FICPA CEO Shelly Weir says the profession survived its most serious deregulation fight yet. The threat isn’t confined to Florida.
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Gear Up for Growth
With Jean Caragher
For CPA Trendlines
Florida CPAs came closer than many realized to losing the regulatory structure behind the CPA license, as a sweeping deregulation drive threatened the state Board of Accountancy and raised the possibility of a credential weakened to the point that “anybody could put those letters behind their name,” according to Shelly Weir, president and CEO of the Florida Institute of CPAs.
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“The elimination of the CPA license altogether – or having a license so degraded and devalued that anybody could put those letters behind their name – I don’t know what terrifies me more,” Weir tells Jean Caragher in this episode of Gear Up for Growth.
Weir describes Florida’s battle to preserve the Florida Board of Accountancy as one of the most significant threats the profession has faced, warning that similar deregulation efforts are emerging across the country. “Florida may be the most visible example,” Weir says, “but this isn’t just a Florida issue. It’s happening in states across the country.”
Among the discussion’s most important messages were the growing importance of the CPA credential in the AI era, the need for firms to transform into strategic advisors, and the critical role state CPA societies play in protecting the profession.
Protecting the CPA License Protects Public Trust
Weir emphasizes that preserving the CPA license is about much more than maintaining professional credentials. “If there is no FICPA, we could very well be in a position right now where there would be no CPA license in Florida,” she says. “None of the resources in the world will matter without that.”
She warns that weakening licensure threatens interstate practice, public confidence and the integrity of the profession.
AI Makes CPA Judgment More Valuable, Not Less
Rather than replacing accountants, artificial intelligence will elevate the value of professional expertise. Using a football analogy, Weir says: “AI is going to help us get from the one-yard line all the way down to the 10-yard line. The real fun begins when we’re on the 10-yard line trying to score the touchdown. That’s where the license comes in.”
She notes that as AI handles more routine work, clients will increasingly rely on CPAs for interpretation, strategy and trusted judgment.
State Societies Are the Profession’s First Line of Defense
Weir says many CPAs underestimate the advocacy role played by their state societies. “I don’t look at any of the alliance groups or AICPA or anyone as a competitor,” she says. “To me, this is a team sport.”
She adds that state societies perform one function no other organization can. “We are the only ones protecting and promoting the CPA license in the state capital.”
Transcript
Jean: Hello. Thank you for joining “Gear Up for Growth”, powered by CPA Trendlines. I’m Jean Caragher, president of Capstone Marketing, and your host. Today’s guest is Shelly Weir, president and CEO of the Florida Institute of CPAs. Since joining the Florida Institute in 2021, Shelly has held several leadership roles within the profession, including the AICPA’s National Pipeline Advisory Group and its Experience, Learn and Earn Task Force. She has been named one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting by “Accounting Today” and one of “Florida Trend’s” 2025 Florida 500. Shelly, welcome to Gear Up for Growth.
Shelly: Thank you so much for having me, Jean. I appreciate it. I’m looking forward to today.
Jean: Yes, me too. So, let’s start with a bit about you. So, prior to joining the Florida Institute, your background was in association management. How did you make the transition from hospitality to accounting?
Shelly: I get asked that question all the time. It’s so fun. So, I’m a lifelong association executive. I started like so many students in college do, looking for an internship that was required and supporting for my major at the time. And I had been working in the hospitality sector, again, like so many college students do. And at the time, the Florida Restaurant Association was on the list of approved internship programs for my major. And I thought, “Well, I work in restaurants and bars. That sounds interesting. I’ll go do that.” And, Jean, I had no idea what an association did or was, what the purpose was, anything. I was kind of your typical aloof trying to get into the working world college student.
And so, I started as an unpaid intern, which would never happen now. And I worked unpaid for like eight months, I think it was, for the FRA at the time and got hired out of college. And spent 10 years there climbing the ranks, truly going from the entry level up to a director position. Then got recruited up at the federal level to work for the American Hotel and Lodging Association. And I got to work directly for the CEOs of Marriott and Hyatt and Hilton and IHG and Wyndham, which was a phenomenal experience.
