WANTED: Great Audit Mentors

Professional audit mentors are scarce.

By Alan Anderson
Transforming Audit for the Future

Instant download:
The New Manifesto for Accountants.

I was lucky in the entirety of my career to have been empowered to try doing things differently. I had mentors who encouraged me to keep learning. But today, this forms-filling exercise that audit has become discourages people like me from staying. The ones who stay in audit are the ones who like filling out those forms.

MORE: Is Audit in Crisis Because of Definitions? | Stop Sending the Wrong Message to Audit TeamsThe Big Issues in Audit: Frustration, Inconsistency and Technology | Talent Retention: Five Tips for an Audit AdjustmentThe Ten Financial Controls That’ll Make You a Hero | Five Cash Reports You Can’t Live Without | When an Audit Is a Great Thing
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New audit staff rarely have a mentor who gives them the big picture of what audit is supposed to be. Instead, they learn how to fill out the forms better and more accurately. They don’t get review notes that ask them to think about what they’re doing. They get review notes about the way they reference their supporting documentation.

This lack of mentorship means that the best and brightest, the ones who like to keep learning, eventually leave. We are making the problem worse for future generations.

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Partner Accountability: The Only Two Things That Really Matter

Both tax and audit partners can achieve margin goals, but in different ways.

By Bill Penczak

I was leading a midyear review of the 2023 strategic plan for one of my CPA firm clients, one that has experienced exponential growth (you’re welcome) in the past few years but simultaneously is facing the positives and negatives that accompany rapid growth. As we delved into the goals and objectives in the six strategic areas, it dawned on me that partner focus – and the ensuing measurement and related compensation – should be narrowed to just two things, which I will address in a bit.

MORE BILL PENCZAK: How to Boost Profits by (OMG) Sharing the Upside | Bill Penczak: Stop Forcing Smart People to Do Stupid Work | Chase Birky: Overcoming Paralysis by Analysis | Dustin Verity: Keep an Open Mind and Constantly Learn | Five Ways to Put Success into Succession Planning | O.D. Lanier: Stepping into Advisory | Secret to Success? A Growth and Abundance Mindset | From Tax to Transformation | Five Steps to Building Advisory Work | The Six Essential KPIs for Managing Partners | The Great Resignation: Five Reasons Accountants Are Quitting | Five Tips for Better Decision-Making | Your Marketing Sucks: Six Reasons Why | Five Global CPA Leaders: Four Survival Strategies | Are You Too Generous with Your Write-Offs? | Nine Smooth Moves to Build Client Satisfaction | Planning for Success in 2021 | Re-Thinking Today’s Firm with Five Global Leaders | 5 Things Your Firm Should Do Differently This Summer | Do You Have the Guts to Beat the Covid Crisis? | How to Inoculate Your Firm against Covid Competition | ‘Found Money’ Delights Clients | Don’t Buy a Rolodex, Buy a Process | The Three R’s for Beating the Corona Crisis | 6 Reasons Why Your Marketing Sucks
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The polar opposite of this KISS approach was the managing partner of a $100 million-plus firm that wound up being gobbled up by one of the supernationals almost 10 years ago. He was brilliant – he could look at an Excel spreadsheet and, in “Rain Man” fashion, immediately identify wrong entries or formulas. (For those readers on the younger age spectrum, “Rain Man” was an Academy Award-winning film from 1988 starring Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise.) Being the king of Excel, this managing partner had created a 20-column rating sheet for each partner to measure their performance. In the words of one partner at the time, “There was so much detail, we didn’t even know what to focus on.”

Time for Wapner, indeed.

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Would You Buy Your Own Services?

Don’t expect potential clients to if you don’t know what sets you apart.

By Steven E. Sacks, CPA, CGMA, ABC

Do you ever wonder why after spending many hours on drafting, editing, proofing, and polishing—and proofing and polishing just once more—your engagement proposal efforts did not result in winning the engagement? And if this happens on a semi-regular basis, the frustration is never easier to take.

MORE STEVE SACKS: How Do You Value Your Most Important Asset?How to Build a Winning Proposal | Six Ways to Fix Your Firm Agreement | The Great Resignation or a Reshuffling? | Listen to Learn | Build the Framework to a Solution with Five Answers | Try for Success, Not a Win
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You may have the requisite knowledge, experience, and perhaps even a broad view based on a diverse set of clients. However, you may have become complacent by maintaining a “cookie-cutter” approach to developing your proposals. Like the old joke defining a consultant: “A person who takes off your watch, tells you the time, and gives the watch back to you,” implies an approach that you believe is best for your potential client, yet reflects no understanding of what the client actually needs.

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Accounting Tech Doesn’t Have to Be Daunting

Getting unstuck on the tech stack and how to use AI today.

By Seth Fineberg
Analysis & Commentary

You’ve probably realized by now that the accounting profession has reached an inflection point. Professionals’ trust in the vendors that create and distribute the essential technology they use is strained at best. And with automation once again at the forefront, the very nature of accountant tasks is up for debate.

LIVE CHAT: Watch or listen to the entire Flash Briefing here.

In short, we needed a non-sponsored, real chat with actual practitioners who, by all accounts, know what it’s like to be a tech-forward accountant. Moreover, they know that’s not what the profession is comprised of and, despite being innovative, have struggled with tech adoption over the years. This is what our recent Flash Briefing, “Getting Real: The Accounting Tech Decisions You Need to Make Today,” was all about.

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Scott Scarano: First, Grow People. Then Firm Growth Can Follow

We need the machines to do as much of this as we can.

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

When Scott Scarano lost a few good people at his firm, he had an epiphany that he needed to change things. Instead of continuing to grow for the sake of growth, he overhauled his management approach.

MORE PODCASTS and VIDEOS:  Peter Margaritis: The Power Skills Every Accountant Needs | Joe Montgomery: Find the Sweet Spot of the Right Clients, Right Services and Right PricesMarie Green: Your Bad Apples Are Ruining YouMegan Genest Tarnow: Hire for Curiosity Rather Than ComplianceClayton Oates: One Way to Keep Clients for LifeRandy Crabtree: Follow These Three Rules to Keep Employees HappyErik Solbakken: Yes, You Can Work Less and Make More | Donny Shimamoto: Future Firm Growth Requires a MindshiftJennifer Wilson: Empower Young Workers to Build the Firm Everyone LovesMike Whitmire: Re-Think Your Hiring and Training PracticesHector Garcia: Success Strategies of a Quickbooks YouTube Superstar | Blake Oliver: Why Tax Work Yearns To Be FreePrivate Equity Explodes in U.K. | Brannon Poe: The Status Quo Must Go  | Accounting Nerds, Unlock Your Super Powers  | Disruptor: Jason Statts Shakes Up the Status Quo | Think Small to Think Big with Matt WilkinsonWhen Financial Statements Go Extinct with Corey SchmidtCan Geraldine Carter Save Accountants from Themselves?Re-Inventing Accounting with Tyler Anderson

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“And things are better now at the firm, because we’re not focused on growth,” but instead on “growing everybody,” including himself, Scarano said. By building better habits and finding better ways to do things, his team is growing its bottom line, and a few of the people who left earlier have now returned. “That’s the growth I like to see.” READ MORE →