Randy Crabtree, CPA, the co-founder of Tri-Merit Specialty Tax Professionals and host of "The Unique CPA" podcast, spotlights the mental health issues facing the accounting profession.
Transcription:
Dan Hood (00:03):
Welcome to On the Air with Accounting Today, I'm editor in chief Dan Hood. There are times, like tax season or audit season, when accounting can be a pretty grueling profession. And then there are times, like the past three years, that can be pretty grueling for everyone. And when you put those together, you end up with a lot of accountants and tax professionals who are burned out, who are on the verge of burning out, and that's a big issue for the profession. Here to talk about all that and what firms and accountants can do about it is Randy Crabtree. He's the CPA and the co-founder of Tri-Merit Specialty Tax Pros, as well as the host of his own podcast, "The Unique CPA," which you ought to listen to after listening to this. But for now, Randy, thanks for joining us.
Randy Crabtree (00:36):
Well, thank you. I appreciate you having me here. This is actually really a thrill for me, so thank you.
Dan Hood (00:41):
Well, between the two of us, this is a summit of the podcasts. It's exciting stuff. Now we're glad to have you with us and particularly about this topic because it's an important one that gets some focus, but I don't think as much anywhere near as much as it should. And maybe we can start by wrapping our heads around how serious a problem mental health issues are for the profession.
Randy Crabtree (01:01):
So in my opinion, it's serious. Is everybody having a mental health breakdown in the profession? No, but in general, I mean, I do a presentation on mental health and so I am able to look up stats and I am out in front of people and they'll tell me their stories. And what I found is just actually through ChatGPT did a little research on there for the what's going on in our profession from a statistic standpoint. And we are a profession that is more likely to have caused depression than most professions out there. At least this is something that was a survey done by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Hazard — or Safety and Health. And they found out that we were a higher percentage of depression in our profession and county and the AICPA did a study showing that they, almost half of CPAs have felt burnout or experiencing burnout. And in reality, they did a follow up survey on that shows that has increased in the last handful of years. So yeah, I think it is a serious issue and it needs, like you said, probably not getting enough recognition right now, but in general, I think the recognition and the talking about it has increased in the last handful of years.
Dan Hood (02:24):
Excellent. Well, let's hope there's more of it. And it's probably worth mentioning, I mean you sort of mentioned two things right there. Depression causing of depression, there's diagnosable mental health issue of depression, but there's also burnout. Burnout itself is sort of, I, I'm sure there's a diagnosis for it, but it's also not, I don't know that people would necessarily, when they say, oh, is it a mental health issue? It is, but it's one that effects can affect everybody and it has nothing to do with your childhood or any of the, it's literally just working too hard and too much and with too much pressure on you for too many different angles.
Randy Crabtree (02:57):
Yeah, it's really good at Googling things and everybody has the same definition of burnout and basically it's a workplace phenomenon. So it's not a life phenomenon, it's a workplace phenomenon where we just feel this overbearing, non-controlled stress that we just can't get out of and then all of a sudden we're less productive and we're less excited about going to the office. So yeah, it's a problem. But yeah, at least Google has taught me that.
Dan Hood (03:26):
Well, I'm glad you brought that up. The notion of the less productivity obviously it's important because of the quality of life issues and we want people to be happy and enjoying their lives and all that sort of stuff. But it's also a serious productivity issue if people aren't engaged with their work or if they're feeling like they just can't do any more of it. This is a serious problem for the profession, a profession that already has troubles finding and keeping talent. Right.
Randy Crabtree (03:49):
Oh yeah. And then I know that's a hot topic for you as well, but the whole retention and attracting employees. So if we continue to at least have this perception of burnout and it's not just perception, it's reality, but there's different levels of it. If we keep having this, it's just going to continue to hurt the profession because we are lacking employees right now. Yep,
Dan Hood (04:12):
Yep. Absolutely. Alright, well you mentioned right, that over the last couple of years it's gotten worse or certainly, I mean some of it may be just diagnosed, right? We're just realizing, hey, wait, this is, some of that's just having words for it. How often do we talk about burnout before the pandemic, but some of it's also caused by the pandemic. Is there any way to tease out how much of this is just endemic to accounting, right, mean we owe taxis and is always going to be brutal and how much of it is really just the last three years have been terrible.
