AICPA & CIMA CEO about accounting: ‘The opportunities are endless’

Mark Koziel, CPA, CGMA, was less than a week into his tenure as AICPA & CIMA CEO when he joined the Journal of Accountancy podcast for a two-part conversation.

In part one, published Thursday, Koziel discussed wanting to hear from members about their challenges and success stories. In part two, he talks about how accountants can work with artificial intelligence tools, why he initially was interested in pursuing work with the FBI, and the value he sees in a hybrid work environment for some firms.

Koziel has invited members to send email to AskMark@aicpa-cima.com and “tell me how the Association can help you, your career, and the profession.”

What you’ll learn from this episode:

• The career-related questions Koziel used to ask fellow CPA firm partners.
• One aspect of Koziel’s preparation to become an accountant that he would have changed.
• The key things he learned as an employee of the grocery store Wegmans.
• What he says to students considering a career in accounting.
• More on how client advisory services have “erupted” over the years.

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 the Journal of Accountancy podcast. This is Neil Amato. This episode is the second of a two-part conversation with AICPA and CIMA CEO Mark Koziel. In the first episode, which will be linked in this episode’s show notes, JofA editor in chief Jeff Drew and I asked Koziel about his background and more about his idea to create communities for the worldwide membership.

He also wants to hear from members, and the email address AskMark@aicpa-cima.com has been set up that purpose. That clickable address will also be shared in the show notes. Thanks to Koziel for his time on the JofA podcast. To start this episode, here’s my question about the accounting talent pipeline.

What is your view of some of the talent pipeline challenges out there and what are the solutions that you think can turn things around?

Mark Koziel: Yeah, I’ve studied the NPAG’s analysis and their recommendations, and I think they’re pretty spot on. One of the things that’s being discussed and I don’t want to get into the politics of the 150-hour rule. You know, thinking that changing the education requirements are going to solve the pipeline challenge, I think is just not completely accurate. There are plenty of other things to do. First of all, we do have to tell a better story. I mentioned [in part one] about mentoring eight different students in the last five years, one of which is not my son. He chose screenwriting as his major. He takes after his mother. He’s a creative type, even though I encouraged all day, every day.

But I’d constantly hear from our members and from people that I worked for back in my CPA firms. I used to say this to the partners in my firm when I did the recruiting. I would ask the partners. I’d say, “Is this firm good enough for your kid?” They’d say, “Well, I’d never recommend accounting for my kid.” I said, “Why not?” If it was good enough for you, good enough for me. I’m sitting in your office. I have to talk to someone else’s kid and tell why they should work here or why they should pursue a career in accounting.” I said, “It’s actually pretty darn good, if you think about it.”

It’s pretty prosperous. Do you work hard? Yeah, you absolutely work hard, but you know what? We don’t own hard work as a profession. I remember one telling me, “Well, accounting is way too hard, so I talked my daughter out of it who went into the medical profession and now she’s a heart surgeon. I said, “Why? Because the hours are better?” I hear these things.

It is the best profession in the world. I think we all can contribute to that in a different way. The whole pipeline thing, telling the better story. We got to work on starting salaries. We started to lag behind some other majors in the business community, for sure. But just getting out there, it is a darn good profession. It is a fantastic profession. If I had to do it all over again, I would have done the exact same thing. I may have studied a little harder, my grades weren’t the best, but I would have done the exact same thing. I think that I can honestly look at any student in the eye and say, “This is a great career opportunity.” I hope everyone else could say the same thing.

Amato: What did the experience of working for the grocery store Wegmans teach you?

Koziel: Well, it’s funny that you bring that up. If people are not familiar with Wegmans, it is the best darn grocery store in the Northeast, now coming down into the South. We love it.

My first job there was bringing carts in from the parking lot. Let me tell you about hard work. Try and push 15 carts through slushy snow in Buffalo, N.Y. They now have power carts to make that happen. We had to do that by hand back in the day. But the one thing that got me was at 16 pushing carts, I was evaluated every other month by the front-end manager on how well I did in pushing carts. More importantly, how well I was servicing customers, and every person in that organization got a similar type of evaluation.

