Talent is top of mind for many accounting and finance organizations as they gear up for 2025. The shortage of qualified accounting talent is “approaching crisis levels,” according to a recent EY survey, and organizations of all sorts are seeing the impact on everything from public filings to reporting accuracy.
Susan Coffey, CEO of public accounting at the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA), is leading the AICPA’s effort to address the accounting pipeline shortage. She recently spoke with CFO Brew about how the accounting profession is changing, the skills that new accountants need to succeed in this new environment, and talent mistakes she sees organizations making.
This is part one of a two-part series on the talent pipeline in 2025. To read part two, click here. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How does this kind of landscape change the skill set that new accounting talent needs?
I think it means that we need to focus education and experience and training much earlier, on those competencies that are going to be most important for the firms, depending on what services they’re offering.
You know, higher level skills like strategic planning and data analysis. Communications and ethical behavior and technology adeptness…less about the “What is the debit and the credit?” and more about “What does the analysis look like?”
How do you see the work that CPA and accounting firms and finance professionals do changing and evolving in the future, particularly in the next, say, 12 to 18 months?
I think it depends on the area of practice, candidly. I’ll just use tax as an example. There are so many technology resources for professionals who provide tax services that affords them the ability to be advisors, where the tax return is like the byproduct of the advisory service, versus starting with, I’m your tax return preparer, and I turn into your advisor. I’m really your business and tax advisor, and I prepare your tax return on the side.
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Another example would be because of technology controls, risk, things like that, are becoming much more important and allow for, for example, the ability to continuously evaluate controls that impact financial systems. I see something like that continuing…it’s already very prominent, but continuing to be even more important, particularly with GenAI.
What’s a mistake that you see organizations making when it comes to talent?
Probably the biggest mistake is not understanding our changing demographics and desires of this new generation of talent coming in. There’s a lot of work, and a lot of people that are doing a lot. They’re very, very busy, and it’s hard to take a step back…and say, “I’m going to set my work aside for a day and focus on what this means for the success of my business, either my firm or my company, and my clients.” It's really hard to do.
That’s probably the one thing that when I talk to firms, it’s making the time to have the conversations and look at the current business model, and ask the hard questions about, “What do we want to be, what types of clients do we want to serve, what types of services do we want to perform for those clients, and…what do we want the culture of our firm to be like to attract and retain the talent that we need to be successful?”