CPA Trendlines

What’s the single most important factor affecting career paths in the profession today?
• CPAs are more than just accountants – they’re finance people and business and individuals planners. Image is the most important factor affecting the profession. If we are respected and held important to business & individual financial success more young folks will join us and more folks will use us. If, however, CPAs are not viewed as essential to the business & individual community the profession will shrink. Personally, I believe the public sees the value of the CPA but the profession must keep pushing its importance to the public.
• Fast changing technical and compliance requirements.
• Keep your options open. I’m not promoting job hopping, but the simple truth is the best way to move up is often to move on. Hold a high standard for going to another employer, but don’t shy away from a better carreer opportunity.
• Client Service.
• Balance between work and life
• Compexity of issues are such that financial statements no longer make sense to the uninformed. The approach shold be to make it understandable so even a grandmother can understand it. We’ve lost our way.
• Willingness to put in the hard work to gain experience and talent to work with clients.
• ethics
• Time constraints, knowledge and interests.
• Ability to understand people.
• Good people skills
• Niches. Today the expected technical knowledge level and the standard CPAs are held to requires most of us to pick one or a few areas to specialize in and just sort of keep a working knowledge of other areas.
• Being in the right place at the right time to get a start
• Salaries
• Low morale due to lesser pay in comparison to the amount of skills needed to succeed in this profession.
• Compatibility with life style and family issues.
• Relationships
• compensation
• Employer choices.
• Overwork and stress
• Toeing the line and billing long hours
• I don’t know
• appropriate skills
• Finding the right niche.
• Desire to constantly learning and upgrading skills.
• Working experience with strong oversight support in the firm.
• Personal preferences of the individuals. (For example: Are you willing to work long hours or do you want a good work/life balance? What are you individual interests/strengths?)
• This is as true as it was 35 years ago–the willingness to devote a lot of time and effort to the job.
• In the traditional CPA firm, opportunities for advancement are limited. The market place affects career paths.
• Having a plan that is reasonable and flexible.
• Regulatory changes in the wake of accounting scandals
• work / life balance
• one’s ability to communicate
• New laws that are affecting our profession. I feel that these new laws do not take into consideration the small practitoners who handle closely-held companies. These companies needs are not being addressed properly. The demands of the lawmakers and our own professional organizations leave our clientele asking why do I need that? Makes our fees seem unreasonable.
• A given CPA’s ability to tolerate stress will dictate their path.
• Work/life balances
• Connections. Develop good, professional relationships and keep your integrity intact.
• Knowing when to move
• drive
• Building and maintaining connections
• Staying abreast of changes and developing good work habits.
• salaries
• Work / life balance
• Staying technically current. And, know what choices there are.
• I don’t know. I will be interested to see the results of this question.
• Retaining good staff and keeping them from jumping to the corporate world.
• Ability to influence and lead others.
• A good balance between work and life
• Networking
• Knowledger of specific technical areas.
• Work/life balance
• Do not know
• work enjoyment
• Staff & career path development
• I believe it is being able to adapt quickly to change.
• There is no single factor but SOX is a major issue.
• Passion
• Work/Life balance
• your attitude.

Posted August 25, 2007