Words are shifty things. When you say them, they mean one thing, but when other people hear them, they may mean something entirely different — and there's often no way to tell until it's too late.
Take, for instance, the word "trusted," as in "most trusted advisor." Accountants definitely fill that role for their clients, but what accountants think it means and what their clients think it means may not be the same thing. The separate definitions are both positive — clients really do value their accountants — but they point in very different directions for the future of the profession.
The accountant's definition of "trusted" positions them as something of a wise counselor, a source of canny solutions for the present and sage advice for the future — a person of integrity who can be trusted to look after the best interests of their client, and guide them in the achievement of their goals, both in business and in their personal lives.
A good illustration of the client's idea of "trusted," on the other hand, came up in a survey of small businesses that Accounting Today conducted a while back, in which the respondents uniformly expressed their appreciation for their accountants, and then equally uniformly said that what they valued most was that, "My accountant always saves me money on my taxes." Saving on taxes is a good thing, but it's a lesser form of trust — it's about being reliable, in the same way a plumber or an electrician or a handyman (or, dare we say it, a computer) is reliable.
Don't misunderstand me — it's great to be reliable, and we all want a plumber and an electrician and a handyman that we can rely on when something comes up. But that's not who we turn to when we're doing something big — when we're constructing a factory or an office for our company, or building a home for our family, we don't turn to our plumber or our electrician or our handyman; we turn to an architect.
We trust architects with our dreams, and we rely on plumbers to handle leaks.
To be sure, we pay plumbers and other reliable professionals a lot, and we value and trust them, but it's that different kind of trust. Unless we're having a plumbing-specific problem, we don't think of them; more important, if we find a plumber who's more reliable (or cheaper), we don't think much about switching.
That's why the position of trust that accountants occupy matters going forward: Soon enough, artificially intelligent computers will be just as reliable as accountants, if not more so, when it comes to much of the work of saving money on taxes, or closing the books, or creating a basic financial plan, if not more so. Being "trusted" in the sense of being reliable will not be enough to thrive in a very competitive future.
But being "trusted" in the higher sense of being turned to for advice when it matters, of being seen as a guide to the future and listened to because you have a proven interest in furthering someone's success — that type of trust can never be disintermediated. Deepening that trust is the impetus behind the profession's ongoing move toward more advisory-based services, and it's a natural fit for accountants, who bring exactly the sort of integrity, experience and business savvy that that higher role requires.
They just have to stop being satisfied with being reliable.
