Ep: 2 Top experts answer: "Will the next generation of accountants be any different from their predecessors?"
The Accounting Influencers Podcast, hosted by Rob Brown, asks critical questions of the experts, leaders and influencers who shape the decision-making of accountants, CPAs and finance professionals. Today we ask:
Will the next generation of accountants be any different from their predecessors?
You'll hear insightful and passionate answers from these 5 experts and influencers:
Amy Horner | Change Enthusiast, Business Strategy Consultant, Keynote Speaker, and Podcast Host
Amy Vetter | CPA, speaker, yogi and CEO of the B3 Method Institute
Andrew Argue | Founder of Instead.com and Corvee.com for smarter tax decisions
Anne-Kathrin Steinröder | Head of the ETL GLOBAL Network of accounting firms
Apoorv Dwivedi | Founder of Fixyr Marketing, strategic marketing advisor for accounting firms
Tune into more on this weekly show for short, sharp episodes that keep you informed of what's happening in the accounting world and the whole ecosystem of consultants, organizations, vendors and advisors who serve them.
This episode was first published in an earlier season of this podcast.
◣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━◢
If you'd like to sponsor the show and elevate your brand with our audience, reach out to show host Rob Brown on LinkedIn and his team will reach out to fix up a chat to explore.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/therobbrown
You can also check out other Accounting Influencers Shows on YouTube: https://bit.ly/AI-youtube
To learn more about the Accounting Influencers Roundtable or AIR, a community of experts, tech providers, software vendors, consultants and professionals serving the accounting profession, go to https://accountinginfluencers.com
You might qualify for a golden ticket for one of our members meetings to see what AIR is all about. Great for building your personal brand, sourcing strategic partners and making valuable industry connections.
If the world wants to know what the world is thinking and to stay relevant and competitive, you need to know what's working and what isn't. You want to peer over the garden wall of your peers and see what they're doing. This is the Accounting Answers Podcast, answering and asking the questions that you have on your mind. And we're asking the people whose opinions and insights are super valuable. I'm Rob Brown, your host, and in recent months I've reached out to 111 of the world's most influential experts, leaders, and advisors in the accounting world. And I've asked them the same five questions, and that means over 500 brilliant, passionate, and articulate perceptions inside viewpoints of professionals with skin in the game. All of these guests play in the accounting finance and tech sphere. They work in through or with accounting firms. They all have the experience, the viewpoints, the interests. They all care. Together, they give you the whole picture of what the next generation of accountants will look like, the realm of proactive advice, what's changing accounting and how, and what the tech and software vendors can do better in this space. I'll also ask them to give three predictions for accounting over the next few years, and you won't believe the variety of answers and perspectives that come out from that one question. And in this show, coming out every working day for the next few weeks, you're going to hear every single answer. Each episode, we'll focus on one of the five questions and give you five answers from our experts. Let's get moving with today's episode. Today, we're soliciting the views of our accounting experts on what the next generation of professionals will look like, specifically, will there be any difference to the generation that's gone before? And if so, how? It seems obvious that they'll be different, but what's driving that, and what is it going to mean for the ability of the accounting profession to attract talent and drive change? Let's hear from our experts right now. Let's hear from Amy Horner, a change enthusiast, business strategy consultant, keynote speaker and podcast host who brings innovative ideas and strategies to businesses looking to thrive in changing markets. I think they're already different, and I think that's what we're seeing as the industry continues to change. And as the people who are working in the industry continues to change, the younger generation wants different things than we did, so I'm a Gen Xer, and very influenced, of course, by the boomers. When we came out of college, the boomers were in charge, and they were in charge. And now we see Gen X starting to be in charge. And I think we are a little bit more receptive to the following generations and what we came in. We do see a lot more collaboration and camaraderie cross-generationally than I remember experiencing when I first came out in the late '90s when my career started. As a result of that willingness to collaborate and bring the cross-generational, tough word, right, camaraderie, you, I think we can expect to see leadership roles looking different. Not the person that's been around the longest or the person that has worked the longest in the corner office. What we will start to see is people being able to contribute because of what they bring to the table, and tenure is not going to be the driving leadership focus or qualification. I think we'll start to see people being valued because they are different. They have different ideas. They bring the technology capabilities that I think we, as we get older, are not as crisp on. And so I do think you're going to see a change in leadership as these younger professionals come in and really start to make their impact on a profession. Next is Amy Vetta, CPA speaker Yogi, and CEO of the B3 Method Institute, blending her expertise and accounting with mindfulness practices to promote balance leadership and well-being in a professional world. I didn't think in essence, accountants are the same as far as the skill set of accounting and enjoying what accounting does. But I do think the mindset is different, which is interesting because I don't think my mindset was actually that different. From this generation, when I started accounting, I didn't like the word "gowards." I didn't want my life taken over. However, I didn't know there was a choice, and people just didn't