Randy Crabtree (04:38):
I think the last three years has if I can see the word correctly, exasperated it. Did I get that right?
Dan Hood (04:45):
Pretty well if that's good. Exasperated is there. I think exacerbated it's worked as well.
Randy Crabtree (04:49):
All right. So actually made
Dan Hood (04:52):
It, they can't see it on podcast, but I've got a dictionary behind me, so that's,
Randy Crabtree (04:56):
I need to get one of those. In fact, Google, I can Google the word maybe that's it. Yeah, it, it's definitely made it worse. Obviously the last three years, going back to March of 2020 or February, 2020, there's been a lot going on in our world and in our profession and everything that has really gall on to helping our economy stay afloat to get through the pandemic at the very beginning was running through the tax repairs, was running through the accountant. It was, I mean you got the P P P and the E R C and the advanced tax credit payments and the restaurant revitalization grant, and I could go on and on. And that all ran through us as a profession. And so obviously that just added to this overwhelming, nonstop deadline yo meet and client expectations that we've had and put on ourselves. A lot of it has been ourselves, but the pandemic definitely increased that stress level because of everything we had to do to make sure that our clients survived, which really is what we were doing.
Dan Hood (06:06):
Well now see, you mentioned that some of this is, are a fair amount of it is stuff that accountants put on themselves and helping clients survive, right? That's exactly what accountants do and one of the things that makes them the most trusted advisors is right, they're always there with an answer, always got to when you call them at two o'clock in the morning, which why you call 'em at two o'clock in the morning, I don't know, but you do. Or why you call them at their kids' soccer games or on their one day of the week or they get some time alone and they're constantly clients are looking for help and accountants are constantly looking to help them. And that's a burden that accountants to a certain extent put on themselves in the sense of, we're always going to be available, we're always going to be there to help which is honorable and noble and one of the reasons why it's a great profession, but it's also kind of creates these sort of self-inflicted wounds. How much of this would you say is this embedded culture of overwork for accounting?
Randy Crabtree (06:52):
So you said it perfectly is we as a profession, we as professionals within the profession, we feel it's our responsibility to help everybody. There's a problem we have, the solution there is we want to help them business grow, we want to help them have a good retirement for the individuals we work with. We have the answers. And so what we do is we're just constantly going. We're constantly, Hey, I have another solution, another problem I have to solve. I have another a client that is going to go out of business if I don't step in and I don't do this. And so we are constantly looking to help others. The problem is we forget about helping ourselves when we do that because we neglect our physical health, we neglect our mental health. And like you said, we're on 24 7. We don't disconnect from work, which I think is extremely important. We don't do it 10 o'clock at maybe, hopefully not 2:00 AM <laugh>, but 10 o'clock at night, we're still responding in the emails, teams, messages, slack messages, text messages, whatever. And so this is I think a personality, and I not can say a problem because that's why we do this. We love to help other people, but it a personality has caused a lot of these problems and there are solutions. It's not just a problem. We can do things about it.
Dan Hood (08:20):
Well, we're going to get into a lot of those I hope and in a little bit. But before we do that, I do want to go back because there's, in addition to the perfectly laudable desire to help when one of the things that makes accountants great, there is also maybe a less laudable tendency, and maybe I'm just seeing this myself you can tell me if I'm wrong about it, but I think there's also a tendency to sort of glorify the grind. There's always, oh, I worked 17 days a week throughout tax season. I never saw my family for 13 years between 1986 and 1999. And that's just what had to do. That's the way it is because we're accountants, and like I said, that's sort of the flip side of the world, always available. I mean, there's a little bit of that there. The glorification of we just work crazy all the time.