And most of my time at AHLA, which leads to your question, I was the senior vice president of career development. So, I was over all things, education, pipeline, workforce development, credentialing, etc., for the hotel industry. And so, in 2020, a headhunter called me about the FICPA position. And my first reaction, of course, was, “Well, gosh, what would the CPAs want with me? I’m hospitality. I’ve been in this sector my whole life.”
And what I very quickly realized in that process was two things. First was that they wanted a seasoned association executive, which we can get into in just a moment how much similarities there are regardless of profession. But two, my background specifically in pipeline and workforce development was really intriguing to them given the acute accounting talent shortage that the profession was going through and still going through at the time.
And so, I went through a whole bunch of interviews over several months, as you can imagine, and ultimately, landed here. And truly, the Florida CPAs and the broader CPA community have welcomed me with open arms. And it has just been my privilege and just such a joy to be in this role. I didn’t know any CPAs except for my own guy that did my tax return at the time before I took this role. So now, I have a whole family of CPA friends.
Jean: There you go. You know, because I’ve had several other state society executives as guests on “Gear Up for Growth”, and all of them talk about the collaboration that is going on among the leaders of the different states. Can you speak to that for a minute?
Shelly: Absolutely. Well, first of all, this position can be really lonely at times, as really any CEO or managing partner can attest to. You’ve got to make really hard decisions and you’ve got to see the field clearly. And you can’t vent down to your staff. You’ve got to work with your executive team and work with your members, but ultimately, you’ve got to make the decisions that you feel are right for your organization, and ultimately, for the profession in the state.
And so, our partnership and friendship and collaboration with the other state society CEOs is just a treasure to me because we talk all the time. We’re all doing the same thing, granted, albeit a little bit differently based on what’s going on in our states, but there’s an opportunity for us to learn from each other and collaborate together. And at the end of the day, our profession is multi-state, multi-national. And so, I would hope that all of the CPAs listening to the podcast today would appreciate and understand, the more collaborative we are with our peers and other states, the better the profession is positioned for success. So, they are my dear friends and I don’t go a day without talking to, gosh, at least four or five of them, at least via text. So, we have a very, very tight relationship. And you saw that play out a bit with the introduction of the new pathways to licensure, which I’m sure we’ll touch on.
Jean: Yes. Yes, oh, for sure, yes. So, let’s get into one of the bigger stories with the Florida Institute, the proposal that would have eliminated the Florida Board of Accountancy. So, as part of a broader deregulation effort, why is it so important to preserve the Florida Board of Accountancy? And what does this debate tell us about the future of professional self-governance?
Shelly: Yeah. So, a couple of things. And I’ve intentionally been limiting interviews on this subject until we kind of got through the worst of it, if you will, in this round in Florida. So, I’m excited to talk about it now, because we can do so being able to know that we have survived and kind of breathe a little easier, if you will. A couple of things. First of all, the deregulation topic is not significant, or excuse me, not specific just to Florida. This is happening all over the country and many, many states across many, many different professions. Florida is the most extreme example of what the CPA profession has seen. And we’ll talk specifics about that in a moment. But this is not unique to Florida. It’s very much a bipartisan issue.
So, on the Republican side of the aisle, what the Republicans are seeking, Jean, is this ideology called free market enterprise. What it really boils down to is this desire to have less red tape, less government bureaucracy, less government in your back pocket, less barriers for people and businesses to be able to get to work and to move, in our case, to Florida. For the Democrats, it’s more of an access and equity issue. So, they view certain components of licensure as a potential barrier from an access perspective and perhaps creating inequitable environments. And what I hope you’re hearing and the audience is hearing from that is that the common thread is workforce. What both parties want is to be able to bolster the workforce and their collective states.
So, if we flash forward to what happened in Florida over the past 18 months or so, and I’ve said this before, we knew that this was coming and that this effort was building. There had been a number of signals legislatively that it was forming. They’re kind of like chess pieces on the chess board. And as lobbyists, as the state society, that’s our primary purpose, is to protect and promote the license in our particular states. It’s our job to see the field clearly and make sure that we are best positioning the profession for the future.
