Mark Koziel Q&A: Talent, sense of community, profession opportunities

“We’re not short on things to do.”

Those are the words of Mark Koziel, CPA, CGMA, CEO of the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants and president and CEO of the AICPA.

He’s been in that role since the start of the year and traveled all over the world hearing from members. Summer’s end seemed like a good time for a progress report on a variety of fronts from Koziel, who at the time of publication was visiting Asia.

This is a special edition of the podcast, published jointly on the Journal of Accountancy and FM channels.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

• Koziel’s ideal walkup song, nearly a year after his introduction, included Ozzy Osbourne’s “Mama, I’m Coming Home.”
• The skills gap affecting businesses around the world.
• Global influence on accounting and standard setting.
• Advocacy success, specifically in the United States.
• The significance of preserving the passthrough entity tax deduction.
• Examples of the perseverance that helped deliver that advocacy victory.
• An update on CPA licensure efforts.

Play the episode below or read the edited transcript:

— To comment on this episode or to suggest an idea for another episode, contact Neil Amato at Neil.Amato@aicpa-cima.com.

Transcript

Neil Amato: Welcome to this special episode of the Journal of Accountancy podcast and the FM podcast. This is your host, Neil Amato. I’m joined today by Mark Koziel for a late summer recording as he is in his eighth month on the job as CEO of the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants and president and CEO of the AICPA. Mark, we will get into what those first months on the job have been like for you in just a bit. But as I’m speaking, our theme music is playing. I’m thinking about music and while prepping for this interview, I was listening to “Rapper’s Delight” from The Sugarhill Gang on my ancient iPod, so I’m curious. What would the Mark Koziel intro song or walkup song be?

Mark Koziel: The walkup song I had last year was Ozzy Osbourne’s “Mama, I’m Coming Home” towards the fall of last year and that was at Fall Council when I was introduced there. I do think that was a bit of the walkup song, but now it’s actually Calum Scott. He sings the song “Rise,” which I’ve been listening to quite a bit. I think we’re going to talk about Rise 2040 in a little while.

Amato: We will have the word “rise” in this podcast. I’m not sure we get the rights to that music while we’re talking, but still, that’s a good intro. Thank you. Since becoming CEO in January, perhaps the term whirlwind is overused, but given you’ve probably been in too many time zones to count, it’s probably accurate. What have you learned in your listening tour with members around the world?

Koziel: Neil, it’s been a variety of ways to be able to do that, which has been pretty interesting. The first way, before I could even get out on the road in January when I started, we created the email address, AskMark@aicpa-cima.com. I’ve received over now 1,400. I was saying 1,300. I got another hundred in the last three days after an email went out to the AICPA membership just recapping the first six months.

From that, I think the common themes that we’re hearing is don’t forget about the small firm, small firm resources, making sure that we’re doing what we can to help the small firm.

Second item was audits of local governments in the U.S. and the fact that many firms have gotten out of doing that, they’ve been unprofitable, what can we do to help local governments from an audit perspective? We’ve looked at that in a couple of ways. Do we encourage more firms to do client accounting services around governments? But I’ve also met with the Government Accountability Office to see if there’s, rather than a full-on financial statement audit, can we be doing something like in agreed-upon procedures, just to focus on the federal funds and the like to make it not so onerous on the organization and on the firm.

And I think the big one, and this is where I see this globally, is sense of community and creating a sense of community and being able to get to our members in ways that they want to interact with us. Whether it’s geography, it could be industry specialty, it could be CFO versus senior manager versus controller, or a variety of ways that we should be connecting with our members and we are working on that now. Then legislatively, globally, from an advocacy perspective, continue to advocate for us, both U.S. and for our CIMA members globally as well.

Amato: That’s great. You mentioned “community.” That’s one thing I want to ask you about, building community and connectivity. How is that manifesting itself in communication with members both on the AICPA side and the CIMA side?

Koziel: We’re in pilot phase right now. We’re piloting three areas. One is the CGMA student side for CIMA members. We have the CFOs of the AICPA, the U.S. CFO community, and then we have the Private Companies Practice Section in the U.S., PCPS, which is really focused on the small firm, focused on practice management. From those three, then we’re going to be able to blow them out.

I’ve already gotten emails from members asking to be in a community in a different way. I had an email from Germany to say, “Hey, I want to meet up with other German members. How do I make that happen?” That’s just a great example of how this community can be created.

