For all future bosses: A leader’s take on in-office work, AI, and more

Kimberly Ellison-Taylor, CPA, CGMA, the founder and CEO of KET Solutions and a former AICPA board chair, is energized by people she met and words she heard at recent events.

Ellison-Taylor recaps some of the highlights in this episode of the JofA podcast, focusing on a session at the Future of Finance Summit in December on how finance professionals, and women in particular, can turn dreams of serving on a corporate board into reality.

Also, get caught up on recent articles in the JofA, including a recap of a session on generative AI at Digital CPA, the start of tax season according to the IRS, how auditors can handle questionable employee retention credit claims, and when some accountants are completing work.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

• A roundup of several JofA articles in a busy news week.
• Ellison-Taylor’s key takeaways from the Women’s Global Leadership Summit and Digital CPA events.
• The networking opportunities provided by those events and the Future of Finance Summit.
• Her thoughts on technology being “unleashed” and future talent being “unlocked.”
• What Ellison-Taylor means when saying “Together, we’re unstoppable.”
• Why she says that budding leaders should spend time in an office instead of being fully remote.

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 back to the Journal of Accountancy podcast. This is Neil Amato. You know me as a podcast host, but in my day job — well, just kidding, this is also my day job — but I’m also news editor for the JofA. Today, before we get to our main interview, I’m going to give you a few highlights of what’s been a busy news week so far on the JofA site.

Bryan Strickland has written about the advice that CPA Jason Staats shared at a recent Digital CPA Conference presentation on artificial intelligence. The article also highlights the recent release of a Gen AI toolkit, and that article will be linked in the show notes for this episode, along with the others that I mention.

Martha Waggoner has the news of the IRS announcement on the start of tax filing season. The IRS said that Jan. 29 is the first day it would begin accepting and processing individual income tax returns. Again, article link will be in the show notes for this episode.

CPAs Bob Durak and Mike Westervelt have written for the site on what auditors can do when, in the course of an audit engagement, they come across questionable claims for the employee retention credit or ERC. We look forward to sharing their insights in the article link, which will be in the show notes. Also a note that Bob Durak is a previous guest on the show and Mike Westervelt is a future guest.

Before we get to my interview with Kimberly Ellison-Taylor, who among many titles is a former AICPA chair, I’ll leave you with this question: How much work are you completing after 7 p.m.? A short and fun article by Bryan Strickland explores some data on this topic. Its headline begins with “Accountants After Dark,” and you’ll find it along with news on many other topics on journalofaccountancy.com. Now here’s my interview with Kimberly Ellison-Taylor.

Back on the Journal of Accountancy podcast, she’s a repeat guest. Kimberly, thank you for being on the JofA podcast. We’re recording at the Future of Finance Summit in Orlando. It’s mid-December. You’ve been at many events over the past few months that I want to highlight with you. Starting with the Women’s Summit in November, anything you want to share or some of the takeaways from some of your travels recently to conferences?

Kimberly Ellison-Taylor: Thank you so much, Neil, and thank you for having me back again. I was the emcee of the [Women’s Global Leadership Summit]. An absolutely amazing vantage point to see people, men and women, across the entire profession — public accounting, business and industry, government, education, not-for-profit, and consulting — coming together to talk about how do we improve our leadership, public speaking, storytelling, brand management? How do we also think about technology and innovation? Lots of great topics, and I’m really proud of the way that the feedback gets incorporated into the conference.

The conference leaders and, in particular Jeannine Brown, who’s also the Women’s Initiatives Executive Committee chair and she was the conference chair, really listened to the feedback and thought about ways that we could make it even better. Kudos to the planning team, to the sponsors, to the attendees themselves, because I think when you put all of those things together along with the AICPA conferences team, it’s a winning combination. And I’m looking forward to next year. I know there were plenty of people thinking about the business case so that they can come next year as well.

Amato: Do you want to also talk about anything as a takeaway from Digital CPA held in early December?

Ellison-Taylor: Digital CPA — so insightful. Every moment was action-packed. It’s the technology part of me that always responds so excitedly, thinking about generative AI and robotics process automation and machine learning, and thinking about the application of those techniques and tools for the profession and on behalf of our clients and the public interest.

I was able to lead a session that I was a keynote speaker for called “Breakfast for Dinner: Thinking Differently to Drive Business Growth.” I was talking about all the things that we need to open up ourselves to, to color outside the line. Because generative AI is going to help us speed up our imagination, but what happens if our imaginations are in a rut because we’ve been told to stay in a box? Instead of thinking out of the box, we have to think, what if there was no box? Because now the technology is going to be unleashed. Although I do know that there is an executive order that’s tried to put some safety and guardrails around it, but by and large, it’s going to be unleashed. We need to put on our imaginations and think about how we do goods, services, lead in an environment where it’s moving so quickly, and it’s moving faster than we can even think and probably did think we would be at this point. So I was really excited to lead this session about innovation, because I think that is really important.

Amato: Thank you for checking the podcast bingo card of making sure we mentioned Gen AI because you can’t have a podcast these days without talking Gen AI.

Ellison-Taylor: Well, and I’m an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon’s executive education program, where I teach emerging technology and innovation. You cannot talk about topical and relevance and issues in general without talking about the technology of the day, which, topping all the headlines, is Gen AI.

Amato: Now at this event, the Future of Finance Summit, you presented or co-presented, I guess, a session on Sunday. I’ve heard a lot about it. I was not able to make it, but can you tell me some about that, how that went and some of the feedback you’ve gotten from it?

Ellison-Taylor: I enjoy being on the Future of Finance [Leadership] Advisory Group as a member. This is our third year. Last year, we had a group of our leaders, who just happened to be women, who said, we want to get together and collaborate and talk about ideas and provide feedback. Out of that came this session, that was a preconference session. It was not an agenda, very informal, people who come and go, but we were talking about what do we need?