Randy Crabtree (09:07):
Well, and part of that is because we're selling hours I think. And so we want to make more money. We have to work longer because I get paid by the hour when I am in this profession, whether I own my firm or whether I'm working for somebody else. And that's what glorified, like you said, is this, Hey, the more you're sitting at your desk, the more your supervisor sees you sitting there. If you come in early and you leave late and you're there on weekends, you're the person that people look at and say, oh, look at what a good worker here that person is. She is, he is. Look how hard they're working. That has nothing to do with your profitability, sitting at your desk for the number of hours. You can get around that with other ways, but that's how we've kind of got into this, that hey, one, we're bill by the hour, which if we listen to Ron Baker, maybe that should be <laugh> changing. And he's been preaching that for a long time. He's
Dan Hood (10:05):
Probably burnt out on it. I think at this point
Randy Crabtree (10:10):
I,
Dan Hood (10:13):
We all know Ron, and we know Ron. He's definitely not burnt out on that. He's excited, still excited about it, but I would be burnt out after that long anyway. Sorry, I interrupted. Go ahead.
Randy Crabtree (10:23):
So this is what I love, the fact that we can laugh and talk about interesting topics at the same time. And so that's my whole thing is that we put this on ourselves with that whole, the longer we sit at the best, the more profitable we're going to be. And there's so many ways that you can be more efficient with your time that you can work less, be more profitable, have a better work-life balance, and still get all the work done that you thought you wouldn't have time to do.
Dan Hood (10:52):
And that should be the goal, get the work done, but not burn yourself out doing it. I want to talk about all the ways you've talked about the, or mentioned that we can that firms and individual accountants can fight off burnout and better their balance and be happier and less crazed. But we need to take a quick break. Alright, we're back. Talk with Randy Crabtree about burnout and how to prevent it and what causes, we talked a little bit about what caused it what causes it, the different aspects of it. Some of it's just inescapable of being the sort of role that accountants take. They're just naturally going to be in a position where there's a lot of work for them to do and a lot of their clients need 'em, right? But then there's also a lot of it that's we'll call it, or avoidable, let's put it that way, be avoidable.
(11:37)
It's a better way to put it. I don't want to burn anybody out on this podcast by being mean and saying it's all their fault. It's not, honestly, now that I think about it, that's really a terrible approach to take to it. That's a terrible approach to any kind of mental health issue is to say, well, it's probably your fault, probably any qualified therapist, which I'm obviously not would say that's the worst thing you could say to someone <laugh> with it. So I apologize. I'm sorry. Now that I realize it, I will stop. But there are built-in factors to the profession that make it difficult to avoid this sort of stuff. Let's talk about ways people can stave off burnout or avoid burnout. And maybe we can start it from a firm perspective. What confirms do accounting firms do or employers in the field to help make sure that their staff don't get burned out?
Randy Crabtree (12:24):
I think just in many different programs. So I would mention before I do this presentation on mental health in a profession and I do many presentations, that's one of the most common ones that people want to talk about now, which is I think positive because they want to bring this out. And so just doing things like that, bringing it out into the open, talk about what's going on, if you're having an issue, what we could do. So companies, it's not individuals that bring me in to do this presentation, it's the leadership. So I think as the leadership, you have to start to initiate programs. There was one managing partner of a top hundred CPA firm. I won't say his name and he won't be afraid if I did, I don't think. But after one of my presentations, he talks about how he's dealing with anxiety he has for a long time and how he's trying to handle that.
(13:15)
And what he's done in his firm is they bring in just a mental health coach that's available like a consultant, an advisor, a therapist that's just available all the time. When people are in the office, you can just go talk to this person, put in programs in place about most health insurance plans, have this. You can go see a counselor, a therapist through your health insurance, just letting everybody know that this is part of our program that you can do this. Don't be vulnerable. I mean that's why the biggest things as a leader in a firm, share your story. Don't hide under the fact that $3,500 hours a year of billable is the pride that I take in. No, be vulnerable with where you are. And just as a quick story on that, I did the presentation for a firm recently and after the presentation, there's multiple people that come in and talk about that.