So, obviously, Florida, very deep red right now. Many have called it the most powerful Republican state in the country. And whether you are stark on the Republican side or the other way, whichever way you slice it, again, bipartisan issue. So, for us, the rhetoric was really around licensure boards are the boogeyman. They are the bad guy. They are prohibiting people from getting to work. They’re putting up too much red tape, too much bureaucracy, and they are a problem. And so, we need to get rid of them.
Now, I say all of that, and I ask people all the time when I talk about this topic, you have to, Jean, take off your CPA hat for a moment when you think about it. Because undoubtedly, it’s going to elicit emotion and feeling as it should. I still get emotional talking about it and I’ve been dealing with it for years. But if you take off your CPA hat for a moment, and you think about… You know, one of the best examples that I can give is until recently, I believe it was the state of Louisiana, you had to have a license to become a florist. And in order to get the florist license, you had to have something like 200 hours of education.
So, if you’re someone that is moving from, let’s say, Mississippi to Louisiana and you want to open a flower stand on the side of the road to be able to provide for your family, both the Republicans and the Democrats are going to take issue with unnecessary barriers. And that is really where all of this had stemmed from. Problem is now, it has accelerated from what we would kind of call the trade professions now to include CPAs, architects, engineers. Even the medical professions and the attorneys are dealing with different variations of this. So, long winded answer. I’ll take a pause there and see how that lands. And I’m happy to sort of speak about what could have happened if the bill had passed. But that’s really what the background is.
Jean: Right. I mean, the example you gave about the florist, like, you could say the same thing about nail technicians and other types of work. But when it comes to something as important as accounting to business and fraud and finances, and now, we’re adding in AI. And I’m hearing practitioners getting draft tax returns that AI help them do, and this is where you made a mistake. I think it’s ridiculous that there’s this question about deregulating a profession like accounting and law and medical for Pete’s sake. So, to give us… So, so far, this has been successful. You know, there’s been a lot of work, as you said, has been brought in in this past 18 months. And so, it’s not a finished issue, but for now, we’re on the winning side.
Shelly: For now.
Jean: What would be the worst case scenario?
Shelly: Well, the worst case scenario is the elimination of the license altogether. And I’ll be honest with you, Jean, some days I feel that’s the worst case scenario, and other days I go, “Would elimination be worse or be better than still having a license?” But it’s so degraded and devalued that it has no meaning whatsoever and anybody could put those letters behind their name. I don’t know what terrifies me more. And any given day I change my mind on which direction that goes.
But as I’ve said when I’ve talked about this issue, we had a lot of concerns about the particular proposals in Florida. What we don’t have concerns about is that we absolutely believe in efficiency and we believe in streamlining and we believe in being thoughtful and productive partners with the legislators. Because if there are areas that we as a license can improve upon from a process perspective, where we can uphold the integrity of our license while protecting the public, then we would absolutely do that. I don’t know of any CPA in the state that would say, “I’m against efficiencies,” right? We are paid a lot of money to help make businesses more efficient and help make governments more efficient as CPAs. And so, that’s our bread and butter. I mean, that’s our jam, right? We love that.
And so, I think philosophically, there was a lot of common ground that we found with the legislators in Florida. This particular application, we obviously had tremendous concerns about. But in the immediate term, had the board been eliminated or CPE been eliminated, we had significant concerns about the impact to commerce for CPAs. So, Florida’s CPAs ability to continue to be able to serve clients in other state, and for those clients to have the freedom of choice of picking what CPA they wanted to work with regardless of where they were based geographically under our practice privilege mobility infrastructure, that was at serious risk. We were getting phone calls from a lot of other state boards of accountancy going, “I don’t think so. If this happens here, we’re going to have a problem.” But in the long term, the elimination or the complete degrading of the license were obviously our mass concerns for us.
Jean: Right. So, we know that licensure is really important. What would you say to students or other accountants who may be questioning whether becoming a CPA is still worth the investment or, like, given what’s going on, is that something they should still pursue?
Shelly: Well, first of all, on the deregulation side of the aisle, I would say the same thing that I think a parent would say to their child, “Let that be my burden and not yours. Don’t change the trajectory of your goals and your dreams over a particular legislative threat.” Because then what you’re doing is you’re putting the power in the hands of those that govern you versus keeping it for yourself. So, I told Florida aspiring CPA time and time again, Jean, “Let this be my burden. I got you. Let me handle this. Let me do what we do best as the FICPA. You just focus on passing that exam, getting the necessary education and work experience, and being on your way.” That’s the best thing that they can do to support Florida’s economy, right?
