The Disruptors

Chase Damiano: Good Operations Means Defining How the Hand-Offs Happen | The Disruptors

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When leaders neglect to delegate, chaos reigns.

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The Disrupters
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

Chase Damiano, founder of Human at Scale, says that operations are the missing piece for many firms. “It’s sort of this bridge or glue that allows a business and a team to function well together,” he says. “I see it as the intersection of people and process and technology and culture.” What that looks like in practice, he said, is a firm where the team is happy, clients are satisfied, work is delivered on time and at high quality, and the owner has the freedom to focus on strategy and growth and has the time to spend on non-work things like family.   

MORE DISRUPTORS: Candy Bellau: The $350 Pricing Mistake that Nearly Broke this Boutique Firm | The Disruptors | Poe: What P.E. Really Wants from Firms | The Disruptors  | Blake Oliver: Build a Biz that Runs Without You | Daiber: Use Succession as a Growth Strategy | Cannon: Busy Season is Self-Inflicted | Carroll: When One Person Can Break the Firm | Rampe: Build a Roadmap Even When the Road’s Not There | Chang: Killing SALY, One Agent at a Time |

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While many consulting firms “might just drop in the deliverables and then leave it up to the team to integrate that on their own,” Human at Scale has a different approach. “We actually embed within the accounting firm, we implement, and we execute alongside of the CEO and their team,” Damiano explains.   READ MORE →

Jeff Seibert: Digits Software Moves Toward Real-Time Accounting | The Disruptors

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Dovetailing finance and product engineering can transform accounting.
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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines 

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When Jeff Seibert, CEO and founder of Digits, was at Twitter, he was astonished by the difference in data quality and timeliness between the product engineering and the finance sides of the business.

On the product engineering side, testing tools, dashboards, and analytic tools provided real-time data on “exactly what your users are clicking on, what your servers are doing every second.” At the same time, “I was waiting two to three weeks for our accountant to give me a black and white P&L,” he recalls, even with “100 people in corporate finance.”

MORE DISRUPTORS: Candy Bellau: The $350 Pricing Mistake that Nearly Broke this Boutique Firm | The Disruptors | Poe: What P.E. Really Wants from Firms | The Disruptors  | Blake Oliver: Build a Biz that Runs Without You | Daiber: Use Succession as a Growth Strategy | Cannon: Busy Season is Self-Inflicted | Carroll: When One Person Can Break the Firm | Rampe: Build a Roadmap Even When the Road’s Not There | Chang: Killing SALY, One Agent at a Time |

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That experience led him to start Digits in 2018, an AI-native accounting platform, which is going “head to head with QuickBooks and Xero.”

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

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

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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.

MORE Tyler Anderson on Re-Inventing Accounting

MORE DISRUPTORS Candy Bellau: The $350 Pricing Mistake that Nearly Broke this Boutique Firm | The Disruptors | Poe: What P.E. Really Wants from Firms | The Disruptors  | Blake Oliver: Build a Biz that Runs Without You | Daiber: Use Succession as a Growth Strategy | Cannon: Busy Season is Self-Inflicted | Carroll: When One Person Can Break the Firm | Rampe: Build a Roadmap Even When the Road’s Not There | Chang: Killing SALY, One Agent at a Time |

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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 →

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

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Transformation in audit can help predict clients’ futures.

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

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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. 

MORE DISRUPTORS: Candy Bellau: The $350 Pricing Mistake that Nearly Broke this Boutique Firm | The Disruptors | Poe: What P.E. Really Wants from Firms | The Disruptors  | Blake Oliver: Build a Biz that Runs Without You | Daiber: Use Succession as a Growth Strategy | Cannon: Busy Season is Self-Inflicted | Carroll: When One Person Can Break the Firm | Rampe: Build a Roadmap Even When the Road’s Not There | Chang: Killing SALY, One Agent at a Time |

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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.” 

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