professionalissues

BY MARK H . FOWLER

The following are excerpts from a recent CalCPA Los Angeles Chapter Management of Accounting Practice ( MAP ) panel discussion on the changing face of the profession and what CalCPA Chair Tayiika Dennis calls the “ Coolest Profession Around .”

Panelists : Moderator Mark H . Fowler ( MHF ): President , Stowe Management Corporation Tayiika Dennis ( TD ): CalCPA Chair ; Principal , Nonprofit Services , CliftonLarsonAllen Alex Medina ( AM ): Accounting Student , Cal State University Northridge ; CalCPA Industry Influencer Jason Melillo ( JM ): CEO , Krost Scott Donnelly ( SD ): Partner , PDM CPAs

MHF : Ty , could you start us off with an introduction and how Coolest Profession Around came to be ?

TD : I ’ m honored to be the 2022-23 Chair of CalCPA . I thought long and hard about my theme and I came up with the idea of rebranding the initials CPA . Why not make it stand for Coolest Profession Around . I ’ m big on acronyms so that came naturally and I ’ m happy CalCPA embraced this theme . And my firm , CLA , is using it in our recruiting of high school and college students .

I ’ m looking at it as a movement for our profession to better promote the positive aspects of being a CPA . We have interesting clients ; opportunities to travel ; and we are part of a well-paying , well-respected career with job stability . We ’ re almost recession-proof !

JM : When I think about what this profession means to so many people , it ’ s the diversity of what we do . I ’ ve never been bored because of various projects that I ’ ve had the opportunity to work on and the people I worked with .

We ’ re going to practice very differently over the next 10 or 20 years than the previous 50 to 60 . With data analytics , artificial intelligence , chatbots , machine learning — all that ’ s coming into play in our work life . We are going to require people with different skill sets , not just accountants . Such skills will require people with data science backgrounds , computer programming

or software engineering backgrounds and more — all to bring different viewpoints to the profession .

Obviously , we have to attract those people into the profession ; we have to make our profession interesting ; we have to showcase our profession . Ty has started a movement to highlight how cool our profession is and it ’ s our opportunity to showcase that — helping bring into the profession students and young workers who may be trying to figure out where they want to go with their degrees and showing different opportunities that exist within our profession .

SD : When we started our firm , one of the premises was to pay attention to what we did not like about our careers , jobs and the firms we were at — and how to avoid those things . We went down the road of encouraging family life and encouraging family involvement . This was extremely important .

I believe , if your clients are happy with you , you ’ re doing the right job ; if you ’ re communicating properly , they ’ ll stay with you . If your employees are in the right jobs and you ’ re providing what they need or want , they ’ ll stay with you . We encourage each other and help each other grow . I ’ m a big advocate of learning from our mistakes . I think a great part of our growth has been openness and support .

Many CalCPA chapters have focused on the Coolest Profession Around theme to build the new pipeline by planning events that cater more to students and our young professionals

We ’ re going to practice very differently over the next 10 or 20 years than the previous 50 to 60 .

and to try to impact and change the narrative on what a CPA is .

MHF : Where does it start ? Where do you put the stake in the ground ?

SD : I teach at Cal State Long Beach and we often bring speakers in from our firm , plus we speak at a number of events . We would only speak to accounting classes and it struck me that people in the accounting classes probably want to be accountants already . We need to start talking to some undeclared people or people who are in business law or engineering to spread ourselves around at the universities and community colleges .

We ’ ve been successful at hiring sophomores and juniors to work part-time , helping them develop , and sometimes , helping them with their homework .

It ’ s about people developing relationships . Starting in high school is where we begin www . calcpa . org MAY 2023 CALIFORNIA CPA 15