(14:15)
They start to open up about what they're going through from a burnout and depression or whatever standpoint. And after this last presentation and my presentation's not doom and glow, it's hey, we have solutions too. But after this last one, the managing partner of this large firm came up and was vulnerable. He started just sobbing, telling his story of going through mental health problems and sharing that. And do you know what that meant to all the rest of the people sitting in there, that vulnerability? I think it was huge. And they're installing programs now for this. So I think that's a big part of what we could do.
Dan Hood (14:54):
That's fantastic. No, those are great. I'm glad you mentioned the insurance aspect because more and more insurance companies just have it and it's totally available and I don't think anybody knows about it or they're not promoted as much as you can. And as you say that vulnerability at top or willingness to talk about it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to share all the details of your mental health, but normalizing the notion that people get burned out, people get anxious, people have anxiety, people get depression, all these things happen. They're not unique to accounting, they're not unique to our firm. They just happen to everybody in their life at some point. And there are all kinds of resources available. Let's talk about what those resources are. So I mean, think that's a great idea. Those are great approaches and well, that firms can do it. As we say, so many insurance companies have that, right? Cause they recognize, they know how much of an issue that is and they're just looking at the dollars and cents. It's not necessary about the people. So when you add the fact that you care about the people, sorry, I interrupted you. I know you wanted to add something else.
Randy Crabtree (15:47):
No, no. So what I was going to say is the insurances, I use that personally and so I, I'm be vulnerable. I'll mention my story at any time, but I went through depression and P T S D and panic attacks after a medical issue I had. But it really was, as I was recovering, it was also my job was contributing to not being able to mentally recover. And I used that insurance on our end and didn't even know that existed until I started researching. So I think the important that the importance, important aspect of that is people know that it exists because almost like you said, almost every assurance program now has this available to you.
Dan Hood (16:30):
Well, and it's an excellent point to bring up about you can have all kinds of mental health issues from other things in your life, but then they get intertwined with your work. So people get all kinds of problems when you have other medical problems for instance. And huge numbers of people can be a fairly <laugh>, it may not be as long lasting, but it could be a fairly devastating sort of health issue, physical health issue that leaves you all with all kinds of lingering anxiety, nervousness concern. And when you roll those in and then suddenly you're working 18 hours a day because as you say P P P and E R C and C T C and all the other anxiety inducing acronyms those things all play together. They intertwine and they can be either become a vicious circle where everything sort of interacts and drags you down or you can hopefully get a virtual spiral out or where you, by changing one thing, you can make something else better, which makes something else better, which makes something else better.
(17:29)
Excellent. All right. So that's what firms can do. Firms can prioritize getting those programs out if they don't have them, making them and then making sure that the staff know about them. And then she said started normalizing the conversation about mental health and making sure people feel comfortable saying to a manager, for instance, I'm going to take tomorrow cause I need a little mental health day, got to be out tomorrow or next week or whatever. And then also being vulnerable at the top. What can individuals do about it? The individual account, what can they do to improve their health or stave off burnout?
Randy Crabtree (18:00):
So do we have two more hours yet? Yeah,
Dan Hood (18:02):
We'll just set aside the weekend and we'll just
Randy Crabtree (18:06):
So let me list about five things out. Try to go through these real quick and you can interrupt whenever you want and go into it. But let me start with simple, just simple changes in mindset is a big part of it. Just mindset changes that I don't have to be change to my desk nonstop. Those think names. So one thing that I personally do on my calendar is 10:00 AM 2:00 PM go for a walk with my wife and dog because I've been working at home. We're a fairly decent size firm. We have 60 people, but we've always been a remote firm as well. And so for 16 years now. And so that's one thing I do when I'm not traveling. I know 10 o'clock, two o'clock we are going for a walk, no phones with us. Little change. It's a 15 minute walk, but that's me unchaining from my desk. There's bigger steps we can do.
