Earlier this year, Jeri Self-Merritt, most recently a partner with the Spokane offices of Eide Bailly LLP, retired from her decades-long career in public accounting.

Self-Merritt, 58, entered the public accounting industry in 1987. Since then, she has been a part of prominent Spokane public accounting firms, formed her own firm, Langenhorst & Self-Merritt CPAs, and had a four-year second career as a lawyer for Spokane-based Allen & McLane PC. She holds an accounting degree and law degree from Gonzaga University.

Self-Merritt is a graduate of Leadership Spokane and is a past president of the Ronald McDonald House Charities of the Inland Northwest. She currently serves on YWCA Spokane’s board of directors and as the organization’s treasurer.

The Journal recently sat down with Self-Merritt to discuss what it was like entering a male-dominated field in the late 1980s, her advice for others in the field, and what she is most proud of looking back.

You’re still fairly young, why did you choose to retire at 58?

About 18 months ago, my husband and I sat down with our financial adviser who was going over our plan and the adviser looked at us and said, ‘You’re working because you want to.’ It was post COVID, and work had been really hard during that time. So when he said that, I thought, I don’t know if I want to be working anymore. That coupled with my husband, who is eight years older than me, decided he wanted to retire, and he wanted me to retire with him so we could travel together and do things while we still could.

Why did you leave accounting for a short time?

I was burnt out.

I started out in accounting with McFarland & Alton in 1987 and received my law degree in 1998, while still working at the firm. McFarland merged with Moss Adams in 1999, and I stayed on for a few more years before going to practice law with Allen and McLane PC.

It was a complete restart. Allen & McLane was an employment firm, and I really loved what I was doing. The two attorneys I worked for were fabulous, but I was doing research and writing, so I was never going to be a partner. 

I had the opportunity to come back to public accounting and be a partner at a small firm with people I had worked with at McFarland. The deal was, if you all still like each other and this works after a year, we’ll make you partner.

I did that for 10 years, and then we merged with Eide Bailly in 2016 because my business partner was getting to the age where he was thinking about retiring. You always have to plan several years ahead.

Who are your mentors?

It took me a bit to get a job in public accounting. At the time, I was a single parent and thought that was the limiting factor. Later, it became apparent to me that it was probably because I wasn’t a good interviewer. I was concerned that they were judging my ability to handle it and that’s why I wasn’t getting any jobs. 

My adviser sent me to Dan Brajcich, who was an iconic accounting professor at Gonzaga. Dan called Lowell Ruen, who was the head of the tax department at McFarland & Alton, and I don’t know how many times Dan called Lowell, but it was multiple times until Lowell decided he would give me an interview. 

Dan Brajcich was definitely a mentor, and then Lowell Ruen became one as well. He was a lawyer as well, and he is the one who encouraged me to go to law school. Another mentor was Rick Betts, who also worked at McFarland and gave me responsibility for a lot of his clients.

Accounting is a demanding job, especially for a single parent. How did you do it? 

My parents were very involved. They lived in Sandpoint, Idaho, where I grew up, and we would meet Friday nights in Coeur d’Alene. My daughter would go and spend Saturday with them, and I would pick her up on Sunday. I would get a good day of work done on Saturday, and during the week, I would work my normal hours, then after dinner and after Katie had gone to sleep, I would do more work.

In the early years, we were working between 55 and 60 hours. That’s what was expected of us. I was always on the high end of those hours. I was worried, since I didn’t get my job the normal way, I needed to work extra hard to make sure I belonged, which wasn’t true, but it was in my head. In the later years, the expectation was a lot more, about 60 to 65 hours. I had a couple of weeks that were 90-plus hours, which you can’t sustain, and it’s not healthy.

What was it like going into a male-dominated field in the late 1980s?

There were a couple of ladies at McFarland & Alton who probably should have been made partners but weren’t. There was remorse over that and there was an awareness that they needed to treat the females better too.

When I first started (in accounting), we always wore skirts and dresses. One day, one of the gals came in wearing a pantsuit. There was a lot of drama over that—an uproar. There were other things that were very divided like that in terms of how you dress and the roles men and women took. People wondered, is that right? Should she be doing that?

I was always so glad that she was brave enough to wear pants so that the rest of us could also start wearing pants. It’s just so funny to think about that now.

Are there any other major changes you’ve noticed over the years?

I think there were a lot of differences back then, but even now that things are more equal, there are still some conversations that I hear happen that show different treatment of genders. 

For example, I was in a meeting in which we were deciding who to give certain responsibilities to get done. We’re deciding between a few people and one of them is a mom with multiple children and the conversation turns into, “Well, she’s got responsibilities at home.” In my mind, that shouldn’t even be a conversation that happens when considering someone for an opportunity. 

So that bias is still there, but I think it’s probably getting better because now you’ve got men who are taking paternity leave and having to adjust their schedules, because they are responsible for pickup or taking the kids to work and are unable to do certain things, so it’s balancing out a little bit more.

What advice would you give others in the industry?

What I have noticed makes you successful in public accounting is learning to delegate. There’s always so much work to be done. Most of us are pretty Type A, and we think we can do it better than someone with less experience. We’re probably right, but you can’t do everything. If you can learn to delegate, that’s going to be a key to success.