Dave Cain: Welcome to unsuitable on Rea Radio, the award-winning financial services and business advisory podcast that challenges your old-school business practices and their traditional business suit culture. Our guests are industry professionals and experts who will challenge you to think beyond the suit and tie, while offering you meaningful modern solutions to help enhance your company’s growth. I’m your host, Dave Cain.
The average American spends 90,000 hours at work over the course of their lifetime. Now, I don’t know about you, but to me, that’s way too many hours to spend doing something I’m truly not passionate about. For those of you who are passionate about what you do, 90,000 hours may seem kind of light. Here’s the thing: If you love what you do, if you’re truly passionate about your profession, then your job becomes something more than a way to make ends meet. It becomes a cause worth promoting and advancing.
Each year, Rea & Associates honors an employee for their dedication to the CPA profession, someone who goes above and beyond the call of duty to promote the field and advance the industry. This year’s recipient was Lee Beall, executive vice president and past CEO of Rea & Associates. Lee is joining us today on unsuitable to talk a little bit about his career in public accounting and why he continues to be an outspoken advocate for the CPA profession. Then we will talk about why you might consider investing in your own profession and how to get started. Welcome back to unsuitable, Lee.
Lee Beall: Hey, Dave. How you doing?
Dave: Pretty good. That’s quite an intro.
Lee: 90,000 hours.
Dave: 90,000 hours.
Lee: I am about to embark on my 43rd tax season.
Dave: Well, that’s pretty good. Let’s start there. Good segue. When did you become a CPA? Now, before you answer that question, at your age, you don’t need to know the exact date, but just estimate when you became a CPA. What year?
Lee: This is pretty easy actually. I didn’t pass the exam finally until I got married, for obvious reasons. Somebody made me buckle down and study, so 1978.
Dave: Okay, quickly, how many years is that?
Lee: A lot.
Dave: A lot. Okay, good. Perfect, perfect, but I think it’s a good thing to start, you and I talked yesterday, kind of the pre-production meeting, about the CPA profession and how powerful the Ohio Society of CPAs is within the State of Ohio in the country. I don’t know that we give that type of organization or the Ohio Society as much credit and air time as we should because the Ohio Society is a tremendous advocate to our clients and all the businesses within the State of Ohio. Of course, you’ve been part of that. You’ve been part of the Ohio Society for many, many years. I want to just throw the mic to you to talk about the Ohio Society and how important it is for businesses within the State of Ohio.
Lee: It’s interesting that you mentioned, we are one of the most powerful State Societies amongst all the State CPA Societies, and we are the fourth largest in terms of membership. I think the only ones larger than us are Texas, New York, and California. Florida and Pennsylvania are kind of pushing around the edges there, but we’re also the fifth most densely populated state in the United States. We are, what is it, 500 miles within two-thirds of the population of the United States. Ohio is a business-centric state. We’ve got more large cities than most states have, and as a result, we’ve got so much business concentration here that we need a lot of CPAs to serve these business, and so it’s not surprising we’re the fourth largest, but that also makes us a leader amongst the profession in the United States in terms of leading the other Societies and driving the American Institute of CPAs.
Dave: The important thing there is as that, a byproduct of that is our clients benefit from the strength of that Ohio Society because they fight tooth and nail to make sure Ohio remains very, very competitive to bring other businesses and maintain businesses within the state.
Lee: We really drive for two things for the Ohio Society, and it’s exactly what you talk about, Dave. There’s two issues that we concern ourselves with. Number one is the economy and making certain that Ohio is as business-friendly as we can make it so that it’s a great place to do business. That’s really our number one focus, and then our second focus is regulation that affects our industry, but regulation that also affects the taxpayers, which includes tax policy of the State of Ohio.
Dave: To wrap that piece of the podcast up, if our listeners, if they have a business issue that is a concern, one of their avenues to fight that battle is the Ohio Society. They certainly should contact their CPA. If they don’t have a CPA, they can reach out to you as a past president of the Ohio Society, and we can find some answers for them or help them get to where they need to be.
