The importance of targeting talent early, enthusiastically

Jennifer Wilson is passionate about the accounting pipeline and the work being done by the National Pipeline Advisory Group (NPAG). Wilson, the CEO of Convergence Coaching and independent facilitator for NPAG, joined the JofA podcast this week to update listeners on progress in addressing talent concerns.

Wilson details the timeline for delivering a draft report to AICPA Council, themes that are emerging in discussions so far, and how entities but also individuals can play a vital role in attracting talent to the profession.

Resources

The main NPAG page, AccountingPipeline.org

March 2023 JofA podcast episode with Avani Desai, CPA

August 2023 JofA podcast episode with NPAG chair Lexy Kessler, CPA, CGMA

Last week’s episode with Kimberly Ellison-Taylor, CPA, CGMA

What you’ll learn from this episode:

• An explanation of the National Pipeline Advisory Group (NPAG) and Wilson’s work with the group.
• Some key factors that contribute to “pipeline leaks.”
• The core value proposition of the profession, in Wilson’s words.
• The role of individual responsibility in helping to address accounting talent concerns.
• A timeline for some of NPAG’s key initiatives.
• The small changes that can lead to big ripples in the pipeline, according to Wilson.

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 your host, Neil Amato. I’m joined for this episode by a repeat guest on the show. She is Jen Wilson, the co-founder of Convergence Coaching. Jen, we’re going to talk today some about the accounting pipeline. I know it’s a topic you’re passionate about. First, welcome back to the JofA podcast. Thanks for being on.

Jen Wilson: Neil, thank you so much for having me, and you’re right, I am passionate about that pipeline.

Amato: Could you first give a brief, high-level summary of the mission of a group you’re doing some work with, the National Pipeline Advisory Group, and the main issues it is aiming to address?

Wilson: Sure. I’m acting as the independent facilitator for that National Pipeline Advisory Group, or the acronym NPAG, and this advisory group is focused on identifying ways to grow the number of people who enter the profession of accounting and then some percentage of whom go on to become licensed, and increase both of those numbers.

Amato: The group was formed in 2023. Obviously, it’s been doing work that continues, so as we record in mid-January 2024, what would you say lies ahead for the group in this process?

Wilson: Well, to talk about what lies ahead, I’m just going to touch briefly on what’s behind us. One of the things, Neil, that any group that would set out to grow the number of people who enter the profession of accounting or who are interested in it would want to do is get together and make a list of all the things we need to change — the solutions, we would call them. And before we could focus on solutions, NPAG has had to really stop and identify our biases and all the things we think we know, and then we’ve been very committed to be data-driven in this process.

So we had to begin to really dig into available research and data and relearn, learn real facts, real themes that came from various research reports, and start to identify what we began to call pipeline leaks. So we have been deep into learning and deep into pipeline leak identification, all the different places where people leave the accounting pipeline, and then we’ve been working to identify the root cause of those leaks, and only then could we begin generating solutions. We have all the way along while we’ve been learning, been also getting feedback. The state societies were super instrumental for us and gathering over 1,600 inputs and feedback and focus groups, validating elements of some of the assumptions we were making in some of our plans for our work together.

We’ve been getting data this month. In January of 2024, I’ve been spending time with various members of NPAG and the AICPA, getting feedback and ideas and input from various stakeholder groups inside the profession on the work we’re doing, and we’ve begun to develop the solution set around these pipeline leaks, and we are preparing to launch a national survey where we will ask stakeholders from all corners of the profession to give us feedback on various ideas to solve these pipeline leaks.

We weren’t able, because you can’t survey everybody on everything or the survey is too long, to include what we began to call expected solutions. But the solutions that we think are more cutting edge or more pushing the envelope, or where we’re less certain about which direction to go, those are the things we’re going to be testing in this national survey.

And so that’s what lies ahead, is the launch of this national survey, where we will ask folks in industry and government and in public accounting and in academia, and in the various state boards and state societies, we will ask all of those folks to input to these solutions and help give us direction on them.