The first part, I was joined by Russell Reynolds’ Art Hopkins, senior partner, co-leader of a technology practice, and he was sharing his insights and perspectives on board preparation. Now what I enjoy about that is that if you’re working and that’s your long-term goal to one day share your insights in such a broad way on a corporate board, you’re leading, you’re doing things at an executive level on the journey.

All of the things — leading a P&L, working across collaboration lines whether it’s in the United States or globally, being able to bring people together to drive top- and bottom-line growth to really achieve year-over-year double-digit growth opportunities — those are the same things that you’re going to need if you aspire to be on a corporate board. So we were sharing those insights and lessons learned and also some of just the mechanics of how you get visibility to even be on someone’s radar to be on a board.

Then in our roundtable discussions, my question is, as always, if you imagine your next move, whatever that is, what’s the gap? What do you need in terms of leadership? What do you need in terms of growth? What do you need in terms of brand management? Everyone went around and shared their insights. They had takeaways and they wrote them down on a form, but we also use Conferences i/o to capture the insights so that we can share it with other people.

We want people to be unlocked. There’s potential that people have not even tapped into. We can unlock that by being intentional and thinking and purposeful about what we’re doing, everyone will benefit.

But also as a byproduct of Digital CPA, the Women’s Summit, and this one, there was a lot of networking. We’re peer mentoring, we’re peer learning from each other. No one company, no one person has all the answers, but together, we’re unstoppable. I think that as CPAs and accountants, I know many of us are thinking about how do we continue to enhance the services and the work we do to promote and protect the public interest even as we drive shareholder value.

Amato: You mentioned corporate board service, adjunct professor roles. You’re part of the Future of Finance Leadership Advisory Group. This group now has, I think, three formal in-person events: Nashville, two years ago; Austin, Texas, last year; and now Orlando. What do you think are some of the key themes this group is looking toward for finance talent in 2024?

Ellison-Taylor: For finance talent, I think we have to give them the possibility of opportunity, choice. There are so many different things that we do. No one day looks like the day before. I think that we have to message that in a meaningful way.

We have to share that you can be an entrepreneur inside the organization, and so you can have responsibility over a line of business, and you can aspire to really showing up in whatever industry you like. If you are a person that likes retail or hospitality or oil and gas or banking or insurance, you can really carry and marry, I think, those two ideals: accounting, finance, and also technology, along with an industry specialization or industry interest.

We have to do a better job of telling our story, to letting our future bosses, which is what I like to say. I’m the immediate past president of Beta Alpha Psi. I’ve always talked about what can we do to help our future bosses realize that this is the profession that allows you to do so many things. To take a phrase from the AICPA: “Start Here, Go Places.” I think it’s a phenomenal way to really get people involved, like Beta Alpha Psi, but we’ve got to tell that story better than we’ve been telling it.

Amato: A specific topic, but one that just has morphed over the past three years. People think they’ve figured it out, but I think it’s still tricky. What’s the future of in-office work?

Ellison-Taylor: Hybrid. It’s interesting. For years and years and years, we said, you need to give people flexibility. I don’t know if I think it’s about working from home or working from the office. It’s more about flexibility. Flex for your day.

I have been in roles when I was at Oracle. I worked at Oracle almost 17 years, and now I’ve been in my own company for the last three. But I will tell you, we had the flexibility to present however we wanted to for our day. For me, that could have been at 7 in the morning, that could have been 7 at night. I was able to really flex my day based on what my needs were. I think that’s what people are asking for.

I do believe, and I have suggested this to all of my future bosses in particular, please go into the office, because we want your learning to be accelerated. We want you to get the benefits of the wisdom of the people who have done this role for years. Now, you’re going to do it in a way that you’re going to do it, is what I tell them, and you’re going to be able to add some experiences because there are digital natives for sure. But that is going to be, not impossible, but a little more challenging to do at home by yourself. As opposed to looking across someone in the office or conference room, and saying, what do you think about this, and what do you think about that?

Then when friction happens, when we disagree, because every moment isn’t a Kodak moment, it’s harder to do it when you don’t know someone. When you disagree remotely, we could damage relationships. When really the point that someone was trying to get across, it didn’t come across well in a chat, didn’t come across well in an email. But if we’re sitting across from each other or in the same space, I can clarify, or you can ask me, or I can read your body language. But none of that — well, I shouldn’t say none — but it’s going to be more challenging. I believe there should be a couple of days a week that people are coming into the office.

But I also know that people need flexibility for their day, and I know that there are some roles that have been identified as great opportunities for remote work, and there are some roles that quite frankly are going to need to be in-person. I hope all of our companies and all of our individuals are thinking through a strategy. Because we can’t wing this, because if we wing this, we will really mess this up. We have to be purposeful and consistent in our thinking and how we apply whatever that approach is. But I think ultimately, it just comes back to flexibility for what you need for your day.

Amato: Kimberly, thank you very much. Anything you’d like to add in closing?

Ellison-Taylor: It has been absolutely great to meet different audiences from AICPA & CIMA. Whether it was the Global Women’s Summit, and we had colleagues that came from global locations, whether it was Digital CPA and we had colleagues that came from global organizations, and now the Future of Finance, AICPA & CIMA are actively working toward providing the tools, resources, ideas, and strategies to help organizations thrive and grow as well as our members.

Yes, I’m biased as a past chairman of AICPA, but I’m proud of the work that we’re doing because we’re not taking our foot off the pedal. We’re accelerating, we’re pushing, and we are flying a plane and serving the coffee in order to help our members meet whatever tomorrow’s concerns and issues are. We’re working on it today, and we’re going to solve it faster, we’re going to solve it better, but more importantly, we’re going to solve it together.