Earn free CPE with Earmark! Take your learning on the go and earn NASBA-approved CPE just for listening to The INSIDE Public Accounting Podcast. Simply listen, take a short quiz and download your certificate. Start now on the IPA channel in the Earmark app: INSIDE Public Accounting | Earmark CPE.

The accounting profession has spent years talking about the talent pipeline challenge. But what if the real issue starts earlier?

In the first episode of season two, Chelsea Summers and Rob Brown kick off IPA's new series, Rewriting the Story of Accounting. Their conversation spans everything from outdated stereotypes to overlooked career opportunities, exploring how accounting has evolved and why the profession needs to do a better job communicating the value, variety and long-term opportunities it offers.

They also preview what's ahead in this five-part series, including conversations on firm culture, personal branding and the future of talent in public accounting.

Follow the podcast for future episodes as we continue exploring the trends shaping the accounting profession.

Learn more about INSIDE Public Accounting at: https://insidepublicaccounting.com.

People think of accounting as one job, and it's not. It's really a launching point into forensic accounting, M&A advisory, technology consulting, running your own firm, being a CFO, government, nonprofits. There's not many degrees out there that will open that many doors that have that much stability behind them.

Welcome to the INSIDE Public Accounting Podcast. I'm Rob Brown and I'm here with Chelsea Summers to kick off something a little bit different. Today we're starting with the launch of a new series called Rewriting the Story of Accounting.

I'm so excited about this, Rob. We've been talking about doing series for a while, and there's a real problem in the profession and and I think it's different than what a lot of firms might think it is going on right now.

Yeah, and we're entitling this, if we give it a title, Chelsea, the perception gap, what the profession gets wrong about its own story. And when people talk about what's wrong with accounting right now, they usually point to the pipeline, fewer students taking accounting majors, fewer CPA candidates for qualifications. The talent shortage is showing some signs of improvement. We've talked about that before, but it's still concerning.

Yeah, and over the next several episodes, we're going to make the case that the pipeline problem is a symptom, not the disease. The disease is a story problem, a perception problem.

Yeah, and that's the beauty of going into a series because we can deep dive a little bit instead of giving the headline stats and a little bit behind them. So we're gonna start on this. Episode one, this perception gap, what the profession actually is versus what people think it is and why that gap is costing us valuable talent.

So, Chelsea, let's kick off with the numbers that everybody already knows. While college enrollment, CPA exam candidates, they're trending upwards. There's still not enough people coming through to fill those spots for a growing profession. We know that firms are competing for fewer people walking into the door, especially the right kind of people, that top talent that people talk about. So tell us why this is happening.

So I think one of the reasons is that the story that is being told about the profession is is is bad. It's not the correct story. It's not the profession itself. The profession is genuinely strong, but the story that is in people's heads, especially young people deciding on a career, that story is outdated and frankly, it's unappealing.

not just us saying that. I've interviewed a few heads of CPA societies and they talked about the brand of accounting having an image problem. So this is something that everyone knows about. We're gonna unpack this a little bit, Chelsea. You've got some more behind this. What do you mean when you say the story is bad rather than the work itself being bad?

So think about what a high school senior or a college sophomore pictures when they hear the word accountant. They hear cubicle, spreadsheets, tax season hours. Nobody's picturing a trusted advisor sitting across the table from a business owner and helping them make decisions that change the trajectory of their company. Nobody's picturing someone who understands the business just as good as the person who maybe founded the business. That's the actual job for a huge number of accountants, but it doesn't make it into the story.

We're not dealing with a profession that needs to change actually what it does. And in fact, what accountants do is becoming more and more important and relevant these days. We're dealing with a profession that needs to change how it talks about what it does. It's a different narrative, isn't it?

Yeah, exactly. If if you think the problem is the work itself, you try to change the work. You might lower the bar, make the work easier, make the hour shorter. But when you understand the problem is the story, then you can start trying to change the narrative. And that fix is very different.

Yeah, I want to ask you where the story went wrong. We've all heard stories about you go into accounting, you get chained to a desk for 10 or 15 years in a dark room, you might make partner. That's a profession that's been around for centuries really. Where did the narrative drift? Because we've got a long way from reality now.

And I think it comes down to how the profession talks about itself internally versus how it should be talking externally. INSIDE the profession, everything is framed around technical mastery, credentials, compliance, getting the information right. What and that matters, but it it's an internal value system. It's not a story that pulls a 17-year-old towards a lifelong career.

Yeah, we hear stories about accounting is boring, but accountants themselves tell me they're in the business of risk management. They're they're managing risk for their clients. And it it doesn't sound particularly sexy when you talk about it like that, but we're still selling the the job and the requirements instead of the reward and the fulfillment in the accounting world.

Yeah, and I think that's a great way to put it. You ask most accountants why they love their job, and they won't say, I love

debits and credits and t-charts. They they might say something like, I get a front row seat to how businesses actually work, or people trust me with the most sensitive parts of their lives, and that trust means something to me. That is the story right there. But what

Yeah.

gets put in front of students is The CPA exam pass rates and the grueling busy season hours and there's a disconnect.

Hmm. I'm fond of a term the psychologists use it called proximity bias, where you get so close to what you do, you don't see it as remarkable. So accountants don't see themselves as particularly special. So they end up talking about the toll and and the role instead of the destination and the fulfillment and the reward of what they're doing.

Yeah, nobody's gonna buy a plane ticket by reading about the airport security first.