We also plan to launch a student survey, because student questions are different, about the student experience and about the solution ideas we have to enhance the student experience. We’re going to be testing those solution ideas with students in the February to April time frame. Then we’re going to formalize a draft of our strategic plan, a pipeline growth plan, and present it in May of 2024 in draft form to the AICPA Council.

Amato: That’s a good summary. You said earlier before we started recording that you’ve been traveling all over, I guess, helping to get that process moving. You’re hearing a lot of things. I’m just wondering, what are some of the themes in the feedback you’ve been collecting and maybe some themes in the data so far?

Wilson: Yes. We’ve been very careful when we’re talking about themes. We’ve tried to make those themes be things, almost truths, from the data. Things that various data sources have confirmed for us versus just one survey or one dataset, and we’ve tried to be careful not to jump to conclusions or assumptions. Right now, we’re operating off of five major data themes that have come and emerged from all the resources. One is that, as a profession, we certainly are leaking out folks before they have declared an accounting major. Before we get them into accounting and school at college, they’ve already chosen to go a different path.

And so there’s a need, as a profession, to tell a more compelling story, to cause our profession to be one that young people would choose or would be interested in. There’s quite a bit of data out there that shows that high schoolers begin to determine an interest in accounting because they’re exposed to an accountant in their classes, or maybe a relative or a mentor or somebody they’ve known, and also because they’ve taken a high school accounting class.

We need to focus, and we’ve had one of our working groups focused on middle school and high school strategies. We have to tell a more compelling story globally about how cool our profession is, about its impact on the global economy, on the way that we impact people’s lives and their businesses and their livelihoods and that sort of thing.

Sometimes when I talk about this theme of needing to tell a better story, we think about like broad ad campaigns, and there are some wonderful programs. The CAQ has an Accounting+ program that’s doing incredible things related to telling a better story on what I’ll call the brand level. But I also call all accountants and CPAs to be more cognizant of the stories we’re telling at our kitchen tables and in our communities about our work and how we can be more involved at middle school and high school and college, telling our stories and sending our young people in to tell their stories so that we could begin to shift the way that people perceive us.

Only one in eight business majors chooses an accounting major. So that is another leak point if you will, and so that’s part of telling a more compelling story. But another theme in the data is we have to address the cost and the time of education. We want people to be excited about the academic experience, and so it has to become more engaging as well. That’s another theme. Course names, pulling our people through the pipeline instead of weeding them out. Sometimes accounting classes, intermediate accounting is sometimes called a weed-out class. We don’t want to weed people out, we want to pull them through the pipeline.

So there’s a lot of possible solutions around both making the academic experience more engaging and the [American Accounting Association] is doing some wonderful work. They’re looking at redesigning the introductory classes, which will make a big difference because all introductory classes are taken by the business majors and that’s where we could potentially get them excited and hook them into the accounting major more effectively. I mentioned addressing the cost and time of education; that’s another theme. The additional 30 hours does cost more and may make it a less affordable major for certain folks, [along with] the additional time.

There’s all sorts of exploration of ways to provide additional pathways that still would hit the college transcript, potentially, and still allow us to have substantial equivalency and mobility but address the cost of time in education. Our group has been talking about those types of solutions to this issue, but also nothing’s been off the table, so we’ve talked about all kinds of potential pathways and ways to ease that process and minimize leaks at the college level.

Amato: I think that’s really good. You mentioned about telling the story, telling the story better or maybe telling it to different populations, telling it to people earlier. Avani Desai, she’s the CEO of the firm Schellman in Florida, she talked to me about a year ago about going to elementary schools and telling that accounting story. Kimberly Ellison-Taylor, who I last saw in person about a month ago, said that exact thing: “We have to tell our story better.” I will ask you a question I asked NPAG chair Lexy Kessler in a JofA episode about five months ago: As you’re meeting with people in the profession, are they understanding the importance of looking inward at their practices as something that can help open the pipeline, so to speak?

