Bissett Bullet: Who is Taking Care of Your Team?
Today’s Bissett Bullet: “What do your team need from you in order to be at their very best?”
By Martin Bissett
Today's Features
The Real Problem with AI in Accounting | ARC
Technology is advancing faster than the profession’s ability to rethink its workflows.
Sponsored by True Advisor: The Definitive Success Guide for Client Advisory Services by Hitendra Patil |
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Accounting ARC
With Donny Shimamoto
Center for Accounting Transformation
In a profession often defined by structure, standards, and well-worn career paths, Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA, opens a different kind of conversation in a recent Accounting ARC episode—one that challenges assumptions about what it means to build a career in accounting.
His guest, Danielle Supkis Cheek, embodies that challenge.
As senior vice president of AI, analytics and assurance at CaseWare, Supkis Cheek operates at the intersection of technology, methodology, and human judgment. But her path there was anything but linear—and that, Shimamoto suggests, is exactly the point.
MORE Accounting ARC: 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 |
Supkis Cheek describes her role less as a technologist and more as a translator. “I like to think of myself as someone who translates across domains,” she says, explaining how she helps software companies understand how accountants actually work—and how technology can reshape those workflows.
CPA-PE Deal Tracker™: How Big Buyouts Are Turning the Profession into a Platform
Venture capital crashes the private equity party in accounting.
By CPA Trendlines Research
Private equity’s push into accounting is entering a new and more complicated phase: platform building, sponsor recycling, technology investments, blended tax and wealth services — and now, a new pipeline of cash from venture capital.
MORE PE Wars: The CPA Platform Economy Is Concentrating Fast | Alan Whitman: Why the Next Big CPA Firms Won’t Look Like CPA Firms | Gear Up for Growth | The PE Takeover: Audit Problem? What Audit Problem? | 1,000 Deals Show Where PE Money in Accounting Really Goes. | The 7.6x Machine: How Grassroots Firms Are Taking Private Equity for a Ride | Deal Tracker: PE Platforms Accelerate the Grab for CPA Firms | With Apax Sale, CohnReznick Starts Building a National Platform | PE Deal Tracker for Feb. 2026: 57 deals in 60 days | PE Deal Tracker Update: Alan Whitman Plants a Flag in the Private Equity Landscape | Alan Whitman: Breaking the Mold with PE Backing | Holistic Guide
MORE Private Equity
This month’s CPA Trendlines CPA-PE Deal Tracker™ shows nine new deals in April, down from the first-quarter deal-closing frenzy but bringing the year-to-date deal count through April 30 to 78, well ahead of the 44 logged in the same window of 2025.
The broader verified dataset now includes 452 in-scope events, giving CPA Trendlines a clearer view of what private capital is doing after its first wave of accounting-firm investments.
The latest data does not show a retreat. It shows a transformation. The new gambits go well beyond roll-ups, and include service line extensions, corporate carve-outs, cross-industry tie-ups, recapitalizations, continuations and a buzzy new venture-backed startup.
World domination
The deal models are sprawling in all directions as big money battles for a dwindling number of prime firms and squeezes for synergies in the firms they’ve acquired.
In the mix, accounting is morphing from a profession into a platform. A launchpad from which to sell a growing, and traditionally conflict-laden, range of products and services. From tax planning to wealth management, from outsourced accounting systems to internal audit, and from risk management to insurance sales.
A once incongruous, even contradictory, collection of services are being acquired, aligned and advanced. The ambition is market encirclement. The impulse is world domination.
Robert Gauvreau: Why This CPA Firm Founder Refuses Equity Partners | Big 4 Transparency
Scaling an eight-figure accounting, tax, law and advisory firm by breaking all the rules.
Sponsored by The Balanced Millionaire: Advisor Edition: Building a 7-Figure Firm in 4 Hours a Week by Dr. Jackie Meyer, CPA, CCA
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Big 4 Transparency
With Dominic Piscopo, CPA
Robert Gauvreau, FCPA, founder and CEO of Gauvreau Accounting, Tax Law and Advisory, joins Dominic Piscopo on the Big Four Transparency show to explain how he’s scaling an Ontario-based firm from a non-obvious location—Peterborough, not Toronto—into a $20 million operation built around fast decision-making, aggressive reinvestment in talent, and a deliberately non-traditional partnership structure.
MORE Dominic Piscopo | MORE CPA Trendlines Streaming Network
Gauvreau says he made a strategic decision from day one to never take on equity partners, arguing that the traditional partnership model is “broken” because conservative consensus-driven decision-making too often blocks growth. Instead, he built a structure of high-compensated “partners” who share in wins without taking on debt, working-capital risk, or ownership downside—while enabling the firm to move quickly without governance gridlock. He framed the tradeoff clearly: partners get stability and upside participation, while the founder retains the long-term exit value. READ MORE →
Sell the Sizzle, Not the Bacon
Four elements to consider every time.
By August Aquila
MAX: Maximize Productivity, Profitability and Client Retention
Selling professional services is not as difficult as some accountants and consultants believe. I like to define sales as solving a client’s problem. If you think in these terms, you’ll realize that this is what we do every day.
MORE by August J. Aquila
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Sales is the life blood of every business out there. If we did not sell our services and products, we would not have a firm or business. So, don’t think of sales as something unprofessional. It’s an integral part of growing your practice.
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