That's very good. That's a great way of putting it. Okay. So let's make the positive case then. If we're talking about the story, the brand of accounting, and we're talking to someone that's 18, they're making career choices, they're weighing up their options, what's the real story that we want them to hear?

Yeah, so think first is the range.

People think of accounting as one job, and it's not. It's really a launching point into forensic accounting, M&A advisory, technology consulting, running your own firm, being a CFO, government, nonprofits. There's not many degrees out there that will open that many doors that have that much stability behind them.

That's such a great way of putting it. I I was thinking of the term a gateway career because it opens the doors to so many other things and that's unappreciated, misunderstood. People think they're picking a job. I went into teaching and you think, well, this is me for 25, 30, 50 years. And there's so many different things a teacher could lead you to, and accounting is the same. They're actually picking a foundation to multiple careers.

Hmm.

Yeah, I love that. I think the second thing is access. The accountants sit closer to the center of major business decisions than almost anyone else in a company. You're not adjacent to strategy. You're really inside the strategy. Every major decision that a business makes runs through the numbers and eventually through the person who understands those numbers.

And nothing showed that more than the pandemic. Because when businesses were keeping the lights on, who did they call first? It was their accountant, really, because accountants were not just advisors and and guiding the business through keeping those lights on. They were therapists, coaches, counselors, trainers, financial advisors. That was a position of real influence and it still is.

Mm.

Yeah. I think the other one that doesn't get talked about enough is that financial literacy is power. Understanding how money moves, how value is created, how risk gets measured. That's a kind of literacy that benefits you in every part of your life and not just inside of your career.

Yeah, financial literacy. It's not taught enough in schools, let alone in in the degrees that are out there. And we don't big it up enough with the accounting profession. You is there a fourth Chelsea coming up?

I think stability with growth. You can build a career that is secure and that keeps evolving. And that combination is really rare right now. A lot of careers will offer one or the other. This one can offer both if it's positioned correctly.

Is so important career stability. You look at so many stories of corporate layoffs and redundancies, and you just don't know what's coming up. That uncertainty kills people. They've got mortgages to pay, they've got loans to pay off. So the real story, to summarize what you said, it's variety, influence, literacy, stability. Those sound great, but they don't sound like what most people picture when they hear the word accountant.

No, and I think that right there is the gap that we need to overcome.

So in this INSIDE Public Accounting Podcast, we don't just give the problems, we try and give some practical solutions. So let's talk about how we go about this. Why does fixing this narrative matter right now specifically? Why not five years ago? Why not five years from now?

The pipeline problem is going to compound. Every year that the the story doesn't get corrected, you lose another graduating class to other fields. And it's not just the headcount of those individuals. The profession needs people who can carry it forward, who can step into leadership, who can keep earning that public trust. And if the talent isn't coming in the door, the whole foundation of the profession is really going to weaken over time.

Yeah, and who are the ambassadors of the brand now? They are the fifty, sixty year olds, a lot of them are going to retire in the next five years or so. If they're holding the banner and carrying the flag, that needs taking up. So it's not just a recruitment problem, it's a succession or sustainability problem.

Yeah.

Yeah, but I don't want this to sound like doom and gloom because I don't think it is. The profession has every advantage it needs to fix this. It just has to actually tell people what's true about it. Now is a really good time to talk about all the positives, especially with so many changes going on in the accounting profession. AI and technology adoption, disruption in business models with the outside capital, and a shift from traditional compliance work into advisory work.

No.

And you've tapped there into the the frame for everything we're doing in this series. We're telling people what's coming and encouraging everybody, inside and outside, to tell a better story of accounting. So tell us what we've got lined up, Chelsea, with this series.

Yes, we've got a few episodes. One is a special bonus conversation with you, Rob, about personal branding and how individuals inside the profession can carry this message forward.

Yep, and that's something that gets overlooked for sure. We've all got a personal brand and whether we like it or not. If you don't cultivate it deliberately, then people are gonna make it up for themselves. And and that doesn't necessarily serve you nor the accounting profession. And the story just doesn't get rewritten at the institutional level. It gets rewritten one person, one conversation at a time. So we'll be really structured on how to build a better personal brand. That's good for you, it's good for the profession.

Yeah. We're also doing a episode on the culture shift that's already happening inside firms. burnout, rethinking busy season, flexibility becoming the standard instead of the exception. And then younger voices actually shaping how firms operate. I think that conversation is really overdue.

It is and I'm excited to be interviewing Alex Romero at the AICPA because she's been part of the talent and pipeline program now and she's gonna have a lot to say on this. She's gonna be a great guest.

Yeah, Alex is going to talk about the pipeline from the inside, what students are actually hearing and experiencing on college campuses right now. And then we close that episode looking forward, what firms can do, how they can reach students earlier, and what this profession looks like if we actually get this right.

Yeah. So the throughout this whole series, it's exactly what we talked about today. Each episode's gonna take one piece of the jigsaw, one piece of the story that narrative that needs rewriting, and we're gonna dig into it, see if we can pull it apart, maybe put it back together again and make it better.

Yeah, that's it. I'm really excited to jump into the series with you, Rob. I think it's something that we need to have the conversation about. And I think just shining a light on it is really gonna make a difference.

Well, it's great to be kicking it off with you. You've got a at the INSIDE Public Accounting engine room. You've got so many stats and stories behind the scenes, Chelsea. It's going to be great for our audience. And if this resonates with you, do hit like. We're growing the show. Subscribe. Send this to a colleague you feel needs to hear it. We'll see you next time on the INSIDE Public Accounting Podcast.