Jean: I know. Right.
Shelly: Just like a mom would say to a child, “You keep going. I got this.”
Jean: That’s right.
Shelly: But I think holistically our license stands for trust. You know, I hear Mark Koziel, my dear friend and leader of AICPA say that every day. And the more that AI accelerates, I think that value of that trust will become even more apparent. Because at the end of the day, you’ve got to have a human that’s interpreting what the particular tool or automation has done and making the right strategic choices. And one of our educators here in Florida, Jean, used this analogy with me, and I’ve stolen it ever since because I love it so much. In football terms, he’s like, “AI is going to help us get from the 1 yard line all the way down to the 10 yard line, ready to score a touchdown.” All of that work is going to be done for us. And the real fun begins when we’re on the 10 yard line in the red zone trying to actually score the touchdown, the strategy and the execution and the expertise that it takes to actually put points on the board. That’s where the license comes in. And AI will help us kind of get everything else out of the way.
Jean: Right. Okay, so I’m going to bounce out around a little bit now based upon that answer, right? So, we’re looking at the 10 yard line to make the score. How can CPAs move from being seen as those compliance experts as opposed to those strategic business advisors? Because that’s basically what we’re talking about here.
Shelly: Absolutely. Well, I think some of that starts coming with business model transformation, especially on the public accounting side. You’re seeing a lot of conversation right now around movement away from the hourly billing model to more of a value billing. I think that is a granular example of something that changes the optical illusion of what someone’s hiring a CPA to do. Because you’re no longer hiring them to do, to your point, more of the administrative tasks. You’re hiring them for their particular expertise. And so, I think the business model transformation that our public accounting firms are going through right now is really, really important.
But I also think it’s incumbent upon us as a profession, as a whole, to tell the right story, to tell the story about how we are saving small businesses and how we are significantly impacting the economies of our state. And if we can get that message out there. Small businesses are leaning on us, not for the debits and credits, but for the strategy that we can provide. And I think the more that our profession accepts that that is the direction that we’re all going in the era of AI, and we start to adapt and make the appropriate pivots, whether it’s business model or service offerings or what have you, the faster we can help tell that story.
Jean: Right. So, let me step back again to the license issue just for a minute. So, the other thing we’ve seen is that PE-backed firms are frequently restricting employees from displaying their CPA credentials. What are your thoughts about that?
Shelly: Well, first, I would say, I think this isn’t a PE issue. I think this has been happening long before the recent infusion of private equity. I think a lot of it is being grounded in compliance concerns. Because if there are certain states or certain applications of things where working across state lines and using that title behind your name might be a little bit more nuanced than how it is in other states, they’re being extra cautious in that regard. So, solving for that, you know, that really has to come from the state boards and the AICPA and NASBA where there are any friction points for that.
Which always, Jean, leads me to the point of, we as a profession have to modernize in this new era and innovate because of marketplace demands. But we have to find a way to balance that with the appropriate regulatory infrastructure. We have to uphold the infrastructure for the value of our license, but we also have to self-reflect and go, “Okay, where can we be better in this modern day era?” So, specific to the use of title issue, I know that there’s some great work happening right now to try to see where we as a profession holistically can help be better on that.
But I personally would not, I wouldn’t categorize it as a PE issue. I know that’s something that a lot of people make an assumption on. For me in Florida, I can tell you that the firms that have been acquired by PE, received PE infusion, they have been highly, highly supportive of the FICPA and our legislative efforts here and really making sure that they are giving us what we need in order to be successful, to protect the license here. And so, from my perspective, I think they have deep respect and deep value for those three letters behind the names. And we’ve seen it firsthand here in Florida of how supportive they’ve been of us as we’ve been going through what we’ve been going through these last few years. But frankly, the non-PE firms have been just as, if not even more, supportive. So, it’s really not been divided.
Jean: Right. Yeah, it’s not easy getting that CPA designation, right?
Shelly: No, it’s not, no.
Jean: Right. It’s a lot of work. Yeah.
Shelly: Absolutely.