It’s going to be a digital platform. It’s going to be available via mobile app or on desktop. It’s also going to be a way for us to actually provide resources at the touch of a button to members that are related to what it is that they’re looking for, rather than having our members always searching through the website. Just a much better way to communicate from us to our members and our members to each other. It’s going to be some great connectivity around that. I had that in my prior role running an international association of firms. We created those, and it was a game changer there, and I think it’s going to be a game changer here.

Amato: Any discussion of the accounting profession today will touch on the topic of talent pipeline. I’ll ask you about that. What would you say is kind of the update? I know it’s definitely an issue. You would say an opportunity for the profession, but where do things stand right now with the talent pipeline for accounting?

Koziel: What’s interesting about the talent pipeline, and this has also been through some of my listening tour as well. Pipeline is a challenge all around the world. In any of your post-World War II economies, it is definitely a challenge, because you have the Baby Boomer generation that are all retiring up now in all of these markets, and we don’t physically have enough population to replace the Baby Boomers who are retiring.

No matter how attractive accounting looks, we have already a disadvantage and just sheer volume of people being available. Then you factor into that, all the other pieces of is accounting attractive for others. You look at starting salaries need to raise, we need to tell a better story. There’s all these things that the National Pipeline Advisory Group came up with, chaired by Lexy Kessler, who’s now chair of the Association. I think we have seen progress, and the enrollment numbers in the U.S. are up 12% from the fall of 2024 and up 12% for the spring of 2025 year over year. What I always say is about presenting to folks.

After it was announced that I was coming back as CEO, there’s an immediate bump of 12% in ’24 and now another bump of 12% in ’25. You’re welcome. Although I had absolutely nothing to do with it, and what it’s great to be able to take the credit for something positive about the profession very early on. So we remain focused on it. I think the bigger conversation around pipeline — and we will continue to keep trying to drive those into university to make things happen — the bigger conversation for me right now is around upskilling talent and this skills gap between coming out of university and immediately entering into the workplace and what the expectations are. They’re far greater today than they ever were when I graduated back in 1991, and they continued. These things have happened over time. It’s not like, in 1991, there was more required of me than what was required of those 20 years prior. I did an employer tour in the U.K., our top five employers in CIMA and the CGMA and a lot of them are using the [Finance Leadership Program]. They all talked about the skills gap.

This is a global issue of we’re no longer giving our individuals the ability to do debits and credits. In management accounting, they’re being asked to do FP&A right out of the gate. They have to analyze things that they’ve never done. Thinking of ways that we can have simulation models or some other way of learning to upskill as fast as humanly possible, so they know what they’re analyzing, they know what they’re doing, planning around.

Amato: That’s great. Thank you for touching on the different issues around the world, and they are similar. As you say, in any post-World War II economy, you’re having those similar Baby Boom numbers issues. Let’s talk some about advocacy success. First, anything to highlight on the global front?

Koziel: On the global front, advocacy is very different in many other countries. While we may not be in there working with parliaments or with governments directly lobbying, as we call lobbying here in the U.S., but there are ways for us to influence, and we’ve had a variety of budgetary papers that we’ve put in and budgetary policy that we’ve recommended, especially in the U.K. We’ve done a lot of work in the U.K. and the EU where we’ve been successful in seeing the things that we’ve recommended make it into the budgeting process for both the EU and the U.K. We’ll continue to do that.

As things develop, it is up to us, and we have a global accounting alliance that we’re a member of with member bodies from around the world. From a standard-setting perspective at the global level, we are well entrenched and engaged in standard setting and influence there from a global standpoint. Those are probably the two big areas.

Amato: Related to AICPA-specific advocacy here in the U.S., obviously, the big news is the budget bill and the numerous tax provisions, I want to give you a chance to talk about other issues in a bit, but I want to focus on one first. Why was it important to preserve the PTET SALT deduction, which is the passthrough entities’ state and local tax deduction?

Koziel: What’s interesting is at the end of the day, if there are members who weren’t necessarily following the day to day of what happened, and they were using the PTET deduction last year, and they’re using it again this year, just as they did in prior years, they would never know the difference.

