Liz Farr, Author at CPA Trendlines

Tyler Anderson: Audit Transformation Is a Mindset, Not a Destination | The Disruptors

“Audit” and “transformation” shouldn’t contradict each other.

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

The words “audit” and “transformation” don’t often appear together. Some might say they contradict each other. But for Tyler Anderson, Director of A&A Innovation at Accountability Plus, audit transformation is something that has been needed for many years.

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Anderson, along with his colleagues Corey Schmidt and Alan Anderson from Accountability Plus, served as subject matter experts for the 2025 Audit Benchmark Survey conducted by CPA.com, which sought to understand the current state of audit transformation. The CPA.com team included Emily Remington (Director of Audit Product Management), Amy Bridges (Senior Manager of Practice Development), and survey methodologist Katherine Blackburn. The resulting report, The Audit Transformation Report, was released at Digital CPA in December 2025. Liz Farr, host of The Disruptors, served as the report writer.

Audit transformation is often misunderstood as a destination or a future state reserved for large firms with deep pockets and advanced technology. But according to Anderson, transformation is far more practical and accessible. “I see it as the process, not really like it’s an end state or anything, but it’s really the evolution of audit,” he explains. READ MORE →

ADVISORY & CONSULTING

Sarah Flischel: The End of the SALY Audit | The Disruptors

Transformation in audit can help predict clients’ futures.

[This is a preview. Full episodes, including summaries, takeaways and transcripts are available to Pro Members first. | Go Pro here]

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

Audit has a reputation for being slow to change, but leaders like Sarah Flischel, Director of Audit Transformation and Training at AAFCPAs, are making it happen.

“We’re fundamentally reimagining how audits are being conducted,” Flischel says. She’s pushing not merely for change in the profession, but true transformation, drawing on wisdom from Tom Hood to distinguish change and transformation: “Change is doing things differently and transformation is doing different things,” she explains.

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While change improves existing processes, transformation creates something fundamentally new. Traditional audits have been linear: gathering documents, testing samples, filling out checklists, and writing reports. Audit transformation means leveraging technology, using data analytics, and leveraging a risk-based approach to create an entirely new way of understanding clients’ businesses. READ MORE →

PODCAST

Sharrin Fuller: Build It Better, Then Let It Run Without You | The Disruptors

Freedom comes from systems.

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The Disrupters
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

Sharrin Fuller isn’t your typical accountant. For one, she’s not a CPA. She doesn’t have an accounting degree. She didn’t even go to college. But despite lacking what most consider the usual credentials and following “the most unconventional and broken path possible,” she managed to build and sell two successful accounting firms. Fuller recounts this story in her new book, Unfollow the Rules: The Messy Truth About Burnout, Bad Decisions, and Building Until It Works.

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Fuller wrote this book to help entrepreneurs see behind the social media images of success. “All you see are their wins and their glorified wins, but you don’t know what it took to get them there,” she explains. Her book was originally intended to be a how-to guide, but halfway through the process, she changed her mind. “I don’t want to write this book telling people this is how you should do it,” she explains. “I needed to be vulnerable so people could understand how I got to the point that I got to.”

ADVISORY & CONSULTING

Oz Demirdoven: Why U.S. Firms Lag the World in Advisory | The Disruptors

Success breeds complacency – and obsolescence.

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

Success, long the defining strength of U.S. accounting firms, is fast becoming their most dangerous liability, according to Oz Demirdovan, a PKF executive with a global portfolio.

Flush with steady profits, deep client rosters, and decades of compliance-driven demand, many firms see little reason to change—just as the ground beneath them shifts, Demirdovan tells Liz Farr in this episode of The Disruptors.

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The paradox is stark: the very stability that built the profession now insulates it from the urgency to adapt, leaving some of its most successful players at greatest risk of falling behind.

Demirdoven has worked in accounting worldwide, spending more than five years at Allinial Global. From his perspective, the most striking difference between accounting in the U.S. and the rest of the world isn’t just our complex regulatory environment.

“The biggest difference isn’t only regulation, it is mindsets,” he explains. “I would say, in North America, especially in the United States, firms are still very compliance anchored.” READ MORE →

PODCAST

Rebecca Driscoll: A Millennial and a Boomer Walk into a Bar… | The Disruptors

The Collaboration Room turns online peer networks into practical tools for pricing strategy, tax planning, succession, and psychological safety.

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Liz Farr

MORE AT STORE.CPATRENDLINES.COM

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.

Here’s what you’re looking for: Liz Farr

Tyler Anderson: Audit Transformation Is a Mindset, Not a Destination | The Disruptors

The complete video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here

Sponsored by The Balanced Millionaire: The Advisor Edition by Dr. Jackie Meyer | See Today’s Special Offer

Sarah Flischel: The End of the SALY Audit | The Disruptors

[This is a preview. Full episodes, including summaries, takeaways and transcripts are available to Pro Members first. | Go Pro here]

Sponsored by The Balanced Millionaire: Advisor Edition: Building a 7-Figure Firm in 4 Hours a Week by Dr. Jackie Meyer, CPA, CCA

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google/YouTube, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music, Audible, Player FM, Audacy, RSS.

Sharrin Fuller: Build It Better, Then Let It Run Without You | The Disruptors

Sponsored by The Balanced Millionaire: The Advisor Edition by Dr. Jackie Meyer | See Today’s Special Offer

Oz Demirdoven: Why U.S. Firms Lag the World in Advisory | The Disruptors

Sponsored by True Advisor: The Definitive Success Guide for Client Advisory Services by Hitendra Patil

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google/YouTube, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music, Audible, Player FM, Audacy, RSS.

Rebecca Driscoll: A Millennial and a Boomer Walk into a Bar… | The Disruptors

Sponsored by The Balanced Millionaire: The Advisor Edition by Dr. Jackie Meyer | See Today’s Special Offer