Turn XML into Object
It is a good Idea to create a generic object model that may represent an XML document. Therefore, the .Net Framework already contains such models: XmlDocument and XDocument.

I would really suggest to use them.



Some comments to your code:


Methods and properties usually start with a capital letter in C#.
The method getChild throws an exception if no element was found. Consider to return null instead because it is not an exceptional use case and returning null is more flexible.
The field subList could be read-only.
C# has the concept of Properties which should be used instead of get* and set* methods 



buildObject.setName(startNode.Name);
buildObject.setValue(startNode.InnerText);



The code above does not produce the expected result because InnerText is not just the inner text of the current node but the text of the current and all sub nodes. The following XML for example:

&lt;xml&gt;
    &lt;test&gt;
        &lt;blub&gt;foo&lt;/blub&gt;
        &lt;blub&gt;bar&lt;/blub&gt;
    &lt;/test&gt;
&lt;/xml&gt;


Produces something like:

XmlObject(Name: xml, Value: foobar)
    XmlObject(Name: test, Value foobar)
        XmlObject(Name: blub, Value foo)
        XmlObject(Name: blub, Value bar)