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ADVISORY & CONSULTING

Rethinking Audits: Shift to Advisory

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Move from quality control to quality assurance.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

For decades, A&A has stood for audit and accounting. It’s been focused on compliance. But sooner than we may want to believe, business owners and stakeholders will be using technology to provide the assurance they need.

This is already happening. To remain viable, we need to move A&A from audit and accounting to assurance and advisory.

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Now all auditors take the quality control standards of our profession seriously. But quality control that only happens at the end is more about satisfying the minimum requirements for compliance. It won’t let you move out of providing the commodity service that clients need to keep their stakeholders happy. Quality at the end doesn’t provide an opportunity to really look under the hood and think about what the client really wants.
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AUDIT & ASSURANCE

How Empowerment Boosts Your Firm and Team

smiling woman standing at end of table, speaking with three seated colleagues

Bonus: Turn your clients into loyal fans.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

“If you’re afraid to fail, then you’re probably going to fail.” – Kobe Bryant

I do a lot of work with firms to help them improve their project management, where everything is color-coded as red, green or yellow, depending on how the project is going. Frequently what I initially see is that everything is green for weeks on end, but still no nearer completion.

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My instinct tells me that those projects that were green four weeks ago really weren’t green then. But out of fear of retribution, the staff were all afraid to tell the partner that something wasn’t going as well as expected. It takes about three to four weeks before people start being sincere about the job status.
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AUDIT & ASSURANCE

Develop an Alternative to the Traditional CPA Career Track

older woman showing young woman something on office computer screen

How about lending new hires out to your best clients?

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

I’m fortunate to have two great former auditors working with me in Accountability Plus – my son Tyler Anderson and Corey Schmidt, who met working together as auditors. But that firm – like most firms – was focused on total hours worked and realization rates, and had no tracks for auditors who didn’t fit in the normal staff to senior to supervisor to manager to partner progression.

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As Corey told me, “Tyler and I were good with workflow management and managing processes, and that’s what our firm should have had us focus on.” Corey demonstrated that when he was assigned the employee benefit plan practice at that firm, and through his leadership, improved fee realization from 60 percent to 100 percent.

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ADVISORY & CONSULTING

What Empowerment Should Look Like … and Shouldn’t

man intently listening to woman in office

Six skills that an auditor needs.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

Empowerment means that teams feel like they have ownership over the outcome, outputs and the process of what they are doing. They need to feel it’s OK to try doing things differently and even to make a mistake – and learn from it. The quality of everyone’s work improves when they have the confidence to present new ideas, and to push back when they think there’s a better way to do something. And empowerment delivers results – especially when it is partnered with owned accountability.

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Unfortunately, most of us have a better idea of what an empowered team and empowering managers do not look like than what they do look like. Let’s look at a few of the ones you may have seen in your time working.
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AUDIT & ASSURANCE

Create a Culture of Empowered Staff

Three people having discussion at table over document and water glasses

Empowerment in audit has become an oxymoron. It doesn’t have to be that way.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

I don’t know if it was luck or by design, but when I started out at McGladrey, I landed on a team that was already doing the kinds of innovative work that I coach teams today to try out. I’ve never been a status quo type of person, so that resonated with me. I was always trying to find a better way to do things.

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In my first six months, we were already working with data, using the primitive data software tools available back then, or, more likely, that we built ourselves. I was in an environment that created the art of what’s possible. We were willing to try new things. I didn’t have mentors or co-workers who would tell me “That’s not the way we do it here,” so I was able to actually do the things I thought about.
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