What Kind of Leader Are You?

Good vs. bad leadership.

By Liz Farr

I am fascinated by leadership. That’s likely because I’ve had way more experience with poor or mediocre leaders than with great leaders. Let me tell you about examples at the extremes.

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In 2002, my accounting career began with a job at H&R Block in rural New Mexico. It was my first job where it was important to be at work on time. All my previous jobs had been as research assistants in biochemistry. My schedule was flexible, and as long as I kept up with the necessary work to move the project forward, my supervisors generally didn’t care when I did the work.

What kind of leader do you want to be?

Do you want to be the kind of leader people want to follow? Who is honored, as Julie Shipp is, “to go shoulder to shoulder with you”? Or the leader who relies on constant and pointless check-ins?

If you’ve never spent time at a retail tax prep office, you may not be familiar with the stampede of people who show up as soon as they get their W2s so they can get their EITC refunds as soon as possible. This office was in a low-income area, so for a few weeks in February, when the doors opened at 9 a.m., we had enough people lined up outside the door to keep us busy until noon or beyond.

Posted on May 9, 2024

Liz Farr

About the Author

Liz Farr, CPA, is a special contributor to CPA Trendlines, bringing an insider's clear-eyed view of the tax and accounting business and a passion for advancing the profession.

She's the host of the hit CPA Trendlines podcast series "The Disruptors," available everywhere: Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music and Audible, Player FM, Audacy, Gaana (India), and Boomplay (Africa).

As founder and proprietor of Farr Communications, she is the secret weapon that her clients use to get their messages out. She has written blog posts, web content, articles, white papers, case studies and books for accountants and accounting tech companies. Her specialty is ghostwriting for coaches and consultants who want to move accountants into the future. She can bridge the gap between the dream these visionaries have for the future and the mindset and reality that today’s accountants are living in.

Five of her past and current clients have been named to Accounting Today’s annual list of 100 most influential in accounting. She has written under her name for the Journal of Accountancy, Intuit’s Firm of the Future blog and AccountingWEB. She has also appeared in Forbes, CFO.com, and Accounting Today.

Farr has a broad educational background, studying biochemistry at the University of Munster, Germany, and obtained her bachelor's degree as a double major in biochemistry and German at the University of New Mexico. She also studied German, Spanish, computer science and linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and continued her studies in linguistics at the University of Washington. She earned her master's degree in accounting in 2004 from the Robert O. Anderson School of Management at the University of New Mexico, qualifying as a licensed CPA in 2005.

Professionally, Liz began as a tax preparer at H&R Block before working at several local CPA firms in the Albuquerque, N.M. area. At her last assignment as a tax manager, she helped a team develop streamlined processes for getting tax returns out faster and more accurately.

After spending 15 years working as an accountant in the Albuquerque, N.M., area, she traded in her ten-key for a pen and has been writing full time since 2018.

She can be contacted at Farr Communications.

When she’s not writing or studying the accounting business, she’s hiking or skiing in the mountains of New Mexico.

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