Practical experience, thoughtful questions, and strong communication help students build careers that reach beyond the classroom.
Sponsored by Radical Pricing by the Radical CPA, Jody Padar | See Today’s Special Offer
Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google/YouTube, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music, Audible, Player FM, Audacy, RSS.
Accounting Conversations
With Chayton Farlee
Center for Accounting Transformation
A perfect GPA can open a door. It cannot explain a client’s financial story, replace practical experience, or demonstrate how someone responds when there is no answer key.
For accounting students eager to distinguish themselves, that difference matters.
On Accounting Conversations, host Chayton Farlee welcomes Hannah Hood and Joey Kinney, co-hosts of The Young CPA Success Show, for a candid discussion about preparing for an accounting career. Drawing on their work in virtual CFO services with Summit Virtual CFO by Anders, the guests challenge students to look beyond familiar recruiting paths and consider what makes an accountant valuable to the people they serve.
MORE Center for Accounting Transformation | MORE CPA Trendlines Streaming Network
Their advice starts with a seemingly modest assignment: Get close to the books.
Students may picture their future in consulting, financial leadership, audit, or tax. Hood and Kinney argue that those ambitions make understanding everyday accounting more essential.
Kinney compares bookkeeping to the scales a pianist practices before performing complex music. The sophisticated work still depends on the fundamentals. Even in virtual CFO engagements, he says, a substantial portion of his work involves returning to basic bookkeeping and checking the foundation beneath the financial analysis.
“If your bookkeeping is not great, your CFOing is not going to be great either,” Kinney says.
Farlee recognizes the disconnect from a student’s perspective. Early assignments can involve auditing a cash balance or completing a small portion of a tax return without fully understanding how the underlying numbers develop. His own internship gave him experience cleaning up messy books, making the relationship between classroom concepts and actual business records much clearer.
Hood encourages students to seek that kind of exposure, whether through internships or other accounting work. Preparing reconciliations, investigating discrepancies, and understanding how transactions flow through financial statements give students something that memorizing a process cannot: context.
Asking why turns an assignment into a learning opportunity.
Completing a checklist is one thing. Understanding why each step matters is another. Hood urges students and early-career professionals to ask supervisors for the reasoning behind their assignments. What is the purpose of the procedure? Where does the number come from? How does the work connect to the client’s business? Some leaders naturally provide that explanation. Others need an invitation.
“Don’t be afraid to ask,” Hood says.
For students worried that questions might expose what they do not know, her advice offers a different perspective: Curiosity helps build the judgment they eventually need. An internship becomes more valuable when students understand the business problem behind the task. That understanding also helps them recognize when a familiar procedure may not fit an unfamiliar situation.
A fulfilling career can follow more than one route.
Hood and Kinney bring markedly different career histories to the conversation. Hood describes an unconventional path that included bookkeeping, controller responsibilities, insurance industry leadership, parenting, and returning to her education. Working on forecasting, budgeting, and reconciliations helped clarify where she wanted to focus her career.
Kinney grew up around accounting, with both parents bringing experience in the profession. College accounting courses helped connect the practical lessons he learns earlier with the mechanics behind them.
Their experiences reinforce a central point for students: There is no single sequence of jobs that guarantees a satisfying accounting career. Hood brought industry experience to her first public accounting firm. Kinney describes feeling like “a square peg in a round hole” in an earlier public accounting environment. His ability to do the work did not automatically make it the right fit.
Farlee presses the importance of showing students opportunities beyond tax, audit, and the largest firms. Virtual CFO services offer one example of how accounting knowledge can support ongoing conversations about business performance and decisions. Hood and Kinney also describe opportunities to work with industries and organizations that match their interests. For Hood, that includes nonprofit and faith-based organizations.
The question becomes broader than which employer looks best on a resume: What work, clients, and environment help someone find meaning in the profession?
Flexibility works best when it fits the person.
For Hood, remote work helps make room for professional ambition alongside family responsibilities. For Kinney, it expands the pool of colleagues and perspectives available to serve clients. But Hood cautions against assuming everyone thrives in the same setting. Some younger professionals want a hybrid arrangement and the connection that comes from spending time in an office. Students evaluating employers need to explore how a workplace supports learning, relationships, and growth within its particular model.
Kinney describes direct training and mentorship within the remote team. Hood discusses coaching conversations that help identify which client assignments employees enjoy and where they struggle. Those details reveal more about a workplace than a promise of flexibility alone. They show how people receive support once they arrive.
Mentorship begins with reaching out.
Students do not need to wait for a formal mentorship program to begin learning from experienced professionals. Kinney recommends starting with professors. Their perspective can help students connect academic work with career possibilities, and their relationships may introduce students to opportunities. He credits a professor with helping him secure his first internship.
Hood encourages students to extend that outreach beyond campus and their local community. If someone’s work or career path resonates, send a thoughtful LinkedIn message. The request does not have to be elaborate. Asking how someone enters a specialty, what they enjoy about their work, or what they recommend learning can begin a useful conversation.
Kinney also advises students to respect timing. A request for an immediate conversation during a tax professional’s busiest period is less likely to receive attention. Building relationships early gives students a chance to learn before they need a referral or job interview. It also helps them discover work they may want to pursue — and work they may prefer to avoid.
Coachability and communication help candidates stand out.
When Farlee asks how students can prepare for a competitive opportunity, Kinney challenges the idea that the strongest candidate always has the highest grades or the most carefully arranged experience. Academic achievement matters, but he places considerable weight on willingness to learn, responsiveness to coaching, and communication. A promising candidate can explain what they know, acknowledge what they need to learn, and show that they can grow with the work. That communication becomes especially important in advisory roles, where technical accuracy is only part of the responsibility.
“You have to be able to translate complex financial information and use it to tell the story of the business,” Kinney says.
The audience may not speak the language of financial accounting. An advisor needs to connect the numbers to what those numbers mean for the person making a decision.
Hood adds that students should represent themselves as whole people. Their interests, experiences, and motivations help explain what they bring to a team.
For students buried in coursework, the conversation offers a reason to keep looking beyond the next exam. The fundamentals they practice today can become the tools they use to help a business owner, support a nonprofit, or guide a difficult decision. Preparing for that future means gaining experience, asking better questions, developing relationships, and learning to make the numbers understandable.