SURVEY RESULTS: What’s hot in CPE?

We’ve been asking here. And your answers kind of look like this:

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Tax and IFRS appear to be at the top of most accountants’ CPE schedules this year.

The survey, “What’s on Your CPE Agenda?  How CPAs Are Re-Tooling for Busy Season,” remains open. Join the survey here; get the answers. Or add a comment below.

Meanwhile, here are the verbatims that formed the pictograph above…

QUESTION: Which topics or subjects are you most eager to dig into?

SELECTED ANSWERS (Verbatim)

  1. Fair value accounting (the FASB and SEC continue to make changes and there are ares with shades of grey), IFRS (this will be the next major change in how America does accounting), leadership and soft-skills (everyone needs help to boost their career outside of technical accounting).
  2. Updates–things are constantly changing
  3. Estate and Gift Tax and planning for wealth transfer interest me because I feel that more Americans will need this kind of expertise as our population grows and ages. Also, negotiating with the IRS has become a constant need for many clients, and I will search for seminars to help me do this more effectively and efficiently. Finally, LLC, S-Corp and Partnership Tax continue to provide areas to improve our expertise as advisors.
  4. year-end planning due to so many new rules & regs
  5. LLCs vs partnerships/Scorps and information reporting requirements due to changes in the law.
  6. Assurance Matters. Convergence with IFRS has driven many changes. Also, want to stay current with differences between IFRS and US GAAP.
  7. Construction – firm niche focus. Tax – relevance to clients
  8. International standards for obvious reasons. Business skills related to serving and retaining clients.
  9. Tax – because with economic change there are resulting changes in tax law which impact the business and personal tax issues.
  10. Staffing, growth and marketing
  11. TAX COMPILATION AND REVIEW
  12. Codification and convergence; impact on financial statements and the understanding to the end user.
  13. Internal Controls, Fraud, Ethics
  14. Taxation of offshore earnings and entities – my clients are changing
  15. tax– continuous change
  16. Taxation as it always seems that I am short on hours in this area
  17. Pension, Investments, Asset Management
  18. FIN 48 both for the accounting and tax sides, tax planning, updates on new pronouncements
  19. IFRS, FASB ASC, fair value
  20. Fine tuning paperless processing. Reduce time
  21. Audit Risk and IFRS. Audit risk because examples rather than the reasons for the risk assessment standards. IFRS because it is coming and I need to get ready.
  22. LLC formation, taxation
  23. technology for accountants
  24. FASB project
  25. Fair value related valuation issues
  26. FAS 157; HIPAA impacts on employee benefit plans
  27. Fraud risks, fraud investigation, forensic accounting, interviewing/interrogation. This is my area of specialization.
  28. Fraud issues, leadership, and internal controls. These are interesting and will give me insight on how to serve my clients better.
  29. IFRS, Codification
  30. International Accounting Standards
  31. Audits of 401(K) plans. Good growth potential, and not calendar-year sensitive.
  32. I prefer topics that show me how to comply most efficiently with increasingly complex tax laws, accounting rules and auditing requirements.
  33. 1. tax, both individual, partner and corporate. 2. litigation support services
  34. Practice management and Marketing
  35. Financial planning. New tax developments.
  36. finding new models to improve business valuation analysis
  37. Trends in CPE and what participants want to get out of their CPE
  38. IFRS to understand what is happening to financials on a going forward basis.
  39. Taxation changes resulting from political changes precipitated by Health Care & other recent changes.
    Insurance (health & other) changes which may result in improvements over the now tenuous supposed coverage on the market.
  40. Next Generation Accounting Firms, Electronic Marketing and Communications,
    Annual Tax Updates, QuickBooks for Mature Corporate Clients ($5M to $25M Revenues).
  41. Taxation of Passthrough Entities, Multi-state taxation
  42. Accounting & auditing related updates/developments, especially those relating to government. Operational auditing. Continuous auditing/monitoring. Require for job as government auditor.