Jean: You know, I know a lot of really, really smart people who are accountants. So, let’s touch a bit on that. You know, CPAs are really smart. Earning that designation is not easy. And I believe in Florida, you’ve introduced legislation around the-150 hour rule that has not been passed, yet. Can you tell us where that is?
Shelly: Thank you for asking that question. So, first of all, I’m going to tell you that all of this has been tied up with the larger deregulation fight that we’ve been navigating. And so, the example that I always like to give, I’ve now said it 100 times, but it seems to work, Jean, so bear with me. Have you seen “Top Gun”, Maverick, the new “Top Gun” movie?
Jean: No, I have not.
Shelly: So, there’s a scene in “Top Gun”, Maverick that is supposed to be like the new era iteration of what was the volleyball scene in the initial movie. Okay, so all the ladies, this is the scene for them, right? Well, I share this because, in the new “Top Gun” movie, they’re playing something called dogfight football. And in dogfight football, you’re playing offense and defense at the same time. So, at the same time that you’re trying to throw a touchdown, throw the football, score a touchdown, you’re trying to prevent the other team from scoring a touchdown, like, literally at the same time.
And when I saw that scene in the movie, I was like, “That is the definition of what we have been doing in Florida the last 18 months.” Because at the same time that we were trying to block and tackle the most significant piece of deregulation language and bill that we had ever seen in the profession, we were trying to get the pathways built past. And so, it actually, they were really symbiotically working together. I’ll say this at the onset, the policy and our pathways bill and the other efficiencies that we proposed were hugely supported across the entire Florida legislature. In fact, I can’t think of a single lawmaker that went, “I don’t like that.” That was never the issue. And so, we actually used that piece of legislation as a tactic for how we defended the license from deregulation.
Because what we did that no other profession had done, at least to my knowledge, is months before that direct bill even dropped, we sat down in conjunction with our regulatory board and self-identified a bunch of different places that we could be more efficient. And Pathways specifically really spoke the language of the legislators that were pushing the deregulation, because they wanted to have a higher emphasis on work experience over education. And so, it matched in really nicely.
When push came to shove in both sessions, there were moments where we had to make a choice. And so, I would say to you that passing legislation is not the same thing as creating certainty in the market. And there was a moment, as CEO here in Florida in both sessions, where we had to decide, are we going to make sure that we uphold our Board of Accountancy, and therefore, create certainty in the market because of the roles that CPA play, empowering the economy and the capital markets? Or are we going to prioritize our Pathways legislation? And at the end of the day, Pathways have no value if there is no license. And so, the choice was always easy. If we had to make it, it was a choice that I obviously didn’t want to make either time, but it was a very deliberate choice so that we could make sure we created certainty in the market.
But I will tell you, every lawmaker loved our bill. That was not the issue. We never had an issue with the lawmakers not wanting to get our bill passed. This is the complexity of how the legislative process works. So, we will try again next year. We might well be last by that point because our session does not begin until March of next year. And by the time our session starts, the other five or six states that are left either will have already passed or their session started earlier. So, we might well be last. We’ll see.
Jean: That’s okay. I think the objective is here to use the analogy before us to get that over the go line, right, to get it benched.
Shelly: That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right.
Jean: So, it really doesn’t matter who’s first or who’s last, right?
Shelly: That’s exactly right.
Jean: Okay, so let me let me switch the conversation a little bit here. So, for public firms, especially the smaller ones, they’re dealing a lot now with technology and talent and client expectations. How does the FICPA help members stay competitive and/or independent with all of this that’s going on?
Shelly: Well, listen, I think you know this better than anyone, Jean, that the pace of change that’s happening in our profession right now, I think, is the biggest challenge that we are grappling with. I was just talking to my dear friend Calvin from the New York State Society this morning. And I said to Calvin, I said, “My favorite quote right now is, ‘The pace of change has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again, because that’s the world that we’re living in.'” So, the challenge for any state society or any public accounting firm, big or small is, how do we preserve the integrity of the license while navigating the pace of change? But we have to do it in a way that doesn’t create unnecessary barriers because of what we’re dealing with on the deregulation side. So, that’s where societies can be one of many resources.
