What Internal Controls Mean to Clients
And how to explain them.
By Ed Mendlowitz
77 Ways to Wow!
LEADERSHIP
Create an Accountability Chart for Your Firm
It beats an org chart and here’s why.
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”
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.”
We got to a point where we realized that Adam and I didn’t have clarity around our individual roles, and we were overlapping one another. We needed to have clearly defined roles for one another, as well as the people who were working for us. Lack of clarity can cause a loss in production.
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Why Audit Walkthroughs Break Down (and What It’s Really Costing You)
Why one of the most critical audit procedures quietly becomes one of the least effective
By William Englehaupt
Walkthroughs sit at the center of audit quality. They are the mechanism through which auditors develop an understanding of processes, identify control points, and assess risk in context. Yet in practice, they are frequently one of the least controlled and most inefficient parts of the engagement.
They tend to run late, produce incomplete evidence, and generate follow-up cycles that extend months beyond the initial meeting. By the time year-end arrives, teams are often still resolving questions that should have been addressed months earlier. This is not a failure of technical capability; it is a failure of process design.
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Most audit teams do not manage walkthroughs as a defined system of work. Instead, they are treated as a sequence of meetings—scheduled, conducted, and documented with varying degrees of rigor. That approach creates the appearance of progress without delivering the underlying objective: a complete, evidence-based understanding of the transaction flow from initiation through financial statement impact.
Randy Crabtree: What if Vulnerability’s What Leaders Need Most? | MOVE Like This
When leaders admit they don’t have all the answers, they create room for others to contribute.
Sponsored by Radical Pricing by Jody Padar, CPA | See Today’s Special Offer
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MOVE Like This
With Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk
For CPA Trendlines Research
Randy Crabtree founded an accounting firm, then came to a difficult realization: Being its founder didn’t make him the right person to lead it. His decision to step aside as managing partner of Tri-Merit opens a bigger conversation about what happens when leaders admit they don’t have all the answers.
On MOVE Like This, Crabtree joins host Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk to explore how vulnerability can build trust, help people find roles that fit their strengths, and give teams the confidence to try something new. Now retired from Tri-Merit and focused on speaking, advising, and The Unique CPA podcast, he challenges a leadership model that asks people to appear invulnerable while carrying more than they can sustain.
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Crabtree’s perspective on vulnerability is deeply personal. Twelve years ago, he suffered a stroke. While his physical recovery was relatively quick, the mental recovery took years as he dealt with panic attacks, PTSD, and depression. That experience forced him to acknowledge something leaders are often conditioned to resist: he couldn’t do everything himself. It also prompted him to question other things he had long accepted as true about work and leadership, including the idea that leaders always need to have the answers, hide weakness, and prove their value by how much they can carry.
That questioning eventually led Crabtree to one of the most difficult decisions of his career.
Kassi Rushing: Firms that Move First Shape the Future | Gear Up for Growth
AI, talent development, pricing, and advisory services demand action now — even if leaders don’t have all the answers.
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Gear Up for Growth
with Jean Caragher
for CPA Trendlines
The accounting profession has no shortage of predictions about its future. But RISE2040 is designed to be something different: a future shaped by the profession itself and a practical framework for deciding what to do next.
In this episode of Gear Up for Growth, host Jean Caragher, president of Capstone Marketing, welcomes back Kassi Rushing, CEO and owner of Kassi Rushing Consulting and a member of the RISE2040 project team. Their conversation explores what the initiative reveals about the profession’s direction — and why accounting leaders cannot afford to wait for certainty before acting.
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Unlike earlier vision projects built primarily through surveys, focus groups, or the perspectives of a select group of thought leaders, RISE2040 draws from conversations with thousands of professionals across 25 countries. Artificial intelligence makes it possible to synthesize that volume of input while preserving the themes, opportunities, and barriers identified by participants.
Rushing describes the initiative as “written by the profession for the profession.”
That distinction matters. As advisory groups reviewed the findings, the project team remained committed to what professionals actually said, even when reviewers wanted to introduce additional ideas.
“We had to protect the voice of the profession,” Rushing says. “We talked about being defenders of the data.”