Danielle Supkis Cheek wants your opinions. As the incoming chair of the AICPA PCPS Technical Issues Committee, Cheek is now in charge of voicing the concerns of CPAs and businesses to standards boards, and it's her job to make sure accountants and their clients are heard.
In addition to her work on the Technical Issues Committee, Cheek currently serves as the director of entrepreneurial advisory services at PKF Texas in Houston. She has also received a Woman of Excellence Award from the Federation of Houston Professional Women and the AICPA’s Outstanding Young CPA Award in 2016, among numerous other accolades. Cheek also serves as a adjunct professor at her alma mater, Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business.
We recently caught up with Cheek to discuss what she has planned for the Technical Issues Committee, and what professionals can do to have more influence over the standards they end up applying.
What made you first want to become an accountant?
My mother told me to take an accounting class in college, no matter what I majored in, because it would be useful. I did not major in accounting and ultimately what I was working on in college ended up not being a good fit.
So, in all candor, my “Intro to Accounting” course had made sense to me, and I wanted a job. As they say, the rest is history. I am very lucky that I happened to fall into a profession that I love.
What are the most important issues to you as the chair of the AICPA PCPS Technical Issues Committee? Why?
I have a long list of super-technical, super-nerdy items. However, the most important thing that the Technical Issues Committee does is [to] make sure the voice of private entities and their CPAs are heard and bring awareness to the potential implications of these emerging issues. The common misconception is that standard-setters don’t care about {insert common complaint here.}
However, I have personally found that is the furthest from the truth: the standard-setters do read your letters and take them into account when drafting final guidance. I encourage you to write a letter when a standard impacts you (or your client, if applicable). You don’t have to be overly technical in your response or even answer all the questions; your voice is important. You can give the implications by citing your (or your client’s) specific example.
For example, right now the Auditing Standards Board is proposing changes to the attest standards which could expand the level of AU-P type of services that firms would be permitted to perform.
You can see other examples in our
What do you hope to accomplish over your first year as chair?
While I’d like to think the TIC should be a household name, that is not going to happen. TIC has done an amazing job of making sure the voice of private entities and their CPAs are heard in the standard setting process. We have made this offer to all the standard-setters we work with – if you have questions on how something may impact our constituency or need us to do some outreach, please let TIC know.
Also, I would like to put it out there that if there is a technical problem that our constituency is seeing in a standard that impacts private entities or their CPAs, please reach out to a TIC member or our AICPA technical staff. (Please note the TIC is an advocacy-based committee. We do not prepare interpretive guidance, nor do we provide technical research or FAQ services. Please reach out to the AICPA technical hotlines, CPEA, or other similar services as needed.)
What are your biggest aspirations for the profession going forward? What do you hope will change in the profession over the next decade?
Technology is going to change the way we do things in accounting in ways that we cannot even imagine. The difficulty in a profession that is based on accounting for the past means that it is hard to see what is coming in the future.
Recently, I have seen a shift in the people that I meet wanting to embrace technology rather than fear it. I hope that in 10 years our profession is on the cutting edge of innovation and technology.
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