Power of the peer group: Riding the wave of finance transformation

The JofA podcast took a road trip last week to the Future of Finance Summit, catching up with several leaders on highlights from the event and reflections on its growth since the first event in Nashville, Tenn., in 2021.

Tom Hood, CPA/CITP, CGMA, executive vice president–Business Growth and Engagement at AICPA & CIMA, leads off this compilation episode, sharing a favorite quote and how it applies to the summit’s themes. He and other speakers explain how a growing community of leaders is applying the knowledge of the crowd to guide their organizations in transformative times.

Other speakers in this episode:

• Carrie Kruse, CPA, CGMA, economic development administrator for the city of Des Moines, Iowa;
• Scott Spiegel, CPA, CGMA, COO for AICPA & CIMA; and
• Kelly Lorenz, AICPA & CIMA’s associate director–Business Growth and Engagement.

The episode is the first of several that will focus on Future of Finance speakers and sessions, so be on the lookout for more, starting Thursday and continuing into 2024.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

• Hood’s summary of the event’s growth over the years.
• Why Cruse considers the event the “top professional development opportunity of the year.”
• The reasons Spiegel is more energized now about a new finance apprenticeship program.
• Why the summit’s idea-sharing has been a “gold mine of opportunity” for finance leaders, according to Lorenz.

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: Hey, it’s Neil Amato again with the Journal of Accountancy podcast. Last week we took our show on the road to the Future of Finance Summit, and here are several people who share their perspectives on insights gained from that summit. First up is Tom Hood, executive vice president– Business Growth and Engagement at AICPA & CIMA. The question I start him off with is one on reflection about the event — where it’s come from and where it’s going.

Tom Hood: Neil, it’s great to be back here on the show. Obviously, I love what you’ve been doing with this, so thank you for doing this and being here at our summit to cover this. This event for me, third year, it’s pretty much tripled or more in size from the very first one, but it was imagined by our Future of Finance Leadership Advisory Group. I have to give them all the credit. I say I stand on the shoulders of giants, and those are the giants — CFOs of these major corporations who’ve been with us now three years.

We started the summit idea with our purpose, which is to transform the finance and accounting profession to power trust, opportunity, and prosperity. It’s right off the Association’s [site]. They adopted it and said: “We really want to impact the trajectory of all finance and accounting.” We decided the way we’re going to do that is with a community, basically a community of practice, getting together, sharing ideas, getting the best of the best, featuring some of the top stories, based on the current issues of the day. That’s what we’ve done, and the growth and the energy in this conference this year is evident. I feel incredibly proud of this group and where we are. It went way beyond my imagination of where we could be, and the group is like: “Let’s keep going.”

Amato: What are some messages that resonated with you from this event in Orlando?

Hood: I think the key takeaway that I got both personally and what I heard from the group, it’s probably both one and the same, is the power of the peer group and the power, if you will, of the crowd that’s basically crowdsourcing what the future of finance looks like. We use polling, we use interactive, we had a ton of breakouts. What they all love: Peer-to-peer networking that stuck out. Everyone built a lot of relationships. We had a lot of time for them to get to know each other and work in groups and change those groups at every breakout.

The second piece was the topics of the day. The major topic issues that we started with, that we designed this program around — transformation, digital transformation, Gen AI popped up in the middle of the year and we had to double down on that, and that was amazing. The workforce, talent, retaining talent, finding talent, and new ways of doing it, which all circled on nontraditional talent, registered apprenticeship, new ideas. That was a big one that we clicked in on.

Then the other one — we had ESG, a little bit of DEI, so we had almost all the top issues that they all want, and they were here for them to choose and work on. Many of them said it was hard to pick one or two when you got two in the same time frame. I think that’s it. It’s the power of the peer network, getting together to solve this problem and move our profession forward.

Amato: Speaking of moving it forward, what is your hope for the profession looking ahead to 2024?

Hood: I hope that the profession starts to really feel the transformation. We have a white paper that this Future of Finance group created called From Scorekeeper to Futurist, and I hope we get to that point. Everyone’s talking about being a finance business partner, a value-added finance professional. No longer closing the books is the thing that we do. Yes, we do it, but it’s about in service of how do we make the business better. Getting that finance leader in that strategic role, and believe it or not, we have tons of examples in our group and in this community already.

For instance, Gen AI, that session, the big issue was all of them were tasked by their CEO to get on Gen AI, not just for finance, for the whole organization, and not just for the whole organization internally, but how does it impact their customer segments and their product and service line? That’s the seat at the table we’ve been talking about how long, Neil, like for 20 years? That’s my aspiration, that in 2024 we move that needle one more big step forward.

Amato: It’s been a great event. It’s been great to be here, Tom. Anything in closing that you’d like to add?