(19:12)
Have a manag partner of a firm out of Iowa and she talks about this full focus system that she's installed in the firm free to focus, I can't think of the author's name, Michael Hyatt maybe where it's just let's identify certain times where individuals, it's not us as a firm, but us as an individual have more energy. For me it's the morning, my morning. Then I would block that out. My calendar's blocked out, my phone's turned off. I have automatic responses on my email that people know that this is the time where I'm doing these high brain power tests because they have the most energy in the afternoon. Maybe I have less energy, maybe that's when I'm returning the emails. Maybe that's what I'm review. Well, I dunno if reviewings a good maybe that's what I'm doing some less brain power activity. Reviewing is important, but doing that, so I could go on that and I'm no expert, she's really good at this. But identifying times of the day where you personally have more energy and get those high value tests done. Then just as a side note, they've gone from before installing the system, let's say they were all working 60 plus hours a week during tax season in back in my day, that was even low.
(20:34)
But now they have a program in place that you cannot work more than 45 hours a week during tax season. That's the max you can work. And they've been tracking this for the last three years. They've gone, I think from 55 to 50 to now 45, they've been more profitable working less hours. Nice. Because they use this time so much, much better. Yeah, that's awesome. So that's another thing. Another thing, oh, one other, just don't be on 24 7. We talked about that a little already. Just be able to disconnect. But this is an important thing. Another person that I've talked to, he's got this great idea of just turning off at the end of the day because we are always on. And so he has a ritual, I can go through it real quick, but you can expand on these. He says, at the end of the day, bookmark your work so that you're not thinking all night, what am I going to do when I get in the morning? You already know because your evening self told your morning self what you're going to do. So bookmark, you could stop thinking about train your brain to shut down on that.
(21:38)
Do a instead of plan. Hey, when I get home, instead of thinking about work, I'm going to read a book. I'm going to make dinner, I'm going to watch the show with my spouse. I'm going to do this. So have a plan and train your brain that it's not going to be checking your email every 10 minutes. It's something else. And then the third thing is just a ritual around that so that you, again, training your brain, you do a ritual, you slam your computer shut, you get on the ground and do pushups. You meditate whenever it is. Just some plan that your brain installs that the day's done
Dan Hood (22:15):
Right to mark the break
Randy Crabtree (22:16):
And recharge because you need that evening to recharge. I mean, other simple things you can do is prioritize. Work out prioritize eating healthy. Although I'm a big craft beer fan, so the calorie has not
Dan Hood (22:32):
Mental health. That's mentally healthy.
Randy Crabtree (22:34):
<laugh>. There you go. There you go. It does my instead of plan.
Dan Hood (22:38):
There you go,
Randy Crabtree (22:40):
<laugh>, go. I'm a craft beer at the end of the day. <laugh>
Dan Hood (22:42):
The, huh? That, but that's a great I example of the kind of, right, it's a, it marks, it's a milestone that marks the switch. I'm switching from all work to recharging time kind of. Yeah,
Randy Crabtree (22:52):
No, and so, I mean, I can go on and on. Other things we can do, but there are plans, there's programs, there's things you can do as individuals, and I know people are thinking when I'm saying this, well, I can't leave my desk for 15 minutes. I can't, and I'd even say this and I can't not eat at my desk. I, because I have to work. That's valuable time. Then believe me, you're going to be so much more energetic and refreshed if you take time for yourself and just get out of that mindset. So mindset is a big part of it.
Dan Hood (23:22):
Well, yeah, and there's no question you can definitely get away from your desk. You can, there's no one, no one's going to catch on fire, nothing. No one's going to die. No planes are going to fall from the sky or anything like that if you leave your desk for a 15 minute walk. But on the other hand, the impact on you can be and your dog can be tremendous. Now, those are all fantastic, and I think one, if there's a thread that's tying 'em together is there's a certain amount of intentionality about your day. It's really sort of examining your day and yourself and knowing when you work best, how you work best, what's the worst kind of interruption for you, you or you least want to be interrupted when it's okay for you to be interrupted. All that sort of stuff is very much sort of requires you to take control of your day and your work life a little bit.
