Mark: Welcome to unsuitable on Rea Radio, the unique financial services and business advisory show that challenges your old school business practices and the traditional business suit culture. You’ll hear from industry professionals who think beyond the suit and tie to offer meaningful, modern solutions to help you enhance your company’s growth. I’m your host, Mark Van Benschoten.
I was looking back through some of our past episodes the other day and it really hit me how broad the CPA profession is. It’s common knowledge that our taxes and accounting services are important to our clients but the work we do goes far beyond that. Today I’m joined by Scott Wiley, president and CEO of the Ohio Society of CPAs. Scott and I are going to dive a little deeper into the CPA profession. We’re going to discuss the ways CPAs and financial advisors help Ohio businesses and business owners thrive. Welcome to unsuitable, Scott.
Scott: Thanks Mark, great to be here.
Mark: I’m glad that you’re here. Do you ever think as you planned your career you’d be working with a bunch of CPAs?
Scott: Not in my wildest dreams, but I’m having a blast doing it. It’s just been over 3 years last week and someone told me when I started this job, a colleague in another state that, “Scott there’s not a day I go home and my head doesn’t hurt.” I didn’t know what he mean but I get it.
Mark: You get it now? You understand?
Scott: I understand and get it. There’s so much that CPAs are expected to know and understand to help their clients and business be successful. At the Ohio Society we’re focused on how do we do the same for our people? How do we the same for CPAs all around the state? That’s what we think about, that’s what we care about and that’s what we’re focused on doing.
Mark: Not to give you an inflated ego before we get started, really dive deep, but your ability to come in, you said only 3 years, and to understand our issues, our client’s issues, the business in Ohio, is very impressive. I don’t know if other people have mentioned that to you.
Scott: I appreciate that. I have not heard that. Here’s what I think matters. At the end of the day people want to be a part of something bigger than themselves but they also want to be part of something that can help them be successful. Our focus at the Ohio Society of CPAs is to recognize that we advance the state of business. We do that for CPAs and those in the CPAs’ sphere of influence by creating and delivering value. It’s not you’re a CPA you should belong. It’s, help us understand more about you, your business, the opportunities you’re trying to seize, the opportunities you want to see created, and how can we think about solutions that can help you be successful in doing that.
We live in a time where people have so much information flying at them, and people are looking for something that can help them differentiate. I fundamentally believe at the Ohio Society of CPAs that’s what we do for our members. There’s opportunities for us to be that better, for us to do more, but that’s what we’re focused on creating.
Mark: When you started you made a statement about driving business. I really buy into that, that if you help me, you personally, help me become a better CPA. That helps me be a better CPA to my clients, which helps the businesses in Ohio grow. I really buy into that, that the CPAs help drive business in Ohio.
Scott: It’s true. Don’t just take my word for it. Any time I have an opportunity to meet with an individual or group of legislators it’s what they tell us. Any time I get around the state and go and meet particularly with people in industry, they tell me how they count on their individual CPAs, companies they work with, firms they work with. When I meet with chief financial officers or other C-suite leaders they talk to me about the CPA who works in their company, or the CPAs they need to work in their company, because they recognize that the CPA credential is the most recognized brand in the business community today.
The one that has ethics and integrity behind it, the one that translates to, “This is my strategic advisor. This is the individual who’s going to help me go forward. She, or he, are going to help me be successful.” I think recognizing that is important. I think the Ohio Society’s focus on how can we help CPAs be successful? How can we help them drive their business? Whether that’s their own business, a firm they work in, or a company they work for, how can we help them do what they’re supposed to do? That’s where the value prop is for us.
Mark: CPA, Certified Public Accountant. I think we probably get our start protecting the public interest. I still believe that today, even though I do not have any public SEC reporting clients, but I believe I have a responsibility to protect the public through sound financial practices, through accurate reporting, through compliance with the tax laws. But probably more importantly through proper business advice so clients that I’m engaged with are making sound business decisions. I don’t think we can ever get away from this public protection that we have to have.
Scott: Yeah, that is fundamentally to me at the core of what the credential and the credential holder really stands for. It demonstrates that we are committed to something. We’re committed to ensuring the highest levels of integrity. We’re committed to a code of ethics. We’re committed to you. Whether the you is an individual, a business, a government, a non-profit entity or something altogether different. That commitment is at the core of what a CPA stands for. I think that’s widely known and widely recognized.