Hood: The closing thing is the poll that we started this conference off, which changed slightly, but top five issues. Accelerated digital transformation, No. 1, that used to be talent, by the way. AI and Gen AI, at No. 2, that wasn’t even on the map a year ago. Need for new skills, that’s always been there, and it’s always been about No. 3. But [with] emphasis on new skills, and that’s what they’re all saying. Finding and retaining talent and maintaining culture in a hybrid work environment, top 5. Three of those, maybe four of those top five, have been consistent. They just moved in priority.

But it gets back to this, and I close this conference today with my favorite quote, Jon Kabat-Zinn says: “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn how to surf.” I really feel this group is helping us curate how we all ride these waves of transformation more successfully for the benefit of all of our businesses, not just finance, but in our leadership role as strategy partners to the whole business, which in turn will impact our whole economy.

Amato: Tom Hood, thank you very much.

Hood: Thanks for having me, Neil.

Amato: Next up on this Future of Finance Summit wrap-up episode is Carrie Kruse. She’s a CPA who holds the CGMA designation. She’s economic development administrator with the city of Des Moines, the capital city of Iowa. Carrie, I’ve seen you a few times at this event. Tell me why you come back, what you like about it, and maybe some of your takeaways from this particular one in mid-December in Orlando?

Carrie Kruse: Happy to. This is such a fun event. There are finance professionals from almost any and every industry I can possibly think of that attend this event every year, so that opportunity to network with my peers that work in every area of finance and learn about the cutting-edge things that they’re doing in their organizations. A lot of us have the same challenges even if we’re in different industries, so the energy at this summit every year is just electric.

People come with ideas, we want to share, we want to learn together. It is the top professional development opportunity of the year. I look forward to it. I’ve looked forward to it the last two times I’ve been here, and as long as it keeps happening, I’m going to keep coming back.

Amato: That’s great. Certainly don’t want to have you forget anyone, but is there anything from any of the sessions that you’d like to talk about as highlights, things that stuck in your mind, or maybe it was just a conversation with a fellow finance professional that you’ll take away as a key lesson?

Kruse: I think the resounding theme this year is definitely Gen AI. It’s what everybody is talking about. There are some large organizations that are really surprisingly far along in their Gen AI journey, but a lot of us haven’t even started or are trying to figure out where to start with it. So I found myself in a lot of conversations about that and just the power of that tool and how it’s going to change the way that all of us in the finance industry work. I thought that was really exciting.

We had a great session on coachability and both giving and receiving feedback. It seems like a commonsense kind of leadership thing we can all work on. But it really is something you have to intentionally prioritize in order to do well. I just thought that was a great additive thrown into the conference of just how to go back and be better leaders for our organizations.

Amato: I was mainly in a separate room recording podcasts, so I didn’t get to too many sessions myself, but I did sit in on some of that coachability session from Kevin Wilde. That was interesting to me how as we advance in age and in career and title, that we tend to be less coachable. What do you think about that?

Kruse: Yeah, in some respects, I was surprised when he showed that chart, and in other respects, I wasn’t as surprised. I think as we get further into our careers and into our lives, it’s really easy just to have a full plate, and we get comfortable with our profession and the work we do. I think when it comes to coachability and receiving feedback, I can see why over time with those full plates that we become less coachable, unless we’re intentionally working on that. It’s kind of like a tool. You have to keep it sharpened.

Amato: Carrie Kruse, thank you very much.

Kruse: Thanks for having me here at the summit — so fun.

Amato: Scott Spiegel, the chief operating officer of AICPA & CIMA, recording from the Future of Finance Summit. Scott, you’ve been to previous Future of Finance Summits. First, how have you seen it grow over the years?

Scott Spiegel: Yeah, it’s amazing, and thanks for having me. I was at the original Future of Finance meeting a few years ago, and this has grown tremendously. To feel the passion, the power, and the energy over the last three years grow the way it has, it’s been really an amazing experience to see where this has come from. From its inception to now, it’s probably three times the size.

Amato: What are some of the messages or conversations that stuck with you from this event?

Spiegel: What’s awesome about this agenda is over the span of about two days, it crossed a lot of diverse topics from women in leadership, to how to be a good leader or how to get coaching and mentoring, to AI, to a really informative session that I came out of around hiring and being from a different background in terms of recruiting into the finance and accounting profession. It was really inspiring. So, I think across two days to see just a wide array of topics in a very short time frame was really powerful.

Amato: What can you as COO of a global organization learn from some of these sessions, the conversations with attendees, etc.?

Spiegel: The peer networking is probably No. 1. I think meeting people who are like-minded or going through the same challenges and issues that we are going through, I think it is really tremendous. You can feel the energy when we started talking about generative AI and the whole room really just buzzing to learn more. It is the hottest topic in the ecosystem right now. I think just paying attention and taking good notes and just really learning from that and bringing it back to our teams is going to be really an important thing.

Amato: We have now checked that podcast bingo card of, hey, we mentioned Gen AI because you can’t have an episode these days without it. Tell me this, looking ahead to 2024, what’s your hope for the profession?

