. We believe in gaining in-depth knowledge about our clients and their overall portfolios, allowing our staff to develop a comprehensive understanding of each client's unique needs and challenges. This approach prevents knowledge gaps, and if one team member transitions, we ensure another individual is ready to tackle the challenges faced.
We recognize that audits are not cookie-cutter processes. While audit requirements may be similar, each audit, client, and auditee has unique elements. Our approach is customized to address these specific characteristics, ensuring that we provide tailored solutions that meet both regulatory requirements and our clients' individual needs.
By maintaining continuity in our client relationships and adapting our methods to each situation, we offer a level of service that combines the expertise of a large firm with the personalized attention typically associated with smaller practices.
Q: One of the special things about Williams Adley is that we have lots of opportunity for travel and have served clients all over the world through our firm's 40-year history. What are some things that new staff can learn on travel engagements that they might not have the opportunity to learn otherwise? What are some of the unique challenges of such engagements, and how is Williams Adley uniquely equipped to overcome these challenges to serve our clients such as USAID?
A: I think new staff can learn so much on travel engagements, especially now when it may be the first time you are interacting in person since we are usually remote. It provides a lot of opportunity to develop relationships you may not have the opportunity to in our "normal" stateside audit work. When I was a new Senior, I worked on the SIGAR audits and got to travel to Scotland alongside a Supervisor and our consulting Partner. This goes back to some of my earlier answers, but I took it as an incredible opportunity to get to know these individuals more, rather than just feeling like I was crazy for offering to drive the rental car on the opposite side of the road as we do in the U.S., with my Partner in the back seat! You also of course get to learn so much from onsite testing and client interactions in a condensed time frame.
The challenges with these type of audits can be the amount of time you have to spend on administrative things as opposed to just the audit work. Thankfully, with an extremely talented operations team supporting us and the depth of our experience in international travel, we are able to overcome this. We've also learned to "overly prep", clearing additional folks, building in cushion time for administrative things to take longer than expected, etc.
Q: What excites you the most about the future of government auditing? What do you think the biggest opportunities in the future will be?
A: Harnessing automation and how we view risk, doing more risk-based procedures and seeing how the government adapts to using a more risk-based control environment.
The integration of automation, AI, and machine learning will revolutionize audit processes, allowing for more efficient and effective risk assessment and targeted procedures. The auditor and the auditee will soon be adapting to more sophisticated, risk-based control environments, so we will all need to evolve our methodologies accordingly. We here at Williams Adley will be capitalizing on these opportunities as government auditors to embrace technological advancements, continuously update our skills, and maintain a forward-thinking approach, ultimately enhancing the value we provide to government entities and the public.
Q: Lastly, as a future leader, what do you think is most exciting about the growth of Williams Adley? What continues to make Williams Adley a service provider and employer of choice?
As someone committed to being a piece of the long-term success at Williams Adley, of course the growth excites me. Growing our portfolio and continuing to have the opportunity of working on such a variety of different types of audits and vastly different types of clients definitely excites me. But I think what excites me most is seeing how our core Williams Adley culture has not wavered through these changes, and seeing how we handle the challenge of maintaining that as we continue to grow. Being a future leader means that I get to play a central role in making that happen. I am lucky to be surrounded by many other leaders in our management committed to that same goal, and I think that is what solidifies us as an employer and service provider of choice.
Thanks so much to Elizabeth for taking the time to answer our questions, and for being such an incredible asset to the Williams Adley team! We hope our readers benefit from her insights just as much as we do.
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