Having said that, because it’s been widely known and been widely recognized does not mean that we should stop talking about, thinking about how can we do more. How can we go farther? We’re living in a time of increasingly complex global business environments, where disruption is happening all around us. The CPA community is not isolated from that. We’ve got to think about how do we disrupt our own models? How do we create and demonstrate new levels of value? We know that in the CPA world increasingly there’s more complexities. We also know that there’s increasingly valuable areas of the business that are growing. We see the advisory side of the house growing significantly in public accounting firms. We know that specialty areas are on the rise.
All this ties into at the same time we see a student population that we’ve done a great job of attracting students to accounting programs. As a profession, and the Ohio Society is a part of that profession, we have not seen that translate to more students sitting for the CPA exam. We know those numbers are down in the state of Ohio. What we also know is the need for CPAs, the need for that level of quality, the need to demonstrate that value, has an all-time high. I think we’ve got to focus on what is at that core and that protection of the public interest, particularly in today’s era, could not be in greater demand than it is today.
Mark: How do we bridge that gap? How do we attract the students back to get in the designation, to going through the rigorous testing, subjecting themselves to a code of ethics?
Scott: I think there’s a lot of speculation out there. Some of it’s probably decent and some of it I don’t think is worth a damn to be frank. I think about, when I meet with students, today we have more than 3,000 student members of the Ohio Society. Those are primarily undergraduate and graduate level accounting students, or others who’ve indicated an interest in the CPA exam. We’ve got a pretty high penetration.
Any time I’m on a campus, or any time I meet with a student group or our own student ambassadors, and we have 17 student ambassadors at campuses around the state, one of the things that amazes me is they are not turned off by the hard work, they are not put out by the rigor, they are not opposed to working longer hours or getting more done. What they are interested in is are there ways that we can create a greater level of balance and flexibility in that environment to operate at a high level? Are there ways that we can come in and contribute to strengthening that core within a firm or within a company?
One of the things I know that Rea & Associates does, I think about some of the internship programs you have going on. Trying to give young professionals, or soon to be young professionals, the opportunity to experience different things in different ways. It’s not such a methodical, quite frankly boring approach. It’s a way that we encounter and look at, what are these students saying? What are the experiences they’re having? How can we take those and make those help our firm become better, and as a result give those students, those future young professionals an opportunity to feel like they have ownership, they have helped create the culture.
Because everyone knows, everyone talks about culture trumps strategy. Culture will eat strategy for breakfast. Everyone says it, everyone knows it, but very few are truly executing on that. Very few are really trying to create a culture that helps them survive, more than survive, to thrive in that environment.
Mark: Right, take advantage of it?
Scott: Yeah. I think there’s work we can do there.
Mark: I like your comment about they’re not afraid of hard work and it’s not that, they just want to make sure that they contribute in a framework that they can. I think that the younger people, they get dismissed. They don’t know, they don’t have the experiences. They’ve always had an iPhone, music was always off an iPod. They didn’t have to put a penny on their needle to listen to a record. They get dismissed, and I sometimes do that myself. Don’t tell my kids that, but they don’t listen anyway so it’s all right. To hear you say that, that’s encouraging to me.
Scott: You know, at one point we were all young professionals. I think the thing that we have to step back from occasionally is, you’re right Scott we all were young professionals and this is how we earned.
Mark: Don’t we have to give that up?
Scott: I don’t know that we have to give it up, but I also think we have to get right with reality. The reality of the matter is we’ve got retirements happening at a faster pace. We’ve got a population, the millennial generation, that now outnumbers, certainly outnumbers my generation, the Xer generation, and now outnumbers boomers in the workforce. It’s only going to continue to rise. We’ve got another generation coming behind them, Gen Z. The things that have influenced them are different.
I think we get in trouble when we do the broad characterizations but the reality is we can look at all these things and wish it weren’t so, but the business realities are what they are. We’ve got the largest generation, the millennial generation, that has entered the workforce. Anyone who believes that we will break them, train them the way we want them trained and they will do it the way we’ve always done it or believe it should be done, is kidding themselves.
I am not looking forward to the day that I’m proven right and I attend the party that values their retirement but also the going out of business for their business. We’ve got to get this right, and getting it right is listening and thinking and trying. Right now people are listening and thinking but there’s so little trying. We’ve got to be comfortable doing more.
Mark: Does that get back to your point? Early on you said that we need to be disruptive, is that the disruptive thing you’re talking about?
