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Nancy McClelland: Bookkeepers Need a Safe Space to Collaborate | The Disruptors
Bookkeepers often feel less empowered than tax professionals.
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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines
Nancy McClelland wants to do more than just run her firm, The Dancing Accountant. She has two big passion projects that are creating the conversations and collaborations this profession desperately needs. Her community, Ask a CPA, aims to bridge the gap between bookkeepers and tax professionals. She also co-hosts a podcast with Questian Telka, She Counts, which provides a safe space for women in accounting to discuss real issues.
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McClelland started the Ask a CPA Community when she noticed “this big gap that wasn’t about technical knowledge. It was about permission, about permission to collaborate.” While “bookkeepers are often the closest person to the financial truth of a business,” historically, “they’ve been positioned as subordinate to tax preparers, just sort of expected to hand off things and hope that they did it right,” McClelland explains.
The Skill That May Matter More Than Your CPA License | ARC
Connection, community, and trust create opportunities that credentials alone cannot.
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Accounting ARC
With Liz Mason and Byron Patrick
Center for Accounting Transformation
In the accounting profession, technical excellence is expected. However, according to the latest episode of Accounting ARC, relationships — not just work product — often determine who grows, who leads, and who thrives.
In a candid and deeply personal conversation, Liz Mason, CPA, and Byron Patrick, CPA.CITP, explore how relationship-building shapes careers, creates opportunity, and provides stability in an unpredictable profession.
MORE Accounting ARC: The Real Problem with AI in Accounting | 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 |
Mason, CEO of High Rock Accounting, opens the discussion by reflecting on how little emphasis the profession places on teaching interpersonal skills. Patrick, senior product manager for Karbon and co-founder and part-time educator for TB Academy, agrees. “You don’t learn it in college,” he says. “There’s no course on building relationships.”
That gap, they argue, becomes especially obvious early in a professional’s career.
Guillaume Turmel: What Genuine Workplace Inclusion Feels Like Beyond Policies & Programs | MOVE Like This
“Inclusion often depends on whether people are willing to communicate, listen, and repair misunderstandings when they happen.”
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MOVE Like This
With Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk
For CPA Trendlines Research
In this episode of the MOVE Like This podcast, Bonnie Ruszczyk sits down with Guillaume Turmel, a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne whose research focuses on how people experience genuine inclusion in the workplace. Drawing from his own experiences working internationally, helping launch an LGBTQ+ employee resource group, and observing the disconnect between strong DEI programs and employees still feeling “slightly off,” Guillaume explores why inclusion is far more personal and complex than most organizations assume.
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One of the most compelling parts of the conversation centers around Guillaume’s comparison of inclusion to “love languages.” He explains that organizations often focus heavily on the actions they believe create inclusion, such as policies, programs, or leadership behaviors, without spending enough time understanding how those efforts are actually experienced by employees.
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Chase Damiano: Good Operations Means Defining How the Hand-Offs Happen | The Disruptors
When leaders neglect to delegate, chaos reigns.
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The Disrupters
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines
Chase Damiano, founder of Human at Scale, says that operations are the missing piece for many firms. “It’s sort of this bridge or glue that allows a business and a team to function well together,” he says. “I see it as the intersection of people and process and technology and culture.” What that looks like in practice, he said, is a firm where the team is happy, clients are satisfied, work is delivered on time and at high quality, and the owner has the freedom to focus on strategy and growth and has the time to spend on non-work things like family.
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 |
While many consulting firms “might just drop in the deliverables and then leave it up to the team to integrate that on their own,” Human at Scale has a different approach. “We actually embed within the accounting firm, we implement, and we execute alongside of the CEO and their team,” Damiano explains. READ MORE →