PAY & COMPENSATION

Accounting Internships Need an Upgrade | ARC

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As AI handles more routine work, how do young accountants develop judgment, communication and leadership?

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Accounting ARC
With Donny Shimamoto and Liz Mason
Center for Accounting Transformation

The accounting internship is due for an upgrade.

For decades, internships often give aspiring accountants their first real taste of the profession by dropping them into the work: Learn the process, complete the assignment, survive busy season and figure out the unwritten rules along the way.

But as artificial intelligence takes over more of the entry-level work traditionally assigned to new accountants, Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA, and Liz Mason, CPA, argue the profession needs to reconsider what an internship is actually supposed to teach.

MORE Accounting ARC: The CPA Career Nobody Talks About | Conference Season Exposes Accounting’s Knowledge Gap | The Feedback Mistake That Costs You Your Best People | Is Your Boss Really the Problem? | 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

In this episode of the Accounting ARC podcast, Shimamoto, founder and managing director of IntrapriseTechKnowlogies LLC and founder and inspiration architect for the Center for Accounting Transformation, and Mason, CEO of High Rock Accounting, explore why tomorrow’s accountants need more than technical proficiency.

They need what Shimamoto calls “power skills.”

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What Relevance Means for Staffing in Accounting

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Five young business people at work in an office setting.

Seventeen ways to improve.

By Marc Rosenberg
CPA Firm Staff: Managing Your #1 Asset

The business graveyard is littered with major organizations that missed the boat by failing to see cataclysmic game changers happening right before their eyes.

  • Ice companies failed to get into refrigeration because they saw themselves in the ice business.
  • Railroads missed out on autos and aerospace because they didn’t see themselves in the transportation business.
  • A CEO of Digital Equipment Corporation said he couldn’t imagine why people would want a computer in their own house.
  • It took the Wright Brothers five years to get the U.S. government to even talk to them about their invention.

MORE: How Accounting Staffing Has Changed
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In all fairness it’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, to anticipate and accept massive changes like these.
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How Accounting Staffing Has Changed

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Businesswoman sitting on table while talking with four coworkers

And two major drivers of that change.

By Marc Rosenberg
CPA Firm Staff: Managing Your #1 Asset

“Treat people as they are and they will remain as they are. Treat people as they can be and should be and they will become as they can and should be.” – Goethe

“You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up, such as dressing and the proper way of speaking and so on, the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl. But I know I can be a lady to you, Colonel Pickering, because you always treat me as a lady and always will.” – Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady”

MORE: Thirteen Traits of Partners You’ll Want to Keep | Six Rules for Keeping Partners Happy and Productive | Why Strategic Thinking Impacts Your Firm’s Future | Seven Things Good Firms Must Do | Five Ways to Separate Accounting Winners from Losers | Two Factors Determine Firm Profitability | Don’t Make Firm Profitability a Goal | Core Values: Why Your Firm Needs Them | Five Keys in Compensating New Managing Partners | Top 20 Tough Choices for the Partner Comp Committee | Voting on Ownership Basis? Three Better Methods | What Partners Do and Don’t Deserve
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The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus said: “There is nothing permanent except change.” People fly and drive cars instead of using horses and carts. Technology has replaced calculators, slide rules and the process for writing books. Food is purchased at grocery stores instead of grown on farms.

Drastic changes have occurred in the CPA industry as well. One of the biggest areas of change is how staff are managed and treated, as shown by this chart.
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Michelle River: The Hidden Data Behind CPA Firm Burnout and Profit Pressure | Gear Up for Growth

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How savvy CPAs are unlocking powerful insights buried in their practice management systems. Plus: Download the slide deck.

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Gear Up for Growth
With Jean Caragher
For CPA Trendlines

“What surprised me most isn’t what the data says,” says Michelle Golden River, CEO of Fore LLC, in a new episode of Gear Up for Growth, powered by CPA Trendlines. “It’s that almost every CPA already has it, and it rarely makes it into leadership conversations.” 

Download Michelle River’s slide deck here

MORE Jean Caragher here | Get her best-selling handbook, The 90-Day Marketing Plan for CPA Firms, here MORE Gear Up for Growth | MORE CPA Trendlines Streaming Network here

River tells host Jean Caragher, president of Capstone Marketing, that firms are overlooking powerful insights buried in their own practice management data. 

River challenges CPA firm leaders to rethink long-held assumptions about growth and sustainability. “There is no reason we should be taking a high volume of low spenders when it’s killing us. It’s ruining our sustainability chances,” she says

River leaves three top takeaways for CPA firms:

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Doug Slaybaugh: How to Define “Values in Motion” | The Disruptors

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Are your firm’s stated values consistent with its behavior?

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

How does your firm define culture? Is your culture consistent with the values posted on the breakroom wall? Doug Slaybaugh, founder of CPA Coach, defines culture as “values in motion.” According to this definition, a firm’s stated values must be evident in the ways a firm actually behaves.

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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A firm with the value of philanthropy, for example, should give team members the ability to volunteer or sponsor nonprofit events. “There should be evidence,” Slaybaugh explains. “Otherwise, there’s no evidence of that value. It’s really not your culture.”

Slaybaugh’s previous firm had the often-clichéd value of “people first,” but actually executed on that. Team members were offered the option to buy an additional month of PTO, prorated from their salaries, resulting in an 11-month year with nearly two months of vacation.

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