Scott: It is. The hot ones out there right now, that you have some global attention, people are talking about Airbnb and Uber. I’m going to butcher this stat but I’ve heard it, who would have ever thought 5, 10 years ago that the largest taxi company in the world wouldn’t own any vehicles? Who would have thought the largest hotel chain in the world wouldn’t own any properties? Airbnb and Uber fit those 2 categories. There are other businesses like that. It’s easy to say, “What’s your Uber?”
But this profession is also getting disrupted. Cloud technology, flexible work environments, shifting demographics, those are disruptions. They might not be as significant as some others are but those are all levels of disruption. My challenge to us in this profession is, those are the ones we’re encountering and, quote on quote, dealing with. What are the disruptions that we’re anticipating? What are the disruptions we’re trying to create? What are the disruptions that we see as being opportunities for our businesses? Because I think that’s where CPAs are going to thrive. If they can think about that, plan for that, create that, I think they’d demonstrate a whole new level of value.
Mark: I think that’s within our skill set. None of those things you mentioned intimidate me, say, “Oh, there’s no way we can do that. I’m going to put my green eye shade cover back on and roll up my sleeves and turn on my desk lamp and get back to ticking and tying.”
Scott: Not only do I think that’s within your skill set, I think it’s time for CPAs to be comfortable trusting their skill set to help their own businesses be successful. So often what I hear from businesses around this state are, “We count on CPAs. We count on them to help us think through these challenges, plan for these challenges and game out the scenarios.” It is time for CPAs to be comfortable doing that work for themselves as well.
Mark: Great point, isn’t there some that the barber has the worst haircut or something?
Scott: That’s right. It strikes that we’re sitting today having this conversation in the middle of February, that’s the time of the year that people like to refer to as busy season. I get it.
Mark: I am busy, let the people know.
Scott: Yeah, I get it. I respect it, people are busy. But if we’re so busy being busy we’re never going to be able to stop being busy, thinking about how we survive versus how we can thrive.
Mark: Right. You talk about working on the business or working in the business. I think we need to be working on the business. It’s not what’s tomorrow but what’s next year? How are we going to attract this millennial? The millennials are coming, like it or not. Hopefully there’s some millennial that buys out my ownership in Rea & Associates so I can retire. If we go the old fashion we’re going to beat them down. There’s probably going to be nobody left so I can retire.
Scott: You know what, I think that’s one of the interesting pieces. We’ve been having conversations and I think even just the idea of partnership has different connotations and different expectations. That whole, how are we going to disrupt the traditional firm ownership model and equity model, I think all those things are on the table. Which I know is scary for some, but I think there’s a bigger opportunity there. I don’t know what it is, I just know it’s there to be found.
Mark: On a previous podcast we had Lesley Mast from our Wooster office on. We talked about the gender gap. It was very enlightening to me, very interesting to me. Do we see a gender gap in other accountants?
Scott: I think when we look across the spectrum, I speak in broad terms, we know that there, certainly we’ve seen a balancing if you will in the accounting programs. For a while, we had a couple of years where women outnumbered men and now that’s trickled back. We don’t really understand why that is yet. We know there are more women in the profession than there are men, but we know that men significantly outnumber women in positions of leadership, whether that’s in firms or whether that’s in industry positions.
We believe that over time that will begin to correct … It’s not even correct, that will begin to transition just by virtue of the population center. I think the bigger issue is not just how do we wait for that to naturally happen, how are we engaging both women and men? I will particularly single out men who are in positions of leadership, to get involved in that conversation. The thing that strikes me as well, this is not just a gender issue, there is some generational aspects of it.
People often talk about one of the issues that holds back women in the work place is this idea of balancing family, work, et cetera and all those pieces, that’s tricky. My wife and I we’re both educated, we’re a 2 income family. My wife has a great career. There are a balancing of the sacrifices we’ve both made and I’m very fortunate in regard, but at the same time we know that, God how do find this flexibility. I think as we think about even men in the profession, there are some expectations they have about how they can be involved in, whether they have a family and kids’ lives, outside activities.
I think how we think about that is important, but we need more male leaders engaging with women on all levels, and how we can create a transition in this profession that not only empowers women to be successful because we think it’s the right thing to do, but fully recognizes more diverse and inclusive teams, generate more revenue for our businesses. They generate better results for our clients. As a result it’s building a stronger culture for our company. If we can come up and get our arms around, there’s an economic factor there, there’s a development of team factor there, and there’s a strengthening of our core there. I think that’s a win-win, every day of the week.
