Tom Hood on: The Staffing Crisis
The three reasons for the CPA shortage and how to fix it.
by Tom Hood, CPA.CITP
Executive Director & CEO
Maryland Association of CPAs, Inc.
I have been thinking about this a lot and we at the MACPA are working hard to fix this.
I think the shortage has three root causes:
1) We are now a Profession where our senior members (Partners and CFOs) cannot tell people how to get in the Profession. That is to say that they do not know the details of educational requirements, the new computerized exam, and the post-exam requirements to get licensed. This is a function of us (AICPA & State CPA Societies & CPA firms) not handling the change management as we went to 150 hours and to computerized exam;
2) The CPA Profession (CPA Firms and Corporations) has not re-created a culture that celebrates, encourages, and rewards the completion of the CPA Exam (remember the old days when every May and November there were rituals about the CPA exam?); and
3) The new generation of students/candidates needs a lot more structure to manage themselves and the flexibility actually works against this.
See my five Steps blog post for what we are doing about it, with the most visible being our new ritual of a formal Swearing-in Ceremony that we just had last Tuesday evening as part of our MDBIZEXPO and included the support of the Top 19 CPA Firms in Maryland to host a big reception for these newly licensed CPAs.
Check out the video – it still gives me goose bumps.
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