Earlier this year, the ACFE hosted a webinar titled, “A Conversation About Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Anti-Fraud Field,” which is free and available to view for all ACFE members. In this month’s episode of Fraud Talk, you’ll hear an excerpt where the four panelists share who should be involved in this discussion and why. They also share how anti-fraud professionals can make belonging an integral part of workplace culture.

Below is an excerpt from the full transcript, where the panelists discuss the role of allyship and how each person has something to contribute. Download the full transcript in PDF form or listen to the episode at the bottom of this post.

Dr. Walker: What is in this movement for allies? On the one hand, we know that allies can do a tremendous work in magnifying the story for black people and for folks of color, but what is in this for allies? Bethmara, I wonder if you could share a little bit on that for us?

Bethmara: It's an interesting question because I've spent a lot of time as an executive sponsor of a bunch of resource groups where we've pushed allyship, and the question has always come up in terms of what's in it for the allies. The reality is that we all in some way, shape and form, just like Monica mentioned earlier, there was a white man who was covering and was kind of hiding his Irishness. I had some folks that I've worked with when I've talked very openly about being an out lesbian come to me and send me notes and say, thank you so much for being open and authentic and sharing. I'm Native American and I never told anybody, or I'm a veteran and I've never told anybody.

The thing is that we've all learned what is alluded to talk about, how we need to show up in almost in these homogenized ways. By being allies, what we're doing is we're creating an environment where, as Charles said, we're building trust and we're creating a situation where people truly are feeling like they belong and feel welcome, which back to your point, Lisa, is what makes organizations great and successful. Diversity makes us better and it is so powerful if we truly get diversity, equity and inclusion right.

For allies, it's about being there. Humanity is about being there for other folks and having other folks be there for you when you need it. It's just about being a human being from my perspective.

Dr. Walker: That's beautifully said.

Charles: I agree with you, Bethmara.

Dr. Walker: I literally hear and feel your heart in that. Charles, you were going to be adding something. Did I hear you?

Charles: No, I was just saying that I agree with Bethmara. It's sorta like, no one can live the full benefit of their lives living a lie, one way or the other. Either if you're hiding anything about yourself, there's just no way that anyone could ever be the person that they're truly meant to be or the person that they really want to be if they're fostering a lie within themselves because it's just a hard thing to keep.

In this place of building allies and living to your fullest extent, and this is what racism prevents. It prevents you from living to your fullest extent, because in many cases, people practiced racism, even when they didn't believe it, they just did it because they felt society thought that that was the right thing to do, not because they believed it, but just because they thought that was the right thing to do based on social norms, and to me, that's a good example of living a lie.

Bethmara: It's interesting you talk about that, Charles, because one of the things that was a big lightbulb for me in the concept of privilege is that I actually was closeted for a lot of my career, and it was really hard. I was using generic pronouns and not sharing with the world that I had the most amazing partner at the time, who's now my wife, and three beautiful children who are awesome adults right now. The thing that was most powerful for me was realizing that I was able and I had the privilege of being able to cover my sexual orientation, where in a racism discussion, when we're talking about somebody's race, there's no privilege to being able to cover.

If somebody sees you, Charles, they see that you're a Black man. If I don’t do my hair like this, and I actually intentionally cover, I can actually pass as being a straight white woman, which gives me a different degree of privilege. You're right. It's so hard and exhausting to have to cover who you are and make believe that you're not the person you actually are on the inside.

Charles: Sure. Racism is—

Monica: Bethmara, I wanted to— Sorry, Charles. Go ahead, Charles.

Charles: Racism has this funny way of attacking people in ways that you really wouldn't imagine. For example, I once moved into a community and I was really concerned about moving there because I had heard so much about this community being racist. I was really thinking about not moving there because I read so much and I heard so much about this neighborhood being racist until finally I met a person who lived there and she said this thing to me, and it stuck with me my entire life, and what she said, she says, "Charles, if you are afraid of white people, don't move to this neighborhood, but if you're not afraid of white people, if white people don't make you feel uncomfortable, move to this neighborhood, and I'm quite sure you will probably have one of the best experiences of your life."

I moved into the neighborhood after I told my wife that I wouldn't, we moved there and it's been one of the best neighborhoods I've ever lived in in my entire life. Racism has its way to take things away that you don't think about because you're only thinking on that defense again, but once you can take it and turn it into an offense, it can truly open your eyes to things that you might not ever experience.

Monica: I wanted to add a comment about the ability to be on the offense, to be an ally, not be a bystander. I remember very early in my career, I was out at a lunch and there was a person who was senior to me, and then an individual who worked for me who was early stage in his career. At that lunch, there happened to be a lot of flies around and I was swatting some of them away. The senior person said, “Well, you should be used to that. You're from India."

I was just beyond just taken aback at that point, because that's not actually where my family's from or what I'm used to. The more junior individual said, "What do you mean by that? How could you say that to her? What are you trying to imply?" It suddenly opened this window, but to have somebody who really was just like, "No, we're not going to stand up for this."

In the workplace, in your community, if you see someone say something, do something. The ability to just to stand up against that, make a comment, be the ally to that individual is so powerful.