Everywhere you look these days, it seems like you can find people making big investments in the future of accounting, putting up money and time and effort to innovate in just about every area of the profession.

Think of the Big Four spending millions on artificial intelligence, cognitive computing and the data-based tools and services of tomorrow, or the American Institute of CPAs and its firm partners spending tens of millions to build their Dynamic Audit Solution and completely revamp the audit. Or how about those Top 100 Firms that are merging in non-accounting businesses that focus on everything from IT security to marketing to HR services? I need hardly mention the software providers, from big players like Wolters Kluwer and Thomson Reuters to new upstarts like botkeeper and Mindbridge AI, that are pursuing accounting innovation on a multitude of fronts.

So, what are you doing to build the future of accounting?

Now, most CPA firms are small busineses, and obviously, no one expects them to invest millions in capital in creating innovative tools or new services or groundbreaking business models. But that doesn’t mean that smaller firms and sole practitioners should or can afford to leave all the investment to the big guys. No matter what size your practice is, you can and must put something into building your own future within the profession of the future.

Make no mistake: This will require both money and time. Not millions of dollars, to be sure, and you won’t need to quit your day job to focus on the future full-time, but you’ll need to build funds for innovation into your budget, and time for it into your calendar. Here are a few ways to start making an investment now:

• Set aside an hour a week. Reserve a space on your calendar where you’ll do nothing but read or think or even talk in a small group about what the future of your firm and the profession will look like. Need conversation starters? Look no further than the next item.
• Read a book — or 10. Amazon will be happy to guide you to a thousand different titles on everything from blockchain, AI and the subscription economy to value pricing, the evolution of the modern advisory services firm, or how to build your own app.
• Attend a conference. There are plenty of great conferences in the accounting space that are focused on the future, like the AICPA’s Engage and Digital CPA gatherings, or Woodard Events’ Scaling New Heights, and the annual Accountex show. Vendor user conferences and state society events are also great places to explore. Go with specific questions you want answered, but also keep your eyes and your mind open — and be prepared to put in some very full days to get the most out of your time and money.
• Test an app. Find an application that purports to solve one of your or your clients’ pain points, and dive into it on a trial basis.
• Invest in new skills. If your firm is of any size, chances are you can find an employee who would be eager to learn the latest in marketing techniques, or how to code, build a blockchain, or conduct high-level data analysis. And in small or solo practices, you yourself can benefit from continually expanding your skill set — just remember to go beyond merely keeping up your technical chops to really explore new areas.

These will all take commitments of time and money — but they should be within the reach of even the most modest practitioner. And while they may not mean that you personally will reshape the entire accounting profession, they should help make sure that when those big investments I mentioned earlier begin to pay off, you won’t get left behind — and you’ll be in a better position to capitalize on them.

Innovation Futurists and Leadership Experts Offer Insights at Dec. 9-11 Event

NEW YORK (Oct. 23, 2019) – Innovation is reshaping the traditional areas of practice in the accounting profession, and CPAs who want to position their firms for success can gain the latest intelligence and insights about this shift at the 2019 Digital CPA Conference, sponsored by the American Institute of CPAs and its technology arm, CPA.com.

This year's conference will be held just outside Seattle at the Hyatt Regency in Bellevue, Wash. The Dec. 9-11 event is organized around the theme “Age of Innovation,” and includes sessions on the shift to advisory services across all core areas of the CPA firm, such as audit and assurance, tax, and accounting services.

Keynote speakers at the event include:

• Lisa Bodell, founder and CEO of FutureThink, a global consulting firm that helps companies eliminate red tape and busy work and adopt simplicity as an operating model to unleash innovation.
• Pascal Finette, chair of Open Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Singularity University and co-founder of radical Ventures, a firm that takes the long view on the impact of technological change. Pascal will share insights and future trend predictions from his year-long collaboration with CPA.com in a program called “Navigating the Future,” which is designed to help CPA firms prepare and prosper from exponential change.
• Steven Robbins, founder of S. L. Robbins and Associates, a firm that studies human behavior, who will talk about how inclusion, leadership and the “power of caring” are key drivers of productivity and innovation.