  43. IFRS – because I think the US will be converted to IFRS for both public and non-public entities by 2015.
  44. business valuation, M&A, startegic planning
  45. audit
  46. Leadership and development skills. I need to develop leadership skills at this point in my career.
  47. Tax Update
  48. IFRS
  49. auditing and accounting, because is my work field
  50. any idea that will bring value to both the client and my billing rate
  51. IFRS, new FASB, controllership issues
  52. Corporate Governance – because I am a member of several boards.
  53. Partnerships, LLCs, international tax, and personal financial planning. The first two out of necessity; we are seeing more activity and complexity. The third due to more activity and what I see as an opportunity to get ahead of the curve, obtain a basic level of knowledge, and then develop a network of experts to rely on. Finally, the fourth is something I am interested in, and I believe it provides opportunity and the personal satisfaction of really helping people.
  54. Taxes, taxes and more taxes. That’s the name of the game for me. I venture into some financial planning topics and some comp and review.
  55. I only work wth government awards and most of my knowledge comes from The Single Audit Service. AICPA CPE after 41 years in the profession is just another way for the AICPA to fleece its members. The annual Governmental Conference is useful but doesn’t provide enough hours so your CPE is just wasting hours we should be reading federal regulations and guidelines.
  56. IFRS – need to understand what changes are coming, Standards Update – there are a lot of new standards being issued and need to be current on all of the changes
  57. Tax law changes
  58. retirement planning
    estate taxes
    ira conversions
    IFRS
  59. Assisting technical partners recognizing that they have to become practice managers rather than production partners. Moving the focus from technical production of product to relationship management.
  60. IFRS, because it’s on the way.
  61. IT related because of my increased responsibility in that area
  62. Forensic CPA topics; I am one
  63. IFRS. Information Security/Cybersecurity. These are what I consider the areas I need to know more about to be successful.
  64. Fraud Examination. IFRS
  65. financial planning & tax, because that is what I do.
  66. Fair value; XBRL; ethics;
  67. Roth IRA conversion/rollovers
  68. Management – client consulting
  69. tech, tax & financial planning
  70. taxes; auditing; SAS’s
  71. Marketing and business development, client retention strategies. We’re facing more competition and clients are fee shopping.
  72. State and Local Taxes – we are a specialty firm that ONLY works on state and local tax issues.
  73. Practice management, small business accounting, auditing and taxes. Professional standards and tax compliance. Those are the things that drive a small practice.
  74. consulting, turn around, financial reporting
  75. Programs focused on efficiency and productivity.
    Quality service will be the result.
  76. Accounting for Payroll & Benefits. Accounting for Investments in mortgage backed securities. Because that’s what I do.
  77. Tax: All the changes
  78. I would like to study accounting and financial reporting developments, leadership development, industry trends and other material that will help me perform my job as CFO of an insurances company
  79. 2009 and 2010 Tax Update. Quick Books
  80. Income Tax. 65% of my business.

Join the survey here; get the answers.

Or add a comment below.

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Posted at November 10, 2009
Filed Under BSG [CPA TRENDLINES] | 4 Comments

Comments

4 Responses to “SURVEY RESULTS: What’s hot in CPE?”

  1. Norm Huffaker on November 11th, 2009 11:56 am

    I would like to stay abreast of numbers 5, 20 and 57 or LLCs vs partnerships, fine tuning paperless processing, and tax law changes.

  2. Robin on November 17th, 2009 2:02 am

    Looking forward, I would suggest that, while currently not on the list, Accounting and Health Care will be a future trend from a planning and reporting perspective. Electronic health records will move this along.

  3. Raissa Evans on December 1st, 2009 6:03 pm

    Rick – What a great way to represent the results in a word cloud. Very effective. Thanks for sharing what others are doing in the CPE arena.

  4. rtelberg on December 4th, 2009 12:15 am

    Thanks. We’re always trying new things. Sometimes they work.

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