So, for us specifically, I’ll use an example, we launched a small firm suite about six months ago that is a curated kind of open the box, if you will, set of tools and resources that small firms can pick up and implement, install, and hopefully, help them be a more efficient operation. And it was designed and developed with several of our small firm members so that we got their input. And we even have a podcast that one of our members, Dan Henn, is hosting as part of that from a resource perspective. So, societies can be a huge help in not only providing resources, tools, expertise, but also helping to navigate complex laws and changes at a time when it’s changing very fast.
Jean: Right. Yeah. Yeah, and I think that’s so important for the state societies because, maybe I shouldn’t say competing, but, you know, there are other networks and associations and the AICPA where they can get all these resources. So, it’s really important for the state societies to be providing that value as well.
Shelly: No doubt. And I personally never been one. I don’t look at any of the alliance groups or AICPA or anyone as a competitor. To me, this is a team sport. And in order to advance the profession, we all have to work together. What I would say, Jean, the one thing that the state societies do that nobody else does, including the firms themselves, is we are the only ones protecting and promoting the CPA license in the state capital. So, if you think about what’s happened in Florida over the past 18 months, if there was no FICPA, we could very well be in a position right now where there would be no CPA license in Florida, for which case, none of the resources in the world will matter without that, right?
Jean: Right. Exactly. It’s mind boggling to even think about that. It really is.
Shelly: It is. It is. We came very close to that moment. We could never get the proper assurance from the legislators that that was going to be the last step, and that the next step wasn’t going to be the complete elimination. Or like I said, the license is so degraded, it has no value. I don’t know which one’s worse.
Jean: Right. Yeah, let’s really go for that license that means nothing. Okay, so I’ve got two more questions for you.
Shelly: Yeah, absolutely.
Jean: If every managing partner in Florida firms were listening today, what’s the one message you want them to hear?
Shelly: I want them to hear that I got their back. It’s been a really tumultuous time here in Florida. But as I said, let this be my burden, don’t let it be their burden. I got them. I’ll take care of them. I will give it everything I’ve got. Jean, you’re talking about weeks and months of very little sleep, many, many weeks away from my family, many, many post-midnight nights. And I would do it all over again in a heartbeat to protect the members that I care so deeply about. So, I got your back. Don’t worry. And when the time comes and we need you to do something, I will let you know, and we’ll work together to do it.
Jean: Right. Yeah, you’re amazing. Okay, last question is a bonus question.
Shelly: Okay.
Jean: Okay, so if you had friends visiting Florida for the first time, where is the top spot you would take them?
Shelly: Oh, I love this question, Jean. So, my favorite spot in the state is Siesta Key. It is one of the small beach towns in the Sarasota area. It’s just my jam. First of all, it was rated the number one beach in the country, something like 10 times. It’s beautiful in terms of the white sand and the turquoise water, but it’s a very community feel there. All of the restaurants and shops and everything is walking distance to both the village and the beach. And Sarasota is just broadly one of my favorite places in the state. So, I would take people there. It’s very Florida. The people are lovely and nice and welcoming. And nothing is more beautiful than Siesta Beach.
Jean: Oh, isn’t that thought, like, just the perfect place for us to end this episode? Because now, we all want to go to Siesta Key.
Shelly: I know. It’s perfect timing here in the heat of July, you know, to go to that.
Jean: Oh, my God. You might want to wait a few months. But just put it on your list.
Shelly: Come visit later when it’s not quite as hot. But, no, I love bragging about Florida and all the great things that we have to offer here.
Jean: Absolutely.
Shelly: Even if it’s been a little scary on the CPA side the last…I wouldn’t live anywhere else. I love it dearly and it’s my home.
Jean: Awesome. That’s great. Well, folks, I’ve been speaking with Shelly Weir, president and CEO of the Florida Institute of CPAs. Thank you, Shelly, for sharing your thoughts with us today and for all of your efforts on behalf of the CPA license.
Shelly: Thank you so much, Jean. I hope this is the first of many chats that we will have, so thank you again.
Jean: I hope so as well. And thanks, you folks, for tuning in to “Gear Up for Growth”. Be sure to check us out next time when we focus on another topic crucial for accounting firms aiming for smart growth in today’s competitive landscape. I’ll see you then.