Further rounding out the speaker lineup are Barry C. Melancon, CPA, CGMA, president and CEO of the American Institute of CPAs, will provide a professional issues update, and Erik Asgeirsson, president and CEO of CPA.com, will give a “state of the union” on Digital CPA trends.

The Digital CPA Conference is designed for CPA firm partners, managers and, staffers responsible for rolling out cloud solutions, and business development, firm marketing and human resources directors within firms.

Reporters interested in covering the event can apply for on-site press credentials or arrange for online access to live broadcasts. Members of the media can contact Jeff May, jeffrey.may@aicpa-cima.com, for more details.

For more information about the conference, please visit digitalcpa.com.

About CPA.com

CPA.com is known for bringing innovative solutions to the accounting profession, either in partnership with leading providers or directly through its own development. The company has established itself as a thought leader on emerging technologies and as the trusted business advisor to practitioners in the United States, with a growing global focus.

Our company's core mission is to drive the transformation of practice areas, advance the technology ecosystem for the profession, and lead technology research and innovation efforts for practitioners.

A subsidiary of the American Institute of CPAs, the company is also part of the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants, the world's most influential organization representing the profession. For more information, visit CPA.com.

The American Institute of CPAs and CPA Practice Advisor have recognized 25 leaders in the accounting profession with the 2019 Most Powerful Women in Accounting Award.

These women represent a broad spectrum of roles and perspectives within the profession, including executives from Top 100 CPA firms and Fortune 500 companies, small to midsize firm partners, state society leaders and consultants. In addition, members of CPA Canada were eligible for recognition for the first time.

The awards were created by CPA Practice Advisor and are jointly administered by the AICPA. The recognition came during the AICPA ENGAGE conference in Las Vegas June 12.

“This recognition of women leaders in the accounting profession shines a bright light on the role models and the inspiration needed by women finding their way in the profession and those who are considering accounting as a career,” says editor-in-chief Gail Perry.

A group of independent judges selected the award recipients, using the following criteria:

• Demonstrates she is a driving force in creating a culture of innovation or excellence within her organization or helped, as a vendor, to develop technologies that empower firms to be more productive and profitable
• Reached a level of management and ownership within her company, with demonstrable impact on its success
• Actively mentors those following in her footsteps

“We received substantially more nominations in 2019 than a year ago and it was a strong group of women,” says Jacquelyn H. Tracy, chair of the AICPA Women’s Initiatives Committee (WIEC). “Asking our judges to choose among a fabulous nominee pool is a good problem to have as we start to see more women leaders rising in our profession.”

The 2019 winners are:

• Tommye Barie, senior consulting shareholder, Succession Institute, LLC
• Samantha Bowling, partner with Garbelman Winslow, CPAs
• Danielle Supkis Cheek, director of entrepreneurial advisory services, PKF Texas
• Susan Coffey, executive vice president of public practice, Association of International Certified Professional Accountants
• Lynne Doughtie, U.S. chairman and CEO, KPMG
• Sarah Elliott, principal and co-founder, Intend2Lead, LLC
• Kimberly Ellison-Taylor, global strategy leader for the cloud business group, Oracle
• Cathy Engelbert, retired CEO of Deloitte US and incoming commissioner of WNBA
• Tracey Golden, AICPA vice chair and an audit partner with Deloitte
• Kelly Grier, U.S. chairman and managing partner and Americas managing partner, EY
• Kacee Johnson, strategic advisor, CPA.com, and founder, Blue Ocean Principles
• Elizabeth Pittelkow Kittner, controller, Litera Microsystems
• Samantha Mansfield, director of professional development and community, CPA.com
• Gail Perry, editor-in-chief, CPA Practice Advisor
• Amy Pitter, president and CEO, Massachusetts Society of CPAs
• Natasha Schamberger, president and CEO, Kansas Society of CPAs
• Lindsay Stevenson, founder and CEO, Origin Evolution, LLC
• Joy Thomas, president and CEO, CPA Canada
• Michelle Loyd Thompson, CEO and firm managing partner, Cherry Bekaert LLP
• Jacquelyn Tracy, partner, Mandel & Tracy, LLC
• Amy Vetter, creator, The B3 Method Institute
• Jennifer Warawa, executive vice president of partners, accountants and alliances, Sage
• Sandra Wiley, president, Boomer Consulting, Inc.
• Jennifer Wilson, co-founder and partner, ConvergenceCoaching, LLC
• Candace Wright, director, accounting and assurance services group, Postlethwaite & Netterville

CPA.com is launching a multipart program to help CPA firms identify the potential change coming to the accounting profession and create new business models to adapt and capitalize on new opportunities.