However, in May of this year, while we were at Council, the House bill dropped, and the House bill dropped, and in it said SSTBs, basically, personal service companies that are passthrough entities, would no longer be allowed to take the deduction or to pay their state tax at the entity level and therefore getting a federal deduction on their federal return for that payment. That brand new came out of nowhere and they had all the $10,000 limitation up to $40,000 lot of debate around how much could be the maximum of your state tax deduction, and then that was phasing out based on dollars.

It was like a double whammy on this, that was really getting the likelihood of many of our members not being able to take a deduction or sizable deduction based on the income from their practice. It wasn’t just us. It was doctors, dentists, lawyers, any of the personal service companies. To us, and we worked with the firms, we worked with the state societies.

This is actually twofold. I think the first iteration is, yeah, it was definitely affecting many of our members, higher income bracket for sure. We needed to take care of those members. The savings or the impact could have been billions of dollars on the CPA profession and on our members. The fact that we got that removed for the Senate bill and then for the final H.R. 1 as it stands now, was critically important.

But for all of our members — one of the things that our member firms have to understand is these things tend to have legs. Even if we had a $500,000 phaseout for the 40,000 that’s happening now for state income tax deduction, that could end up coming downstream, or they can start to say there’s even going to be more impact that they’re going to have and let’s separately exclude SSTBs on this and that. Just removing the idea of taking SSTBs and thinking of them differently than other passthrough entities like S corps. and other types of partnerships that are personal service companies, it was absolutely necessary.

It was incredibly hard work. Our D.C. team did a phenomenal job working with the firms, working with members, getting members out. Members were out, running down their senator who was out on their prayer walk on a Sunday to tell them how bad this bill impact would be. Really, as a profession. It was so incredibly collaborative to see, and it was high success. But it was success to keep us where we were and not to hurt the profession more, and absolutely necessary, and a big win.

Amato: Thanks for that overview of the PTET SALT deduction. What about some other advocacy, I guess, successes during your first [eight] months on the job now?

Koziel: We’re not short on things to do, Neil, that’s for sure. It’s been interesting because as I entered January 1, from a state perspective, creating an additional pathway around obtaining the CPA license, adding back the bachelor’s plus two years’ experience, has been top of mind for our state advocacy team and working with the state societies and NASBA. We’ve updated the [Uniform Accountancy Act] to reflect that. Before I even started, there was one state that passed, and it was awaiting the governor’s signature. That was Ohio, signed January 9, and I was with all the state society CEOs on the day it was signed. Just hearing the momentum that was happening right out of the gate, and we needed to support that. We needed to support it quickly. We’re hopeful that this all happens, get all jurisdictions to quickly pass it.

One of my challenges or concerns around it is it hasn’t been completely consistent. In the UAA, and in many of the states, we hear bachelor’s plus two, and in some states they’re passing 120 hours plus two, and people equate that to be the same thing, but it may not always be. Trying to get that consistent and one state saying they’re going to accept that as equivalent and one state to say that is not, mobility is a massive concern for us and is something that we continue to work on and making sure that we get the language right on that. We’ve got to make it easier for CPAs to go from state to state. This continues to be in process. We have about 22 states that have passed so far. That’s a big one.

Obviously, out of the H.R. 1, there’s plenty of other business-friendly provisions that are in there, and I’ve done a number of interviews with press, those in the investor community. Bloomberg, their capital markets reporter calls because in the capital markets, they’re all talking about the tax assets being created off of this bill that they’re anticipating. It’s being talked about in big business, being talked about in small business.

I talked to a local manufacturer last night who told me that how they’re going to take care of the [Sec.] 174 R&E, whether or not they’re going to go back, do a lookback, or they’re just going to take it from now forward, and they’ve already been talking to their accounting firm about it. It’s in process. Firms are active already with their clients, which is good. We do need guidance, and we’ll continue working with the IRS and Treasury to try and get guidance. We’ve already sent out a couple of statements on things that we need definitions to very quickly in hopes that we get that very soon.

But then the final one was disaster relief, was not in H.R. 1, and that was passed shortly thereafter, a bipartisan bill. We’ve been pushing for disaster relief at the federal level for a long time. It was good to see that pass as well.

Amato: Yeah, definitely a lot of initiatives, both successful and ongoing, a lot of resources coming out, still to be updated, and as you say, more comments for clarity, definitions, things like that, so still plenty of work to do. We mentioned that word “rise” early on, talking about walkup songs, but Rise 2040. For those who are not familiar with it, what is Rise 2040, and what do you think it will mean for the profession going forward?

