Today's Features
LEADERSHIP

The Most Expensive Promotion Your Firm Can Make | MOVE Like This

It may create costly leadership gaps that affect engagement, retention, and firm performance.

This is a preview. The complete 1-hour video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
Sponsored by True Advisor: The Definitive Success Guide to Client Advisory Services by Hitendra Patil | See Today’s Special Offer 

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines Research podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google/YouTube, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music, Audible, Player FM, Audacy, RSS. 
Originally published May 13, 2026
True Advisor: Buy now | Learn more

MOVE Like This
With Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk
For CPA Trendlines Research

Promotions are meant to strengthen an organization. But when firms elevate top performers without preparing them to lead, those promotions can become some of the most expensive decisions they make. The result is often disengaged employees, overwhelmed managers, and avoidable turnover.

MORE MOVE Like This | MORE CPA Trendlines Streaming Network

In this episode of MOVE Like This, Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk talks with Megan Robinson, founder and CEO of E Leader Experience, about why leadership isn’t a natural next step for every high performer—and what firms can do to build leaders intentionally instead of hoping they’ll figure it out.
READ MORE →

PODCAST

Lochhead, Yoon: What Accountants Do when AI Makes Accounting Free | The Distruptors

The old answers to old problems don’t work anymore.

This is a preview. PRO Members always get the full video, takeaways and transcript. Go PRO here.
Sponsored by True Advisor: The Definitive Success Guide for Client Advisory Services by Hitendra Patil
Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google/YouTube, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music, Audible, Player FM, Audacy, RSS.
True Advisor: Buy now | Learn more

The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

Accountants, one of the most prized varieties of knowledge workers, are in trouble. AI is coming for the jobs. But Christopher Lochhead and Eddie Yoon may have an answer.

MORE DISRUPTORS: Ira Rosenbloom: PE Forces Firms to Pick a Future | Doug Slaybaugh: How to Define “Values in Motion” | Nancy McClelland: Bookkeepers Need a Safe Space to Collaborate |Chase Damiano: Good Operations Means Defining How the Hand-Offs Happen | Jeff Seibert: Digits Software Moves Toward Real-Time Accounting | Tyler Anderson: Audit Transformation Is a Mindset, Not a Destination | Sarah Flischel: The End of the SALY Audit | Sharrin Fuller: Build It Better, Then Let It Run Without You | Oz Demirdoven: Why U.S. Firms Lag the World in Advisory | Rebecca Driscoll: A Millennial and a Boomer Walk into a Bar… |

MORE CPA Trendlines Streaming Network

Lochhead and Yoon, who style themselves “the Category Pirates,” are suggesting the biggest change in the nature of work in decades.

In the age of AI, Eddie Yoon says, “knowledge is essentially free.” The credentials, specializations, and years of study that went into becoming an accountant are becoming commodities. Yoon describes a pyramid of knowledge work. At the base is “memorize and regurgitate,” where the majority of professionals have thrived. Above that is “synthesize and curate.” And at the rarefied top are the non-obvious connections: the insights that link disparate facts in ways no one else sees. AI, he argues, is already demolishing the lower tiers.

READ MORE →

ADVISORY & CONSULTING

Chris Papin: A Bold Blueprint for Modernizing | The Concierge CPA

This interdisciplinary approach offers a glimpse into the future of the accounting profession.

This is a preview. The complete episode is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
Sponsored by CPA Trendlines Pro Membership, Where Accounting Pros Go Pro  – See Today’s Special Offer
Click to subscribe anywhere: Apple, Google/Youtube, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music and Audible, Player FM, Audacy, Gaana (India), Boomplay (Africa), or RSS.

The Concierge CPA
With Jackie Meyer
For CPA Trendlines

In this episode of The Concierge CPA, host Jackie Meyer introduces an extraordinary guest who truly embodies the term concierge advisor. Meet Chris Papin—CPA, attorney, insurance producer, and all-around problem-solver for small business clients navigating today’s increasingly complex financial landscape.

Papin, founder of both Papin CPA and Papin Law, brings a rare blend of legal, accounting, and advisory insight under one roof. Based in Edmond, Oklahoma, his firm is not only a one-stop shop for tax compliance and estate planning—it’s a home base for strategic conversations, real-world coaching, and highly personalized service.

More Jackie Meyer

Papin’s journey began when a college professor explained that certain advanced tax topics were reserved for lawyers. That stuck. Years later, Papin is that lawyer—and CPA—bringing the skipped chapters into focus for his clients. His multi-credentialed approach is more than a résumé flex; it’s a direct response to client demand for integrated, trustworthy, and empathetic advisory.

“Small business owners often need to pull five levers to get all the professionals they need in one room. I decided to be all five,” Papin quips.

READ MORE →

AUDIT & ASSURANCE

Six Skills That Every Auditor Needs

man intently listening to woman in office

Empowerment is for the whole organization, not just the rookies.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

Empowerment means that teams feel like they have ownership over the outcome, outputs and the process of what they are doing. They need to feel it’s OK to try doing things differently and even to make a mistake – and learn from it. The quality of everyone’s work improves when they have the confidence to present new ideas, and to push back when they think there’s a better way to do something. And empowerment delivers results – especially when it is partnered with owned accountability.

MORE by Alan Anderson
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

 

Unfortunately, most of us have a better idea of what an empowered team and empowering managers do not look like than what they do look like. Let’s look at a few of the ones you may have seen in your time working.
READ MORE →