Lee: For all of the business owners out there and the people in our professional, it sometimes doesn’t occur to them that if you come up with a challenge with your client, that calling the Ohio Society is a resource for you to at least tell you where you might go to get that answer because we’re connected with all the other major trade associations and professions in the state and we work with them as a coalition in many cases to try and drive improvement in regulation and the state economy and taxation.
If you’re listening out there and you’ve got a question, you can call the Ohio Society directly, you can ask your CPA, and you might also bump your CPA and say, “Hey, I understand that you’ve got a lot of resources at the Ohio Society of CPAs you can call on.”
Dave: This leads, that was a good intro to our topic for today is investing in your profession. I wanted to get those facts out about the Ohio Society as kind of an example that you’ve invested in the profession through your continuous involvement with the Ohio Society. We want to talk about investing in your profession, whether it’s the CPA profession, whether it’s in the construction industry, the manufacturing industry, the medical industry. It’s about giving back to that profession.
Lee: If you embrace what you do, you’ve got to be engaged in your profession, you gotta be engaged in the infrastructure that supports your profession, and you’ve got to reach out beyond your profession and try and influence others. I think what makes CPAs unique amongst a certain group of what I’ll call professions, there’s a certain education requirement to become a CPA, there is an examination that is required to become a CPA, and there’s a certain experience level is required to become CPA, not unlike becoming an attorney, becoming a physician. The attitude we’ve always taken is we are a profession, not a trade association; therefore, it is our mission to look out for the best interests of the public in the State of Ohio, not just a very narrow group that might just have certain business interest in mind. I think that is why CPAs find themselves ranked typically in the top one or two or three in terms of public confidence in our profession.
Dave: Your middle name is Culture, and this is really talking about a company’s culture. One of the byproducts here is when a company encourages, invites, supports their employees to invest in their profession. Here at Rea & Associates over the course of your career, you’ve encouraged the team to do just that. How did you do that? What were some keys as you went through your career to coach and mentor younger people and your clients to invest in their profession?
Lee: First of all, when you and I were talking the other day to prep this and I had forgotten about the culture piece, culture is very strong in our firm, and it’s very strong in terms of supporting our profession. It is, in fact, the way in which the small practice that may partner Clay Rose and I were in came to me at Rea & Associates. It was directly through a connection with the Ohio Society of CPAs when Rea wanted to be in Central Ohio and called the Ohio Society and said, “Who would we talk to?” Chet Stocker, the then-CEO of Rea came over to talk to us about that.
The benefit you get from being involved in your profession is far greater than the feel-good when you go home at the end of the night. It is about helping grow your business, helping advance your own people, and helping have a sense of pride in what you do so that when you’re entering your 43rd tax season, you feel like it’s your first.
Dave: 43 tax years, huh? Did you ever prepare a tax return by hand?
Lee: Do you really want to go there?
Dave: Well, yeah. Yeah, do you still know how to run a 10-key?
Lee: I’m a little ancient compared to some of our younger folks in terms of the resources that I employ to do some of my tax work, so we’ll just leave it at that, but yes, I remember what they call carbon sets where you had to hand-write a tax return on a carbon set, and if you made a mistake, you had to tear it up and start over again. Then we got copiers. That was great because if you made a mistake, you could just recopy the darn thing. Now, the technology’s just astounding.
Dave: I’m sure our young listeners are out there just shaking their head about, “I don’t understand a word he just said.”
Lee: I’m sure they don’t.
Dave: No. One of Rea’s core value that’s embedded in Rhe Rea Way is invest in your family, community, and future. That’s really one of the things we’re talking about today as you invest in the profession. I want to go maybe a little bit different direction here with your experience. You have seen companies that do not invest in their community, that do not invest in their profession. What’s their bottom line look like? What’s their morale look like?