speak up. And so I think in this generation, the biggest difference is that I think they actually think the city, but they're actually actioning their prioritizing their life before their work. So what that is going to mean for accounting firms is that they can no longer put their heels on the stand about changing their culture and their firm and the way that they work, that if they truly want to recruit the next generation of accountants, then this is going to have to change and we can no longer wait. Joining the conversation now is Andrew Argu, the founder of Instead.com and Carvy.com, dedicated to helping businesses and individuals make smarter tax decisions through innovative software solutions. I think that probably every generation is a little bit different, and I think everybody thinks the next generation is worse than the last generation. Being said, I do think that they are going to be very different. Big piece of it that I'll talk about on a number of these points today is just their relationship to technology. There's still some people out there that started their career working with green sheets and still use 10 keys with receipts on them, even still. Some of the young kids today, I have a three month old baby, might grow up maybe never using a computer. Maybe they use computers in a different way than we're used to where we sit down and type on them. I do think that these computers are getting so good that a lot of the next generation is never going to have to do some of the fundamental accounting work. They might never have to write a journal entry. They might never have to post a transaction because a lot of that stuff is going to be automated. They've got to figure out how to do some higher level work out of the gates. What is it like to start your career as a director of accounting where you were never a staff or a senior or a manager? I think that's an interesting question and those people are going to have to figure out how do you learn something that you never did in a way that maybe the previous generation didn't have to do. I'm now insights from Anne Catherine Steinroder, head of the ETL Global Network of Accounting Phones where she spearheads initiatives to foster collaboration and innovation across the global accounting landscape. In a way, yes, as things are developing all the time, talking in pictures of cliches that the profession of accountants is moving away a little bit from the little gray men, fronting numbers in the back offices to a more active role in advising science and irrelevant and strategic and also creative way. Although this process has been going on for quite a while already, but I think it's receiving a new push through the technological innovations in automation, AI and so on taking place at the moment. The next generation of accountants will be more advisory focused, relying on technology to solve the number of or basically to solve the number fronting part and rather focus on the advisory role that they have. They will be well basically advising in or can be advising any part of the company from the procurement department, sales, cut folding, sea level, whatever, always depending on the data they receive from their systems and for that, in a way, a more diverse skill set is needed. So, a lot of accessibility is needed to adapt to an ever-changing business environment and basically to analyze the data or to read the data and to contextualize the data that they receive from the tools. And in that sense, accounting may be also becoming as a profession less about refining one skill set through certifications, but rather through growing competencies over time in the sense of lifelong learning as we all know and skills development. In that sense, I think the next generation of accountants will look different from the little grey man that we have in mind when thinking about accountants. We now turn to our Paul Duivady, founder of Fixa Marketing, a strategic marketing advisor for accounting firms, bringing cutting-edge strategies to the forefront of accounting firm growth. Yeah, absolutely. I think what you've got in this next generation is you've got a whole cohort, a whole generation that's been raised on tech. So they're tech-native, right? They don't remember a time when there was no internet. They've been raised on such smartphones and they've had this interconnectedness constantly. They're used to instant delivery, they're used to being able to whip out a phone or ask Siri or Alexa questions and get instant answers. So they've grown up in this environment where they're very tech-savvy and they're very demanding of tech as well. So that's the first part. And then I think the second part is we're also seeing a whole generation that's maybe looking for a different career path than what we saw 20, 30 years ago in the accounting industry. And it's not so much that those individuals have changed, but what has changed is that the industry is now competing with other industries for talent, right? So folks that are looking potentially going into accounting versus, say, going into tech sectors, or in tech or various other things, right, and they're looking at the options and what's available to them in comparing them to each other. I think you can see a lot more of those types of demands as well. So there you have five prior answers to the question. Will the next generation of accountants be any different from their predecessors? Each work in day of the week, Monday through Friday, we give the insights of five top influences in the accounting world on this critical area of next-gen accountants. It's 25 valuable perspectives, viewpoints, and best thinking every week. And with the fresh week comes a fresh question and more thoughts from the best accounting leaders and influencers we can find. Thanks for listening to the Accounting Answers podcast and sharing the show with your friends. If you want to join the conversation, you can plug into our community of influencers at accountinginfluencers.com and check out our virtual speed networking events. These happen every few months for North America and UK Europe. The opportunities to raise your profile, build valuable connections and share your thoughts with influential peers. Until next time, this is your host Rob Brown saying stay informed, stay relevant and stay connected. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING]
