'We Must be Fearless': Q&A With Chairman Joseph T. Wells, CFE, CPA

Why has the ACFE succeeded and prospered? 

There are many reasons. But at the time we established the ACFE, there were about 40,000 professional associations in the U.S., but not a single one of them was dedicated to fraud detection and deterrence and nothing else. As others have said, it was an idea whose time had come. 

 

What have you enjoyed most about building the ACFE from the beginning? 

Probably the most enjoyable thing can be likened to a farmer who puts a seed in the ground. He waters it, fertilizes and nurtures it and does everything he can to see that it grows. When that seed finally sprouts from the ground, he knows that his efforts have paid off. There is no feeling quite the same. Perhaps the thing that surprises me most is it didn't take longer for that seed to grow and bear fruit. 

 

Many have called you a risk-taker. You put your entire savings into starting the Association. Was it a scary thing to bet everything on creating something from scratch? 

Walking across the street or slipping in your bathtub is a risk. Otherwise, you'd go nowhere nor do anything. But if you truly believe in something, you should put your money where your mouth is. That's what I did. For Jim, Kathie, and me, failure never entered the equation. 

 

How are you indebted to those educators, researchers, and investigators who preceded you? 

Sir Isaac Newton, one of the greatest scientific minds of all time, said that what he learned had been accomplished by standing on the shoulders of giants. I feel the same way. 

 

You've written and/or edited 14 books, authored scores of articles and research projects, and have won numerous awards in the process. What is it about writing that captivates you? 

My eighth-grade grammar teacher was Tex-Ann Aldridge -- yes, that was her real name. You couldn't survive her class unless you could write a grammatically correct sentence. I will forever be in her debt, although I didn't feel that way then. Sentences make up paragraphs, which make up pages, which make up chapters, which make up books. The enjoyment is that writing is very difficult to do well. Ernest Hemmingway once said that he was satisfied with one good paragraph a day. But anyone who has read Hemmingway knows his books are pretty skinny. My goal is to write at least one good page a day. 

 

I am frankly very surprised at my prodigious output over the years, and it just seems to keep coming. I guess I get some sort of perverse pleasure by starting out with a blank screen and filling it with words. Wiley, my publisher, has been hounding me for years to write an autobiography, but I've resisted until now. The most difficult thing is to write about yourself. But I'm about halfway through this epic tome and hope to get it to print by sometime next year. 

 

What are you most proud of with your work with the ACFE? 

Meeting the members and establishing very solid friendships with many, many of them. That is one thing I never anticipated when starting the ACFE, but it has turned out to be the most important benefit to me personally. 

 

What issues do you see on the horizon for fraud examiners? 

In reading back over what I said 20 years ago, I expressed concern over fraud in the markets. Many people now believe that I was looking into some crystal ball. But to me, it was as obvious as the nose on your face. A very difficult issue facing us in the future is that we now live in a global economy. Just ask anyone from America about investigating a fraud that originated in a country like Estonia -- or anywhere else, for that matter -- and then spread worldwide. The problems are almost insurmountable and I don't expect the issue to be resolved in our lifetimes. To finally fix this, it will need universal laws and treaties. Because of the complexity of global political laws, I believe that we are probably at least 50 years away from those goals. 

 

What advice do you have for fraud examiners? 

Fraud examination, by its very nature, is an adversarial process; those who have committed these crimes kick and scream when they are under investigation and don't tend to take it lying down. One of the most common tactics is to attempt to reverse the course by accusing the accuser. Before taking the first step in any fraud examination, make sure that you anticipate this and are not surprised when it occurs. Scrutinize every action you take before you take it. Pretend that everything you do will find the harsh light of a courtroom and act accordingly. Fraud examination is not the profession for wimps. But when you are right, both in thought and in deed, you must be fearless.