Incorporating Practicing Professionals in the Classroom

Dick Riley Jr., Ph.D., CFE, CPA, is the new chair of the ACFE Higher Education Advisory Committee and editor of the Fraud EDge column. Franco Frandé is chief of the Financial Investigative Services Division of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Franco joins Dick in this column to talk about the ways ATF instructors help teach college students practical fraud examination and forensic principles. – ed. 

From Franco Frandé: When I speak to college students in the classroom, I’ll often tell the shocking story of Christopher Wood. Christopher was 10 years old when his father (we’ll call him Sam) killed him for life and fire insurance money. Sam strangled Christopher, started a fire in the family home, and then drove several miles and tossed Christopher’s body onto the side of the road near a lake.

Sam told law enforcement and the media that Christopher accidentally started the fire and then ran away. Sam tearfully pleaded on a TV newscast for his son’s safe return. At the time, no one except Sam knew Christopher was dead.

For weeks prior to the fire and murder, Sam had set up the crime by talking with others about the “problem” he was having with his son playing with matches. Sam also planted matches under a couch seat cushion so his daughter would discover them when she cleaned the house. 

Sam’s intent was to use the insurance money to pay back his former employer as restitution for a fraud that Sam had been caught perpetrating. The employer had agreed to not file charges if Sam reimbursed the company for the missing funds. The employer didn’t know Sam had stolen from previous employers who had opted to fire him without pressing charges.

Christopher might still be alive today if one of the prior employers had prosecuted Sam. Their choices allowed Sam, a habitual criminal, to quietly move from victim to victim.

From Dick Riley: At this point in his presentation, my friend Franco has the students mesmerized as I’ve witnessed many times in my accounting classes. We’ve all been there – listening to practicing professionals’ spellbinding war stories. But is it enough? Can practitioners use these great anecdotes to improve students’ educational outcomes (development of immediately applicable skills and abilities not just knowledge concepts) while keeping them engaged?

Franco and other members of his ATF team offer so much more than war stories, and it shows in the evaluations students fill out. At one university, the ATF instructors’ ratings have averaged 4.9 on a scale of 1 to 5.

Franco and the other ATF instructors emphasize exceptional communication, genuine skills development, and hands-on experiential learning. They might begin with the attention-grabbing case history, but they then will sprinkle in skills development and hands-on learning activities or exercises for a complete learning package.

At West Virginia University, Franco and other ATF forensic auditors have enriched our students’ education with real-world experiences.

The goal is to make sure that when their classroom sessions are over, the students have the ability to “do something” and the confidence that, with some supervision, they can immediately make a contribution to a criminal enforcement or forensic audit investigative team.

If you’re an academic, here are some guidelines to working with practitioner guest instructors. If you’re that practitioner, here’s help to ensure your success as you teach a session in a fraud examination or forensics accounting class.

SESSION PLANNING AND DESIGN 

From Franco: Prior to a presentation, the ATF instructor interviews the course professor to determine the goals of the session. The first order of business is to know what the professor is hoping to accomplish in the classroom and to determine how your session will fit into the curricula so you’ll help him or her transfer knowledge and skills.

Sometimes ATF instructors will invite faculty to their local offices to review course objectives and goals and carve out those pieces that the ATF representatives will address, designing a simple list of goals, objectives, practical exercises, knowledge transfers, skills development, and testing.

The next step is to develop a syllabus that will list session goals and objectives and identify lecture topics and hands-on exercises.

DEVELOPING SKILLS AND ABILITIES 

From Franco: ATF investigators want students to first remember and understand basic definitions and concepts (all passive learning) and we can do that through case histories and war stories. However, we have a more important classroom goal: We want to challenge the students to learn at higher levels by requiring them to solve complex problems, complete critical thinking and analytical reasoning exercises, and make decisions based on their work.  

Decision making, which can be characterized as drawing conclusions based on the analyzed information and evidence, might be the most important outcome for the session. These exercises ensure that students can do more than just regurgitate knowledge shared by the visiting instructor; they determine that the students have developed skills and abilities and have the confidence to work independently on field engagements.

Drawing from their years of experience and case data, ATF personnel pull critical pieces of evidence, such as tax returns, cancelled checks, and bank statements, and either redact any identifying information or use that data to create some “fake” evidence that the students can examine, analyze, and investigate in the classroom setting.

To drive home their objectives even more effectively, the ATF personnel provide frequent and immediate feedback in the classroom to reinforce those areas in which the students did well. The ATF representatives will explain why the students answered correctly and will identify errors or lapses in judgment so the students can learn the reasons for their errors.

EDUCATIONAL FOR STUDENTS, REWARDING FOR PROFESSORS

From Dick: Any course needs a variety of learning forms (lectures, open discussion, teamwork exercises, writing assignments, data analysis, etc.) to support goals and styles. But these learning activities also need to be structured to lay the foundation for complex and higher-level learning tasks for later exercises.

Because the ATF instructors are in the classroom for a relatively short time, the grading of in-class activities and any out-of-class assignments is left to the professor. However, the visiting instructor ensures that the knowledge, skills, and testing fit seamlessly to the class by using a system that builds on the professor’s plans.  

Guest instructors can cover such topics as interviewing, international anti-money laundering, undercover work, courtroom preparation and testimony, crime scene investigation for electronic and financial evidence, data mining, computer tools and techniques, report writing, the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and securities fraud and enforcement, to name a few.  

Having practicing professionals share their knowledge and experience in the classroom is fun for students and rewarding for professors. It’s even more valuable when visiting instructors collaboratively design the session with professors to include not only arresting case histories, but hands-on experiences and activities.

Richard “Dick” A. Riley Jr., Ph.D., CFE, CPA, is a Louis F. Tanner Distinguished Professor of Public Accounting in the College of Business and Economics at West Virginia University in Morgantown. He is chair of the ACFE Higher Education Advisory Committee and the informal director of research for the Institute for Fraud Prevention.