CPA Trendlines

Today's Features

Tony Wilson: Career Options CPAs May Be Overlooking | Accounting Conversations

Extraordinary opportunities lie ahead for those who combine accounting knowledge with curiosity, judgment, and business insight.

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Accounting Conversations
With Chayton Farlee
Center for Accounting Transformation

Accounting students often feel pressure to choose the perfect career path before they have taken their first professional step. Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA, offers a more forgiving — and practical — approach: Choose a direction, start moving, and learn along the way.

“Sometimes, just choose the thing,” Wilson says. “Just go after it.”

In this episode of the Accounting Conversations Podcast, host Chayton Farlee, an assurance associate at CliftonLarsonAllen, talks with Wilson, founder of Accquip, about building a career that stretches from public accounting and corporate finance to entrepreneurship and fractional CFO services.

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Along the way, Wilson shares candid advice for students and early-career accountants who want to gain meaningful experience, prepare for firm ownership, and understand where they can create value in a profession transformed by technology.

AUDIT & ASSURANCE

The Post-Audit Debrief Most Teams Get Wrong

Why most debriefs fail to change the next audit—and how to turn them into real design inputs

By William Englehaupt

As one audit cycle closes and the next begins, most teams go through some form of debrief. In theory, this is where learning happens, where teams step back, reflect on what worked, what didn’t, and carry those insights forward.

In practice, it rarely works that way.

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Debriefs are often rushed or treated as closure rather than input. The questions are familiar—what went well, what didn’t—but the discussion stays at the surface. Late nights, difficult clients, tight deadlines. The symptoms are easy to identify. The underlying causes are not. READ MORE →

MARKETING & SALES

Shut Down the Scarcity Mentality

Reconsider your prices. Here are 10 questions to help.

By Martin Bissett
Business Development On a Budget

Undercharging – or lowballing as it’s also called – is the scourge of the profession. It has always been present, and unfortunately, it will probably be with us for the foreseeable future.

Undercharging is directly related to fear – fear of rejection.

MORE by Martin Bissett
Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

When you are building your pipeline according to the process, you have assigned fees you think might be in the ballpark of what you believe you could get from a new piece of work or a new client. You may tend to estimate on the low side, which is not a bad idea in theory, because it lets you be pleasantly surprised when it’s anything beyond that.

ACCOUNTING ARC

Donny Shimamoto: Build Careers That Bend, Not Break | MOVE Like This

Flexible systems help accounting professionals remain, contribute, and advance when life’s responsibilities change.

This is a preview. The complete 1-hour video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here

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MOVE Like This
With Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk
For CPA Trendlines Research

When caregiving responsibilities collide with work, even the most committed professionals can find themselves questioning whether their careers are still sustainable.

In this episode of MOVE Like This, Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA, managing director of IntrapriseTechKnowlogies and inspiration architect at the Center for Accounting Transformation, joins Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk to discuss what accounting firms can do to better support employees with caregiving responsibilities. Drawing from his own experience as a caregiver and his firm’s long-standing flexible work model, Shimamoto explains why supporting caregivers isn’t about creating complicated new policies. Instead, it’s about building thoughtful systems, training managers, and planning work in ways that recognize employees have lives outside the office.

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Shimamoto shares how becoming a caregiver for his great-aunt changed his own perspective on the issue. While many people associate caregiving with raising young children, his experience highlighted how responsibilities for aging parents, relatives, and others often arrive unexpectedly and affect employees across every stage of their careers. Rather than viewing caregiving as a temporary accommodation for a small group of employees, he believes firms should recognize it as a reality that will affect nearly everyone at some point in their lives.

That shift in thinking changes how organizations design policies, manage workloads, and retain experienced professionals.

ADVISORY & CONSULTING

Emerging Trends Are Reshaping Advisory-CAS

Don’t just buy technology; strategically activate it.

By Hitendra Patil
Client Accounting Services: The Definitive Success Guide

Advisory is changing rapidly and it is not just in what firms offer, but in how clients think, how technology fits in and how pricing evolves. This article examines the emerging shifts redefining the Advisory-CAS world, from burnout and outdated service models to the increasing demand for proactive, strategic insight. You will see what’s fading and what’s rising, and where to focus to stay ahead.

MORE by Hitendra Patil
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Most surveys focus on direct responses, but the real value comes from analyzing what those responses reveal, especially in context. The nuances, patterns and implications hidden within the answers often provide the most strategic insights, particularly when you connect the dots across service lines, firm models, client dynamics and workforce pressure points.
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