Lee: Interesting you bring this up. I was at a Rotary organizational meeting last night for a fundraiser that we do every year, and we’re approaching businesses in our community-
Dave: Was there a cash bar?
Lee: No. We were approaching businesses in our community about becoming sponsors, and we are brainstorming all the names of all the companies you know in this community. We had a representative from another organization who does some of this work, and we would bring up a name, and one person said, “Don’t even approach that company.” “Well, why not?” “They don’t respond. They’re not interested. They don’t seem to care. They’re not engaged.” Now, what does that tell you about that organization?
First of all, you’ve got a whole room full of people who are in Rotary, but they’re volunteering their time to help raise money for charitable events, and we’re being told by people that that’s a company that’s not engaged. Now, what impression did that make on me and the other people in the room? I wonder what impression that makes on their people because what’s the point in being in business and being engaged in a community if you’re not part of the fabric of that community?
Dave: It shows. Even though without looking at the bottom line, you can probably look at employee turnover. The bottom line, the top line, however you want to do it. Company morale. It’s a good point. Going back to the CPA profession, obviously, there’s some state regulations that we deal with each and every day as a licensed CPA. A lot of people don’t really understand the licensing, what goes on behind the scenes, and what it takes for you to maintain one of the highest designation in the business community. Can you talk about the regulations?
Lee: Here’s the selfish reason why we are engaged in our profession: In Ohio, the CPA certificate and the CPA firms are regulated by our state legislature. The Bar Association is regulated by the Supreme Court of the State of Ohio. They know exactly where they go, and they all practice law, and so they all understand how they regulate their industry. If we don’t influence legislators, we might end up with regulations that impact our industry that would be not favorable to us for the practice, and it may not be favorable for business in terms of serving their best interests.
I never expected, when I got engaged in this industry, that I would become a lobbyist, but I have. I call on legislators fairly often. I testify at the State House a couple times a year. People look at me like, “Why would you do that? I have a disdain for being involved in politics,” and my answer is very simple. If you’re not engaged, you have no influence over how your profession is going to be regulated during your career, and that is the selfish reason why I’m engaged, but I have to tell you, in spite of what people think about politicians, they’re all basically good people, they’re all looking for sources of credible information, and they look at CPAs as being one of the most credible sources that they can find that when they dial you up and they ask you a question, they know they’re going to get a straight response.
I build up some nice relationships with some of our elected officials, but I will tell you that the only thing we deal with when we deal with legislators is two issues: number one, how things affect our profession that you’re possibly going to act on, and number two, tax and economic policy. We stay out of everything else because if we get involved in other peripheral things, then that degrades our independence with those elected officials.
Dave: Let’s talk about an example that many of our listeners can relate to. You and I have both heard this where one of our clients may be filing tax returns in 10 or 15 different municipalities across the State of Ohio with, and each of those municipalities had different rules and different regulation and did this one way and did this another way. You were on several committees and councils to talk about how to make that policy uniform across the State of Ohio. How successful has the CPA profession, the Ohio Society been within the State of Ohio to level the playing field?
Lee: We’ve been moderately successful in at least clarifying rules and making them applicable to all of our cities across the state. If you’re a business filing in Cleveland or Cincinnati or Columbus, you’re following the same regulation. Now, having said that, the Ohio Municipal League, which represents cities in the State of Ohio, has an issue with me because I’ve been outspoken about this. The challenge that we have is we have a large government segment on our firm that does a lot of work with municipalities, and that has caused a little bit of friction with regard to our own practice. The point I try to make constantly is, our job is to look out for our clients. If municipalities don’t view their taxpayers as their customers, they’re confused about who they are serving, and they need to take a look at their customers and they need to determine how we can make it easier for our customers to do business in our cities.
