Modern Educating Fueling the Accounting Industry

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I’m a proud CPA, but when asked about what I do,  that’s not often what I lead with. I mean, I don’t want to shut off the conversation completely, right? I don’t want them to immediately think of me as the ‘traditional’ accountant that we grew up thinking about. I’d rather them think of me as a mix of Christian Wolff from “The Accountant” and Albert Brennaman from “Hitch”. Cool, but not too cool, and also I know stuff and can make things happen.

Typically, I lead with ‘Financial Consultant’ or ‘Business Advisor’, which is more in line with my day-to-day rather than simplifying what I do to number crunching like Milton and his stapler from “Office Space”.

The broader industry is slowly catching up to the modern accountant who should be viewed as a holistic business advisor. One that understands the impacts and actions of business decisions through the language of numbers. We’re going to explore how this gap is slowly being addressed through education and opportunity.

Where do we Stand Today?

Historically, education in the accounting sector has been…vanilla? Ok, let’s be honest. It’s been pretty poor. The focus has been largely on accounting theory and standardized usage of systems, rather than value extraction and application to business. 

If you LOVED your Accounting 201 class in university, you are a rare breed. Kudos to you. So many individuals have been pushed away from accounting at the educational level or have been intrigued, but intimated, to launch a career in accounting after having years of experience in another field. It’s a difficult nut to crack.

Our industry is facing tremendous headwinds with professionals leaving the industry in droves and fewer and fewer graduates entering the profession. If you listened in your Econ 101 class, the traditional supply and demand model is being flipped upside down and less supply is creating more opportunity.

How is Education Helping?

Let’s walk through two examples about how education in our field is flipping the script.

Example 1

Intuit recently launched their new ProAdvisor Academy (emphasis on the Advisor) and it’s a world apart from the old program. Here are a few highlights as to why this is a big deal:

• The learning is contextual. It’s not just learning a new platform, it’s educating you on how and why it’s important to your client. It creates connectivity to the situations that you face every day.
• You learn from  your peers. Community-style learning and peer proof points provide a tremendous amount of lift when seeking to apply new learnings.
• It’s advisory-centric. As our industry evolves with technology, so must our approaches. Leaning into value extraction is the best thing that newcomers to the industry can learn.
• There is a natural progression. Instead of the learning being so centric around how to utilize a product, they’ve launched a free 30 hour Bookkeeping Certification that provides a baseline for their Level 1 and Level 2 hands-on ProAdvisor courses.

Ok, so this is now a new era of learning that supports widening a talent pipeline and empowers more folks to join the accounting profession. Imagine if your entire bookkeeping team was certified - you’ve immediately up-leveled your entire team and provided more opportunities for those to grow with their foundational knowledge.

Example 2

Continuing Professional Education (CPE) has always been pretty, well, bland. Over the last few years, Earmark has met us where we are at…podcasts. You can get CPE by listening to podcasts, yep, you heard that right. Here are three reasons why that’s awesome:

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• We already listen to them. Whether it’s The Unique CPA, The Accounting Podcast, or The Modern CPA Success Show - these are all podcasts that you can earn CPE from through Earmark.
• You curate CPE specifically to your interests. Want to learn how Erica Goode works 15 hours per week while running her firm? CPE. Want to dive deep into automated reporting from Jason Staats? CPE. Want to listen to CPA/comedian Greg Kyte talk about accounting fraud? CPE.
• It’s simple. No need to sit on a webinar and click on a half-baked poll question to confirm that you’re still somewhere near your computer. Instead, you can fully bake it into your daily rhythm.
  

Again, we’re pointing towards change happening in our industry and creating broader accessibility to individuals to build upontheir skill sets to get more out of their career. These new options are good for our greater industry.

Summary

Where there is smoke, there is fire. The reality is that the number of CPA applicants and accounting graduates has declined for over a decade now. While the current day issue is creating opportunities for those with an accounting skillset today, we must be focused on what the next generation of services and professionals looks like. Tools like these will help shape how we move forward, how we learn, and how we introduce new people to our industry. While there might be fire today, I’m optimistic about tomorrow!

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_{This was lovingly written by yours truly in a paid partnership with Intuit 💚.}