MANAGEMENT

Is Your Boss Really the Problem? | ARC

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The hardest workplace lesson isn’t spotting a bad manager—it’s recognizing when you’re standing in your own way.

 

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Originally Published May 28, 2026.
The step-by-step operating guide for firms building, pricing, and scaling advisory services that clients value—and pay for.

Accounting ARC
With Liz Mason and Byron Patrick
Center for Accounting Transformation

In a candid, unfiltered episode of Accounting ARC, Liz Mason, CPA, CEO of High Rock Accounting, and Byron Patrick, CPA.CITP, senior product manager at Karbon and co-founder of TB Academy, confront one of the profession’s most relatable—and uncomfortable—topics: bad bosses. 

But the conversation goes further than workplace horror stories. Mason and Patrick explore a more nuanced reality: sometimes the boss is the problem—and sometimes it’s the employee. 

MORE Accounting ARC: Most Accountants Are Missing This AI Shift | AI Can Fix Your Workflow—or Break It in Seconds | Efficiency Is the Wrong Goal for AI | Accounting’s Hidden Talent Risk: The Sandwich Generation | Built Fast. Sold Faster. Broken Later? The Truth About Accounting Tech | Recognize When You Need to Recharge Before You Burn Out | Valuing More Than the Balance Sheet | Accounting’s “Untalked-About” Frontier | Why Happiness is Hard-Fought for High Achievers | The Fastest Way to Lose Talent Is “Dick Leadership” | Post-Holiday Fatigue Isn’t a Failure; It’s a Signal | OCR, Research Bots & Meeting Assistants: What Actually Helps Now | Return Season is the New Stress Test | Small Firms May Have the Biggest Advantage in 2026 | Downgraded: What the DOE Said About Accounting |

“We wanted to talk about this topic because it’s really important to understand when you’re the problem, when your boss is the problem, and what acceptable boundaries are,” Mason says early in the episode.

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The Post-Audit Debrief Most Teams Get Wrong

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Here’s why most debriefs fail to change the next audit—and how to turn them into real design inputs.

By William Englehaupt

As one audit cycle closes and the next begins, most teams go through some form of debrief. In theory, this is where learning happens, where teams step back, reflect on what worked, what didn’t, and carry those insights forward.

In practice, it rarely works that way.

Debriefs are often rushed or treated as closure rather than input. The questions are familiar—what went well, what didn’t—but the discussion stays at the surface. Late nights, difficult clients, tight deadlines. The symptoms are easy to identify. The underlying causes are not. READ MORE →

What Happens Before Fieldwork Determines What Happens Under Pressure

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Why audit outcomes are set earlier than most teams think—and how to design for a cleaner execution

By William Englehaupt

By the time audit work is under pressure, most of the outcome has already been determined.

Deadlines tighten. Review queues build. Questions surface late. Client pressure magnifies. Teams respond the only way they can: by working longer, moving faster, and relying on experience to close the gap.

It feels like execution is the problem. In reality, execution is where earlier decisions show up.

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Seven Things Your Compensation Model Must Accomplish

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Take a hard look at your partners.

By Domenick J. Esposito
8 Steps to Great

Let’s take a deep dive into both a firm’s partner mix and its compensation model.

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In a “Good to Great” research study on high-performing organizations performed by Jim Collins, it was concluded that the method of compensation, as a causal factor for high and sustained performance, is largely irrelevant. The study concluded that whatever system is in use, it simply must be rational and equitably managed and that high sustained performance is largely the result of doing many things well.
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Put an Accountability Chart in Play

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Three questions to ask about each role.

By Jody Grunden
Building the Virtual CFO Firm in the Cloud

“Getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats – these are all crucial steps in the early stages of buildup…” – Jim Collins, “Good to Great”

MORE by Jody Grunden
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

When Adam and I first started the company, we didn’t have much organizational structure. We didn’t need it. But as the company grew, it became necessary to develop an organizational structure. There’s a great quote by Michael E. Gerber in his book “The E-Myth Revisited” that says, “Without the Organization Chart, confusion, discord and conflict become the order of the day.”
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