Koziel: For us, it’s not new at the AICPA. Prior to AICPA and CIMA coming together, AICPA back in the late ’90s was the first of its kind and from what we see, the only profession that’s ever done this type of visioning project, where we said, “Looking out 15 years, what is the profession going to look like? What are the skill sets that are going to be needed, and then how are we going to drive to get there?” A lot of people say, well, 15 years is way too far down. I can’t think that far out. Well, it’s to stretch the thinking. We just don’t want to be in a quick year to two years. We really want to make sure that we are setting up the profession for success, looking farther out. [CPA Vision Project], late ’90s. That expired somewhere around 2011.

In 2011, Paul Stahlin was chair of AICPA then, just before AICPA and CIMA really started their joint venture at that point in time, and we created the CPA Horizons 2025. Again, visioning out 15 years or almost 15 years to 2025, and here we are. CPA Horizons is about to sunset. We’ve looked at what worked, what was right, and what wasn’t quite right in that report. It was about 80, 85% accurate to where we’re at today, which is highly successful.

Here we are, 2025. Now we need to look out another 15 years. We chose 2040, try and keep an even number. And this time, we have the absolute benefit of representing the global profession, with CIMA and with the AICPA being able to do it. What it takes is almost like a strategic planning process. You look at the hard trends and the soft trends of the profession. What are the trends that are affecting what we do today, and what are the future trends in future focus need to be? How are we going to get there? We’ve done these Rise 2040 strategic sessions. We did it at the AICPA Council in May. We did it at the CIMA Council in June. Tom Hood right now is in India, working with a number of CPAs and CGMAs there, doing a Rise 2040 exercise.

Our hope is to get into every region with a Rise 2040 exercise to really gather all of this input from the profession globally. With the state societies in the U.S., we have our leadership academy grads, 80 of them are trained to go into the state societies, state society annual meetings and also facilitate it. All of this coming up into one repository that we’re going to be able to use that and that members can gain access to that, and then they can put in some of their criteria around who they are, what they do, what geography they’re in, and look at what the trends are for that particular region and then being able to incorporate that into the strategic plan of their organization.

We’re excited about it. We’ve gotten nothing but fantastic feedback from all the groups that we’ve done. This will continue through the next year and then in May of 2026, we’ll have a report out from that, but that’s not where it ends. We’re going to keep going, and this will be evergreen so that we’re constantly getting trends and looking at the trends on a very regular basis and making that information real time to our members going forward.

Amato: Mark, I really appreciate the time today, the insights you’ve shared. I know there’s still a long way to go. I’ll ask this as a closing thought, and you can have the floor and go in any way you want with your closing thought, but I’ll start you off with this question. What have you learned about yourself in your first seven, eight months on this job?

Koziel: Well, the biggest thing that I’ve learned is that every experience that I’ve had in the past has prepared me for how I sit in this role today. Twelve years of public accounting in a local firm, and I’ve gotten a knock at times, some say, “Well, you practice in a big firm.” “Well, I didn’t start there.” The firm that I started with was a 40-person firm. I had two firms. They were both 40 people when I started, the second firm, 40 when I started, 120 when I left nine years later. But that 40-person firm was started by a sole owner. That sole owner was still there. Hearing the stories and working with clients that were clients of his, and him and his wife, Lois, Lois carrying the typewriter, going out to the client, kitchen table, she’s typing up the financial statements as he’s having a conversation with the client. That’s the environment that I grew up in, and then we became a 120-person firm with nine departments and just very different.

I got to see blends of firm sizes, small business, midsize businesses, a couple of capital-funded clients as well. Then leaving that to go into political media and public affairs. Who does that as a CPA? But that public affairs for three years, getting me ready and understanding what D.C. looks like. Then the 14 years at the Association and then leaving to go be CEO of an international organization, an international association of firms to again round out of the global perspective.

Each of those steps, it wasn’t like I said, “Well, there’s another step on the ladder to get me ready to be Association CEO,” but it all kind of fell into place. I’m excited to be here. I love this profession, greatest profession in the world, and I just love the collaboration that I’m seeing and the opportunities that we have going forward.

Amato: Mark Koziel, thanks very much.

Koziel: Thanks, Neil.