The initiative, “Navigating the Future,” will include a collaboration with innovation expert Pascal Finette and his firm, radical. The program will use a mix of thought leadership, learning sessions and planning exercises to help firms:

• Create business models for future success
• Positively embrace disruption
• Prepare the profession for exponential change
• Shift their mindset to a more empowered digital focus
• Engage in strategy-building sessions to design digital organizations.

“At CPA.com, we’ve said for some time that the hardest part of dealing with disruptive change isn’t the technology piece, it’s change management,” said Erik Asgeirsson, president and CEO of CPA.com. “This program is designed to help firms take a longer, more insightful view on how to drive change.”

The program will kick off with a July 25 webcast, “Thrive in Exponential Times,” featuring Asgeirsson and Finette. Participants can download a kit after the webcast that will allow them to conduct their own planning exercises such as “disruption maps,” in which firms can play out the implications of change on specific business models and identify opportunities and challenges from those shifts.

Finette will participate in several AICPA events, including CPA.com’s signature conference, Digital CPA, which will be held Dec. 9-11 in the Seattle area. Some of the findings of these explorations will be summarized at the conference.

The Navigating the Future program will also include several in-depth thought leadership articles on technology and change management topics. The first will be available this summer.

For more information, please visit cpa.com/research-innovation

With advancements in technology that can handle the once daunting, but billable hour-filling work that CPAs have been traditionally known for, the call for accounting professionals to move towards a more advisory role and add value has been loud.

Moreover, word from vendors of such products and services and even the AICPA and CPA.com (which markets products and services to CPAs) has been that if CPAs are to survive they need to move away from compliance work.

The fact is, for nearly a decade, the death knell for compliance work has been sounded for but after attending this year’s AICPA ENGAGE it was clear that is not necessarily the case…at least, not without some caveats. Once more, technology is playing a role in the message to CPAs and the kind of work they can (and should) be doing, compliance included.

As we all know, compliance work remains the “bread and butter” for so many firms, especially smaller ones. Now that current tax and even audit technology exists to (for lack of a better phrase) make compliance great again, profession leaders are walking back the death of compliance stance.

“Compliance will not completely go away. At the very low end it may to a degree, but certainly not at the high end,” said AICPA Chairman Bill Reeb. “We have so much compliance work to do most of us keep talking about being advisors, but it doesn't happen. We should enjoy the expansion that is there.”

Reeb was mainly referring to current messaging, which is the recognition that CPAs do need to move into a more advisory role, but most compliance work is still very necessary for them to oversee and technology is there to see it done more effectively and efficiently; particularly audit work.

“Immense powers of technology come into the audit of today. We need to be imaging the audit as if we created it today with the technology that exists today,” said AICPA CEO Barry Melancon. “Everthing we do today has to be done with an advisory angle, including audit work."

Reeb followed up Melancon’s point during a co-keynote session, adding "every one of the partners and managers at a firm has to learn how to provide advice, it's no longer an option.” He also noted that it is conceivable that in several years on an audit there will be more technologists involved. 

The call for audit’s evolution was also noted during last year’s Digital CPA event, when Melancon shone a spotlight on the work the AICPA and CPA.com are doing to help it move towards the future.

“We are taking on the challenge of changing what audit is… today our challenge is also to create the capacity to see new opportunities, new services that we don't yet offer. If we do not do that we aren't guaranteed our space,” Melancon had said.

In a related matter, Melancon noted how CPAs’ core service requires a skillset that is beyond the traditional accountant.To that end, this year’s PCPS CPA Firm Top Issues Survey showed that finding qualified staff was the number one concern for every firm size aside from sole practitioners.

Keeping up with complexities, managing privacy and risk were also among the top CPA concerns. The charts below indicate the top CPA concerns based on firm staff size.