OUTLOOK & ANALYSIS

Ellison-Taylor: Small Firms’ Fix for Talent Crisis | Gear Up For Growth

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They’re not leaving the firm. They’re leaving you.

Originally published Jan. 10, 2025.
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Gear Up for Growth
With Jean Caragher
For CPA Trendlines

What’s driving talent out of accounting firms? According to Kimberly Ellison-Taylor, CPA, CGMA, CITP, CISA, everything from outdated leadership to untold success stories is pushing promising professionals away. In this episode of Gear Up for Growth, powered by CPA Trendlines, host Jean Caragher sits down with the powerhouse behind KET Solutions to explore how the profession can—and must—change to attract and retain the next generation.

Gear Up for Growth spotlights the best strategies for smart and efficient growth in today’s competitive landscape. More Gear Up for Growth | More Capstone Conversations with Jean Caragher | More Jean Caragher here | Get her best-selling handbook, The 90-Day Marketing Plan for CPA Firms, here | More CPA Trendlines videos and podcasts here

Ellison-Taylor, former chair of both the AICPA and the Maryland Association of CPAs, started her journey into accounting as a third grader inspired by a career-day presentation. That spark led to decades of leadership—and now, a mission to transform the narrative around what it means to be a CPA.

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How Private Equity Turns CPA Loyalty into Legal Risk

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Overlapping ownership tests conflict and control. Cue the lawyers.

Rivals in the Loop: Grant Thornton and Wipfli, now stablemates under New Mountain Capital’s billion-dollar investments, seek to maintain separate operations and arm’s-length decision-making. Shown in Chicago: The Grant Thornton Tower on North Clark (left) and Wipfli offices at the Chicago Title building on Wacker (right).

By CPA Trendlines Research

Grant Thornton and Wipfli keep offices barely a half-mile apart in Chicago’s Loop — about a 10-minute walk, or a single stop on the “L.”

Zoom out. After a generation of competitive drive, the rival firms are now part of the same investor’s stable.

MORE Private Equity | What $1 Billion Buys in Today’s CPA Market

Private equity’s push into accounting is making for some strange bedfellows, as some investment firms build out networks of ostensibly independent firms that increasingly overlap in clients, services, acquisitions and talent markets.

With more than 500 deals under study, the CPA PE Deal Tracker™ from CPA Trendlines Research provides a vivid picture of private equity firms quietly adding a new layer of consolidation as they roll up the CPA profession. Sponsors are evolving into holding companies with multiple platforms, built simultaneously on a number of large CPA firms as acquisition engines. At least five sponsors now hold two or more competing platforms at the same time.

“As the Peter Parker principle reminds us, with great power comes great responsibility,” Proskauer Rose LLP, the private-funds legal powerhouse, says in a client playbook. “Sponsors should remember the portfolio company corollary: with greater control comes greater exposure to liability.”

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Private Equity’s Big Bet Faces an AI Shake-Up

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But scale may matter more, not less, in the accounting and legal markets.

By CPA Trendlines Research

The same technology that promises higher margins could weaken the billable-hour economics that made professional services so attractive.

MORE Private Equity | What $1 Billion Buys in Today’s CPA Market

Private equity’s rush into law and accounting is running into a new question: What happens to a roll-up strategy built on professional labor when artificial intelligence starts doing more of the work?

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Outlook: Tax and Accounting Workloads Are Only Getting Heavier

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Accounting Firms Face a Productivity Test as Demand Outruns Capacity.

Accountants Demand Index: Steady Growth in New Work

Forecast: After steady expansion, the index predicts a decline in December, followed by a sharp advance in January 2027

By CPA Trendlines Research

The tax and accounting profession’s biggest problem is no longer finding work. It is finding the time, people, and technology to do it.

The new CPA Trendlines Accountants Demand Index, which slipped in May, remains firmly above year-ago levels. The proprietary index of economic indicators fell to 121.2 in May, down 0.3 percent from April but still up 1.8 percent from a year earlier and comfortably above its 2019 baseline level of 100.

MORE Accountants Demand Index: How it works, how to use it

The next six months are forecast to follow a pattern firm owners will recognize. June softens. July surges with the sharpest single-month gain in the forecast window. Then August stalls, nearly flat, which is where the index makes its call.

History says late summer is the reset. This year, the data says the reset holds: the index climbs steadily through September, October and into November, reaching its fall peak before December pulls it back below zero.

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