Dear recent grads: accounting is cooler than you think
June 20, 2023
By Chris Spurio
Let me start with this: I know.
I know that when you were a kid, dreaming about what you wanted to be when you grew up – I know you didn’t say “accountant.” Me, I wanted to be an NFL Quarterback. Then an air traffic controller. CPA never crossed my mind.
Believe me, I know. I know that even recent college grads – like you, reading this – aren’t clamoring to be accountants anymore. An estimate from 2021 showed that the new “CPA pipeline” was the lowest it had been in more than a decade. Over 300,000 accountants and auditors have quit in the past two years, and 75% of today’s public accounting CPAs will retire in the next fifteen.
You know things are really bad when The Wall Street Journal runs an article with the headline, “How Can We Make Accounting Cool?” (The answers, unfortunately, were pretty thin: raise salaries, showcase practitioners who also play guitar, screen a 2016 Ben Affleck thriller called – you guessed it – The Accountant.)
I’m not here to lie to you. Your dinner party guests won’t be enthralled when they hear stories about the time you spotted an error in a company’s 10-Q. Kids will not sit in rapt attention on career day when you share the findings of a recent audit.
I am, however, here to tell you that accounting is a noble profession that impacts the lives of countless people. It’s also evolved in exciting ways these past few years – and is not nearly as “boring” or “vanilla” as those dinner guests might think. Here’s why.
Accounting makes a real impact in people’s lives
FTX, Silicon Valley Bank...at any moment it seems there’s another financial scandal with devastating consequences.
Early in my own career, I worked on a client that was a large community bank. Unfortunately, the leaders of that organization were far too sophisticated for their own good and ended up investing in high-risk instruments that resulted in the bank going into government receivership. They had sold hundreds of millions of dollars in notes to people in the community…all of which were wiped out. People’s livelihood, savings and retirement were gone in a flash.
This is largely why accountants exist: to prevent crises and help individuals, businesses, and communities prepare for a better tomorrow.
During COVID, for instance, we helped local businesses and nonprofits claim the Employee Retention Tax Credit, ensuring they can secure refunds that enable them to cover pandemic losses, reinvest in their employees, rejuvenate their businesses, and mitigate inflationary threats. And accountants will increasingly take over responsibility for integrating ESG into a business’s decision-making, handling reporting efforts to help make these investments a reality.
Accountants are no longer just “bean counters”
In fact, we’re increasingly being called on to drive big-picture solutions for revenue growth, technology integration, corporate sustainability, and more.
Consider the typical day of an accountant who works with me:
- Meeting with our Chief Innovation Officer about using ChatGPT and other AI technologies to accelerate our learning, improve our accounting solutions, and enhance our client deliverables.
- Coaching a leader on how to activate our teams to respond to new market opportunities. Change is constant in our profession, and we will continue to need leaders who can quickly mobilize our teams for impact.
- Providing a client with strategies for powering through a slow-growth economy. Recession or not, today's high-interest rate environment can be challenging – but it can also unleash fresh ideas for managing costs and increasing revenue to fund growth opportunities.
- Partnering with a community organization to help them amplify their mission and impact. We’re as good at preparing meals at a Ronald McDonald House as we are teaching financial literacy courses in middle schools.
- Mentoring a new graduate. Clients have needs in so many different areas, from forensic accounting, fraud prevention and cybersecurity, to growth projections, stock offerings and more. My team regularly works with new graduates to figure out where their skills and passions align with client needs.
- Brainstorming with private equity dealmakers on how to fast-track merger and acquisition plans.
Accounting is getting more diverse and community-focused
A 2019 report found that 42% of accounting graduates were from an ethnic minority – over 10 percentage points higher than a decade earlier. Yet the data also showed that total minority hiring by U.S. CPA firms has remained flat since 2012.
While there’s significant room for improvement, you should know that accounting leaders are taking note of this disparity. At CBIZ, for instance, we’ve added new employee resource groups to support BIPOC and LGBTQ+ staff, and are continually looking for new ways to connect, collaborate, and engage with one another.
Accountants and #finance chiefs are increasingly focused on community engagement as well. A client of ours, for instance, is a longtime CFO for an HVAC company, and, like so many other business leaders today, faced a new demand from employees: the need for purpose and meaning in their work. Being in the business of selling heating and air conditioning equipment, it wasn’t immediately obvious what this might entail. Yet the company took the need seriously and went on to develop a community outreach program to upgrade HVAC systems at public schools. The CFO told us it created unity amongst his team, drove recruitment and retention, and made a real difference in their community.
We’re more than just accountants
We may not be moonlighting as a contract killer, like Ben Affleck in The Accountant, but we’re anything but boring. I work with accountants who paint, skydive, run nonprofits, fly planes, do stand-up comedy, wish they did stand up-comedy, and more.
But even if I can convince you that we’re cool (we are!), it doesn’t mean you’ll think our profession is. That’s on us. I for one am here to say that what we do matters. That you can help people avoid enormous difficulties and realize their greatest dreams. That you can make a real difference, with great groups of diverse people and exciting, innovative technologies.
I know you don’t think accounting is the coolest profession out there – I know. But maybe, just maybe, it’s more exciting than you may think.
Chris Spurio, CPA, CGMA, is the president of CBIZ Financial Services.
Reprinted with permission from Chris Spurio. Read the original publication here.