I’ve spent most of my career being five to 10 years too early. Sometimes that’s an advantage … and sometimes it’s exhausting.
When you talk about where something is headed, people always think you’re being dramatic for a while. Then, the market catches up and suddenly everyone is talking about the thing you’ve been saying for years.
I’m watching that happen right now with the changing structure of accounting firms.
The Firm I Saw Coming
In April 2024, I wrote an article for Accounting Today called “Protect the profession as traditional firms fade away.” At the time, I said we were witnessing the evolution of the “new firm” — professional services and technology merging with significant investment from venture capital and other outside capital while traditional firms merged up with private equity.
I was questioning what the CPA firm would look like by 2030.
Two years later, look around. Private equity has become a major force in accounting. Firms are consolidating, outside capital is pouring into the profession and entirely new business models are emerging.
The conversation has shifted from: “Could private equity change accounting?” to “What happens now that it has?”
I’m not just saying, “Told you so.” Okay, fine, maybe I’m kind of saying that! But I really want to let you in on why I could see it coming.
I Keep Coming Back to the Same Question
I’ve spent my career looking at where the market is going instead of where it happens to be today. I was early on cloud accounting. I was early on automation. I was early on the changing structure of firms. And underneath all of those predictions has really been the same question:
What is going to make an accountant valuable when the way we do the work changes?
That was actually the bigger point of my 2024 article. Private equity itself wasn’t the thing to fear. I wanted us to separate the CPA profession from the traditional CPA firm.
If accounting services can increasingly be delivered by businesses that look nothing like the firms we grew up with, then protecting the old firm model can’t be our strategy for preserving the value of the CPA.
That distinction matters even more today. Technology is changing how work gets done. Capital is changing where the work gets done and who owns the companies doing it. AI is automating and accelerating work we once considered central to being an accountant. That doesn’t make accountants less valuable. It changes what makes us valuable.
The Next Advantage is Human
That’s why I keep talking about coaching, communication and the human side of this profession. I wrote in 2024 that as technology and bots became more embedded in our work, we needed to focus on the human element and serving customers. I believe that even more strongly today.
Technical competency matters, but it won’t differentiate you when technology can do more of the technical work faster and cheaper.
The accountants who become more valuable will be the ones who can take all that technology, data and knowledge and do something distinctly human with it. They’ll be able to:
Ask better questions
Communicate complicated ideas clearly
Understand what a client is really struggling with
Coach that client toward a better decision
Turn numbers and insights into a clear answer to “What should we do next?”
They won’t just deliver the numbers. They’ll help people figure out what to do next.
Don’t Wait Until the Shift Is Obvious
So when I talk about accountants developing coaching skills and becoming better communicators, maybe that sounds a little radical today. Maybe it feels unrelated to what you were taught an accountant was supposed to be.
But I’ve been early before.
The firm I wrote about in 2024 isn’t theoretical anymore. It’s being built around us. So maybe we shouldn’t wait until the next shift becomes obvious before we start preparing for it.
Seeing the future can be a little lonely sometimes, but I’d still rather be building tomorrow than protecting yesterday.
