There are a lot of things people don’t know about the accounting profession.
To a certain extent, that’s fine — if they knew how to create a financial statement or prepare a complex tax return, they might start thinking they didn’t need accountants.
But there are many other things that people don’t know about accounting that are actually hurting the profession, basic facts about why it’s great to be an accountant or work with one that could help solve many of the problems that firms are currently facing, if only the world outside the profession were aware of them.
It would be nice to blame the world for its ignorance, but the simple fact is that the accounting profession all too often hides its light under a bushel, making only sporadic efforts to educate clients, prospects and even staff about why, exactly, accountants are so valuable, and why the field is such a spectacular career choice.
With that in mind, here are five things that the profession needs to explain, often and forcefully, to students, educators, staff, clients and anyone else who will listen:
- Young people — particularly minorities — have no idea how great it is to be an accountant. One of the reasons Black and Latinx students don’t pursue accounting in school, according to research conducted by Deloitte as part of the background for its recently launched Making Accounting Diverse & Equitable initiative, is that they don’t see many accountants in their communities, and so aren’t aware of the potential of the field. On a broader scale, when you ask current accountants how they got into the field, it’s astonishing how many were only exposed to it because they had a close relative who was an accountant. The profession needs to do much more to educate high school and college students on how wide-ranging the career opportunities are — from forensic accounting and financial planning to strategic planning, cybersecurity, sustainability accounting and much, much more.
- Your own staff don’t know how rewarding it can be to become a partner. As good as they are with numbers and as familiar as they are with finance, many young staff at accounting firms have no idea how much a partner makes; in fact, they routinely underestimate it by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Giving them a clear sense of that will go a long way to retaining your high-potentials.
- Even if they do know, they often don’t know how to get there. It’s often assumed that young staff understand the steps they need to take and the skills they need to have to become a partner. Assume instead that they don’t — and start cluing them in.
- Your clients don’t know how much you can help them. In an Accounting Today survey of small business clients conducted before COVID-19, the overwhelming majority of them looked to their accountants solely for tax help. The profession’s central role in getting our economy through the pandemic should have enlightened them somewhat, but the fact remains that firms don’t do enough to promote their whole range of services to their clients, or to emphasize the value of the advice they give.
- Your clients don’t know how they can help you. In another Accounting Today survey, more than three-quarters of accountants reported that client referrals were their primary source of new business — but far less than half said that they actually asked for referrals. All you need to do is ask (or, better still, send clients a boilerplate referral letter and ask them to share it).
Remember — the only way to be sure that the world understands accounting is for you to explain it to them!