Mark: I agree with you, that the diversity in a group and decision making to me is very, very paramount to me. I look for that as I structure meetings, who do I want to engage with? If it’s a bunch of people looking like me I can make that decision, I know what it’s going to be. But I want to hear somebody else’s perspective and what life experiences they’re bringing to table that I might not have encountered. I think those are so important to get out onto the table. I agree with you about trying to create this diversity, and unfortunately it comes down to economics as to why people are going to generate to it, not just because it’s the right thing to do. It’s going to be economic as to why it’s the right thing.
Scott: Yeah. I think the hardest part of the conversation is starting it.
Mark: Good point.
Scott: We’ve just got to be committed to starting it.
Mark: When I was in school, when I was in high school I took my first accounting class. I had teacher named Mr. Welton. He taught me a lot about accounting and I thoroughly enjoyed. At that point, in 1979, I’m going to become a CPA. I never lost focus of that, I just took my classes and I eventually got there. I’m very proud of that. I have concerns, we talked in the beginning, they want to be involved, but I … Are there people out there like that? Geeks like me?
Scott: I think accounting’s gotten a bad rep. I think people don’t realize how cool accounting is and how cool accountants can be. There’s a past chair of the Ohio Society who said to me, he’s like, “Scott, any time people think all we do is taxes and we’re good at math, we’re selling ourselves short.” One of my observations, and I’ll own it, frustration with the profession and I think even some of the professional bodies, are this clamoring to try to say, “Gosh, we’ve got get in on the STEM technology piece and cluster accounting under math.” I think that’s crap quite frankly.
We need to recognize that people who major in accounting, people who want to have a career as a CPA, they do so because they have skills, they have capabilities, but they also have a passion for helping their clients be successful. They’re also focused on being good business people and understanding the fundamentals behind that. I think there are lots of talented individuals who would, and do, resonate to that. What we’ve got to do is a better job of telling that story.
That’s what we’re committed to doing at the Ohio Society. I’ve talked about this idea that we advance the state of business. Here in Ohio that’s a big ask and a little ask. You have little ask, if you will, the state of business is, where is the state of business? Businesses influx, people use this term VUCA, Volatile Uncertain Complex Ambiguous environment that we’re in. CPAs are at the core of helping people work through that. We also talk about the big ask, the state of Ohio. Ohio over the last 6, 7 years has made a pretty significant come back. There’s still opportunity for improvement.
We’re focused on how we do that. How do we create a tax environment in this state that truly helps people want to bring their family here, raise their family here? Helps people want to start a business here, grow a business here? Helps people want to stay here in Ohio because people recognize this is a great place to be? The Ohio Society and CPAs all around the state get that, know that, and are focused on how do we create that environment? I think those conversations enable us to talk with high school students and colleges students and their families, to game out, this is what a career in this profession could look like.
Let’s not be bashful about saying, it can be a pretty lucrative one. It can one that creates opportunities for you and your family to have a great life, to be able to retire and then do fun things. It is one that is committed to ensuring as this disruption happens we need to think about how our business model shift with it. I think if we can have the conversation that way, and don’t rely on, “But this is how we’ve always done it, and this is how we’ll recruit, and this is who’ll recruit from, and this is, we know they’re going to get this so we’re going to focus on this … ” I think that is all out the window. People are willing to talk about a company and a business and a firm that is focused on culture, that is focused on personal and professional growth and that understands in my career there needs to be more than my career.
Mark: I agree. We don’t want people just showing up for a paycheck. We want to know something about them. We want them to feel good about it, to know something about me and create an atmosphere that they want to work here. That’s what we strive here. Scott I really enjoyed our conversation. You and I could go on for a long time talking about this and I’m sure we’d have all of our listeners still at the end. Before we wrap up I want to ask you a question that we ask every guest. Hopefully you’re not going to be surprised by this. If you could have one super power, what would it be?
Scott: If I could have one super power it would the ability to look into the future and see what it holds and figure out how we create solutions that can help us get there. But I don’t have it, so I just try to think about ways I can figure that out on my own, with the great team of people that we have at the Ohio Society.
Mark: That’s a great super power. I thought you were going to go to like a Powerball, something like that, make it all about you.
Scott: Can I get 2? Can I get 2?
Mark: Thanks for joining us today Scott. To our listeners, do you have any questions about the CPA profession and how a financial advisor can help your business? We’d love to hear from you. Send your questions to podcast@reacpa.com. You can find more information about this episode as well as archived content and additional resources on our website, www.reacpa.com/podcast. You can subscribe to unsuitable on Rea Radio on iTunes or on SoundCloud. Until next time, I’m Mark Van Benschoten for unsuitable on Rea Radio, encouraging you to loosen up your tie and think outside the box.