Spiegel: Well, that’s a great question. First, I hope we can attract many more candidates into the profession. Filling the pipeline with younger people who really show an interest in the profession, I think, is really important. It’s been a great career path for me. I think [there’s] a lot of ways to instill that confidence that it’s still a great career path regardless. People think there’s some disruption in the ecosystem. Disruption creates opportunity. I would say one [is] just filling the pipeline.

I think two, just staying ahead on the technological changes that are going on. There’s so much talk about finance and digital transformation that’s taking place. It’s always going to transform, but there’s a lot right now that’s taking place, and the buzz of term of generative AI is probably no hotter of a topic right now.

Then I think three would just be talent. I would say keeping skill sets fresh and making sure that finance and accounting teams are upskilling and reskilling and learning all the time, I think, would be my third important thing for 2024.

Amato: You mentioned talent pipeline. The apprenticeship program for finance business partners up and running, adding more companies. Some of the actual apprentices were here, the companies that are accepting those apprentices and developing them. What does that mean for the profession, and what have you seen from the program so far?

Spiegel: I think it’s a really unique opportunity to bring more people into the profession. The interesting thing about the apprenticeship program is you can now attract people from nontraditional accounting and finance backgrounds into the profession, upskill them, rotate them through your accounting or finance departments or teams, or even in an accounting firm, let them get a broad base of experience. And now, by investing the time and energy into that person, you’ve now recruited somebody into the profession who you probably wouldn’t have originally thought of.

I think the traditional model of having an accounting degree and sitting for the exam — it works in a lot of cases. But there’s a whole subset of people who are still learning what they really want to do in life. I think the apprentice program really gives people an opportunity to touch it, to feel it, to experience it, and then get heavily entrenched in it. I’m really excited about what the future of apprentices can do for this profession. By meeting some of those candidates here at the conference this week, I’m even more excited than I was coming into the week.

Amato: Scott Spiegel, appreciate you being on the show.

Spiegel: Thanks for having me.

Amato: Joining me for this segment of the show is Kelly Lorenz, associate director–Business Growth and Engagement at AICPA & CIMA. To me, she is the person who has been key to the growth of the Future of Finance Summit. We are now completing the third such event. Kelly, first, how have you seen the summit grow over the years?

Kelly Lorenz: Thanks for having me, Neil. I think one of the things that has been interesting over the three years is I joined the team and started leading the initiatives that we do around Future of Finance and with our executives as we were finishing planning for the 2021 summit. In 2021, we had a spike in COVID, so I’m changing jobs, and we have COVID spiking again, and we had an event planned. There were a lot of last-minute, Plan A, Plan B, Plan C [scenarios]. We ended up doing a little bit of a hybrid approach of an in-person summit with about 35, 40 people and then an online companion for everybody who couldn’t travel.

That was a real experimentation. I think what I love about the work that we do on Tom Hood’s team and with the Future of Finance group, we wanted to have regular touch points, and we didn’t believe at that time in 2021 that we could get senior leaders at Fortune 500 companies to join us every other month for a chat, which thankfully proved false.

We actually have had them engaged and active. We have about 50 senior finance leaders from the Fortune 500 engaged in a bimonthly meeting, and as part of this cohort that helps us design — what are we focused on in terms of potentially new business models, potentially new learning opportunities?

Then how do we create an environment for the leaders to come together, meet with each other, learn from each other, and also build a relationship and a community for finance leaders? You think about accounting, which is the other side of our business, has long been concentrated around the CPA. It’s very similar. If you’re an accountant in one job, you can be an accountant anywhere.

Whereas if you’re in finance and you’re a leader, you can own so many different things depending on where you work. We were unsure if this would be successful because of that massive amount of diversity in companies, industries, functions that they owned, their backgrounds. We were concerned.

What we found was actually it has been a gem and a gold mine of opportunity for folks. Because when we went into 2022 and we were thinking about what topics are we going to cover and who are we going to ask, we went first to our finance leader community and made sure we were hitting on the topics that they were most concerned about that was top of mind for them day in and day out.

Then we also tapped some of them to come and do case studies. We were in Austin, Texas, for the 2022 summit. What really worked last year was this was the first time a lot of them were meeting face to face and they thought, this is my opportunity to grow, not only myself, but thinking about what my team can do as a result of attending a summit like this, and it’s such a tight-knit community. By creating that intimate environment where they see the same folks year in and year out and they start to get to know each other and their needs, we have organic connections made.

Amato: Kelly, thank you very much and congratulations on a great event.

Lorenz: Well, thank you so much. Thanks, Neil.

Amato: Again, those speakers were in order Tom Hood, Carrie Kruse, Scott Spiegel, and Kelly Lorenz. We appreciate them taking time to be on the show. This is Neil Amato, and I appreciate you, the listener, taking time to listen as well. We plan one more episode this year. After that, we’ll talk to you in early January. Enjoy your holidays. Thanks for listening to the Journal of Accountancy podcast.