Now, there’s a lawsuit that the Ohio Municipal League currently is signing up many cities to go sue the state on this consolidated filing for clients that file in multiple cities including a construction client I work with who has to file in 50 different municipalities under 50 different sets of forms and regulations and all that other stuff. The hue and cry that you hear out there publicly from some of these cities about how much revenue it’s going to cost them would cause you to believe that this is going to be catastrophic, but we’re CPAs, and so we sit down, and we gather facts, and we present the facts to them. Oftentimes, they don’t care to hear them and the cost is minuscule, but what they forget is, in exchange for a minuscule cost, you make it easier for those businesses in your communities that hire the people, that have taxes taken out of every paycheck to support all the city services in that community. Sometimes, I think bureaucracies get a little confused about who they really serve.
Dave, here’s a great example where the Ohio Society and Rea & Associates and myself and others have taken positions that aren’t necessarily popular with all of our clients, but we have an obligation to look out for all of our clients’ best interest and for the State of Ohio.
Dave: I’ve heard you say, and your colleagues that have fought the fight, and you mentioned this earlier, it’s really about the bigger picture is make Ohio a very business-friendly state so we can continue to grow, and that is a great example of investing in the profession.
Lee: There’s only, I think it’s three or four states that have municipal income tax across the country. We happen to be one of them. It does make compliance in Ohio more difficult. All I would ask is that those municipalities understand that all we’re trying to do is look out for those business so that they want to stay in this state, they want to stay in our communities, and they want to continue to support us so that we have the public infrastructure we need for our families.
Dave: You’d mentioned earlier about independence of CPAs and how important that is and how high-esteem the public holds of CPA. We have some closing comments, any closing comments in regard to that statement in how or why you feel that way about why CPAs are held in such high esteem?
Lee: Well, it is really important, when you go home at night and you reflect on your day and who you served, it’s really important that your clients respect you. Unfortunately, in our profession, we have some practitioners that maybe don’t deliver their services as professionally as we might like. In fact, we just picked up a client this week because they had been with a firm that has been disbarred by the Accountancy Board of the State of Ohio, and fined, and that’s very disappointing to me to see anybody who’s practicing in our profession that is not upholding the standard, but the key to being in a profession is that we do hold our members to a standard. If you hold them to a standard and you expect a certain level of ethics, then the independence and the integrity that the public view you with stays steadfast, but if you let it slip and you let their attitude slip, you can’t get it back.
Dave: Thanks, Lee. Our guest today has been Lee Beall, executive principle with Rea & Associates in the Dublin, Ohio office. Lee, thanks again for joining us on unsuitable today. You’ve taken us behind the curtain with the CPA profession, and as a result of several of your stories, I think we’ve demonstrated to our listeners about why it is so important to give back to your profession, regardless of what industry it is. I guess on behalf of Rea & Associates and all the other CPAs that are listening to the podcast, I certainly want to thank you for stepping out on a limb and giving back to the profession.
Lee: Well, Dave, I always appreciate our time. I have to rat you out a little bit here because I always do the Annual Awards presentations at our annual retreat for all our people who win awards. I was a little confused this year about why you were up on the stage doing it and not me, until I found out that I had been selected to receive one of those awards. That was very gratifying. I’m very appreciative. You did a wonderful job. Thank you so much … for that.
Dave: Thanks. Listeners I hope you enjoyed today’s episode and are inspired to get involved in your profession. Lee’s not the only one who has helped make a difference over the course of his career. I’m sure you know of many others who’ve made great strides in any number of industries.
We look forward to providing you with additional leadership, tips, and industry insight over the next year. Be sure to subscribe to unsuitable on iTunes or on Rea’s YouTube channel to make sure you never miss an episode. Until next time, I’m Dave Cain, encouraging you to loosen up your tie and think outside the box.
Disclaimer: The views expressed on unsuitable on Rea Radio are our own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Rea & Associates. The podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended to replace the professional advice you would receive elsewhere. Consult with a trusted advisor about your unique situation so they can expertly guide you to the best solution for your specific circumstance.