Wilson: I think we are, Neil, but I do think one of the things that I experienced when I first took on this role as independent facilitator was it did feel a little bit to me like everybody wanted to point out what someone else had to change. “I know how to solve this pipeline problem. Those people over there need to fix it.” I have a few personal themes that I think are part of our critical success factors.

One is personal responsibility and individual responsibility, not just employer responsibility at firms or in industry, but individual accountant and CPA responsibility and all of us in the profession to realize we’re going to have to change something — each of us — change the way we think, change the way we behave in order to transform our pipeline.

This is not something that one ad campaign or one shift and education requirements by itself can solve. This is something that’s very complex and very integrated. It stems from changes needed in every single aspect of our profession. Mostly minor refinements because we have such a great profession, but we do have to make the changes. You say, do they realize that they need to look inward? I think we intellectually do, but I don’t think that we’ve internalized it to the point of being clear about what changes we should make as individuals and inside firms and employers. I do think some firms and some employers are up to some incredible things, and there are lots of stories to be amplified.

Just as you mentioned, getting into high schools, middle schools, going to colleges, assisting professors with curriculum. You know, really getting into elementary schools and telling stories earlier. Providing better support for CPA Exam candidates, cohort management, things like that, or helping them with scheduling so that they have time to study, providing scholarships, providing financial support for the CPA Exam costs and prep classes and all of these things that we can do and should do.

I just call on every person hearing this or in our profession to think about what could I personally do? How can I personally amplify more positive, hopeful, really interesting stories about our profession? Then, what could I possibly do to get out there and make sure more people know what a great profession I’m in, because they are. When you talk to people, they start getting very enthused about their work and about what they’re doing. But we don’t realize how talking about the worst busy season I’ve had in 34 years or writing a tweet about I’m in the office again on a Sunday; these hours stink. How those kinds of messages have contributed to a decently difficult brand image for us.

Amato: I’ll ask you: The passion clearly comes through in your voice as you talk about those things. But why exactly is it something you’re passionate about?

Wilson: Well, I mean, I love this profession and I do believe that that the CPA profession in particular is a cornerstone in the health and well-being of our global economy. I think that the work we do is so diverse, it’s so technology forward, it’s complex, it’s interesting. It’s all relationship-driven. The client relationships, the talent relationships, the integration that we have with other companies and entities in our work. It’s so interesting.

I feel like everybody should know what a cool and really intellectually stimulating and difference-making profession we’re in. When I see that our pipeline is declining and I see that we’re just not really being known for what we are, it frustrates me. In my heart, I’m a marketer and a communicator. I think we really have somehow lost sight of the core value proposition of this fantastic work we’re doing, and we’ve got to shift that.

Amato: It’s clearly a multifaceted issue. There’s still plenty of things to be done, plenty of questions I could ask you. But for now, what would you say as a closing thought as this group moves into more of 2024?

Wilson: I think I would say that I just hope our profession will pull together. Another critical success factor to me as unity and leverage and the ability to amplify one another’s efforts and not look at ourselves as competing entities or trying to find who’s got more fault in our current pipeline situation than the next person. We take personal responsibility. We unify, prioritize our strategies, and really put all of our efforts together, all these different associations, all of these different groups. If we work together, we can transform this pipeline. It doesn’t take much.

If one in eight business majors chooses an accounting major, what would happen if it became two of the eight or three of the eight? What would we see happen as an example? There are many other places we can make small changes that will cause big impact, big ripple in the pipeline. I just hope we’ll pull together and work together. I also encourage every person to get more information about this and to stay attuned to it. If you’ve see it coming up on groups meetings as an agenda item, please come and attend and provide feedback. Please take the national survey when it comes, and please go out to accountingpipeline.org and read the resources, and also email us, provide us input. Let us know what you’re thinking and how we can integrate your ideas to grow the pipeline.

Amato: We will be sure to share that link in the show notes for this episode. Jen, thank you very much for being on the podcast.

Wilson: Hey, Neil, thanks for having me. I’m so grateful to talk about this with you and looking forward to amplifying this when it’s ready.