Randy Crabtree (24:02):
Yep, for sure. Just a couple things if I get through it, because this I think is important. Yeah, please. These are great. So many times people feel uncomfortable being themselves at work. Like I'm at work, I'm the auditor now I'm the tax preparer. Now I am not the craft beer enthusiast, I am not the hir, I am not the mountain biker, I am not whatever, because I'm in work mode. I think it's extremely important to bring yourself to work, not just your work, self to work. And so if a company will promote that and encourage it, honestly, you'll have a better work environment because people will share their passions with each other. They'll talk about, they'll look forward to going into the office if the offices is where the work happens. That's not always the case these days, but I think that, and I'm a big fan of John Garrett, and that's what John
Dan Hood (24:57):
Says. Yeah, I was going to just say his, you bring your hand,
Randy Crabtree (24:59):
And so I think that is so important that we're all individuals and let us all be that and incorporate your passion. I mean, it may not be easy, but if you could incorporate your passion into work. If my passion is craft beer and now I want to start serving the craft brewing industry through our profession, I can start with one client. I can go to my supervisor or my manager or my partner and say, Hey, I really love talking to craft beer industry. I know a lot of people on that. Would it be okay if I try to build a business around that, a segment of our business around that? Man, if you could incorporate your passion with what you're doing, I can. How can you lose?
Dan Hood (25:44):
No, it's fantastic, Clint. And even if you can, it's just say one of the things when you talk about that ritual of sort of closing off the workday, work will expand to fill the time work. Work will always expand to fill anytime you give it. And so it's easy to forget that you're not just the auditor, not just the taxpayer but if you're bringing your passions to work, you're remembering all the time, there's a reason I leave at the end of the day. There's a reason I close down my computer or leave the home office and go out to the fridge or wherever. If you're brewing it out in the garage, wherever you're
Randy Crabtree (26:16):
Buying other people's beer, it's not better
Dan Hood (26:17):
Than, I'm not brewing anything yet. I've tried it once. It was a disaster. But the point is, if you're constantly remembering there are other things, then work it helps contain it. Which isn't to say, I mean at all points, we want to remember accountants are one of the reasons they're great and one of the reasons they're trust is because they work so hard which makes it all the more important that they take all the steps you're talking about to make sure that they preserve that recharging time. So that's great. Alright. As you say, we could probably talk for another two to three days on this because there is so many, and particularly the specifics of how to go about preserving yourself from burnout, which are great. I wish we had, like I said, two, three more days to go through those. But any final thoughts on burnout, mental health how the profession should be handling them, or any other great tips you want to share?
Randy Crabtree (27:02):
Yeah, so everything we talked about ready, I think the bottom line is just take time for yourself. And I know it's hard because that's not a billable minute when I'm taking time for myself, but believe me, you'll recharge when you have time for yourself. So I think that's important. I guess one last thing is we don't have to help everybody. There are certain clients that will thrive with somebody else as well, and so that's okay to not be able to manage every single client and taxpayer out there.
Dan Hood (27:33):
Fortunately, I think we are starting to see a lot of firms sort of saying, maybe we could lose some of these people or maybe we could encourage them to find a better fit for them for themselves. I mean, that is one aspect that we haven't even touched upon is the clients. Clients and also managers. Let's speak. There are also internal problems with people you just don't want to work with who just make the work worse. It's just tough work to start with, right? That's why it's, it's valuable. That's why people find it a challenge and exciting. There's no reason to make it any tougher or more difficult by doing it for people who are less than pleasant,
Randy Crabtree (28:05):
Let's put it out. Yeah, if your phone rings and you cringe that you don't want to answer that call <laugh>. That might be a client you might want to encourage to be successful somewhere else.
Dan Hood (28:15):
<laugh> encouraged to be successful somewhere else. That's excellent. All right. Fantastic. On that note, Randy Crabtree, thank you so much for joining us. This was great.
Randy Crabtree (28:23):
Dan, thank you. This was, like I said at the beginning, a thrill for me, so I appreciate it.
Dan Hood (28:27):
Yeah, it was a pleasure. Excellent. And thank you all for listening. This episode of On the Air was produced by Accounting Today with audio production by Kevin Parise. Rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform and see the rest of our content on accountingtoday.com. Thanks again to our guest, Randy Crabtree, and thank you for listening.