I said at 16 pushing carts, if it was important enough for them to give me feedback on my performance, shouldn’t we expect that out of all professional-service firms that we have and professional organizations? We owe it to those that are working for us to make that happen to first give them education on what the competencies are up front, but then also to provide feedback against that on a periodic basis becomes important.

The customer service without a doubt, service mentality, relationships, all of that came from what I learned at Wegmans.

Amato: I don’t know if the power cart thing is applicable to AI today, but you’re working with the technology. How does the accounting profession best adapt and work with, as opposed to fight, “Oh, I’m going to be extinct” when it comes to GenAI and other transformative technologies. Also, how can that explosion of technology help in the pipeline issue?

Koziel: Well, I definitely think that the technology explosion, which continues on and has forever, will help to solidify it. It’s funny because we always talk about the pyramid shape. We hire a lot of people at the bottom. Some of them stay, and we turn them into seniors. Some of them stay, we turn them into managers, and then the ones who are left over turn into partners.

I think it’s the same even in business and industry. We hire more analysts at that entry level all the way up to CFO. We want to make everything based on this pyramid model, and is the pyramid shape right? Someone just sent me a quote to say, by the way, all of these organizations that are used in the pyramid as their potential model should also be aware that the pyramid, as created, is actually a tomb.

We’re modeling our firms or organizations after a pyramid, which is the tomb of many of the Pharaohs back in the day. In any event, thinking about that and how we do things, yes, the bottom two corners, one is to outsource to U.S.-based companies or to offshore it, whatever that is.

Then the other pieces of technology. I spoke at Digital CPA a couple of years ago. I had two of our CEOs from Allinial member firms on stage, and we talked about outsourcing and how they look at their firm, and how they were able to grow their firms exponentially even though there was a talent crunch. They talked about the fact that today, how they look at things, if there’s a new process that needs to be created, or there’s a key person who’s leaving, the way they look at it today is they say, “Can we automate it 100%? Yes or no.” Yes, then great, go automate it. If no, can we automate a portion of it and can we outsource a portion of it? If we can’t do that, can we outsource all of it? If we can’t do that, now we need to make the hiring decision. The hiring decision’s actually last in the hierarchy rather than the first.

So many firms are immediately saying we need to replace a body with a body, that’s not always the case. People are saying, well, that’s a threat to our existence because we’re eliminating jobs for accountants, and that’s actually not true. We have them doing different things. At that entry level, I think this is where part of the crunch has been on the profession. At that entry level, if you think back to what I did, when I entered into public accounting back 30 years ago, making copies of accounts receivable confirmations at the copier may not have been the highest, best use of my time, but that’s what I did as a staff accountant. That’s been eliminated.

When you think about the requirements on a new entrant into firms, into companies doing financial analysis, they’re being asked to do higher-level work immediately than what was ever asked back 30 years ago. We haven’t eliminated what makes us talented as accountants. We’ve eliminated some of the mundane and the routine that people didn’t necessarily want to do anyway.

And so I think auditors need to be upskilled faster. Our training level of how we’re going to train people needs to change. It’s not two weeks and good luck. It’s not look at last year’s file and copy it. It’s going to be, you need to bring talent to the table. We are going to train you for I don’t know, three months, six months, whatever that is. You’re going to get virtual reality-type engagements that you can work on, get tested on so that when you go out into the field, you are ready to be almost like that light senior of the past rather than saying that you’re a staff accountant. The requirements have changed.

Amato: Jeff, anything to say in response?

Jeff Drew: Imagine I was 30 years younger and coming out of school or still in school and considering what business career I wanted to go into. But I was concerned about work/life balance and earnings and earning potential. What would you say to someone like me who is considering accounting, but also considering other options?

Koziel: No other options, Jeff. The only option is accounting.

Again, I would have done it the same way for me. Public accounting was definitely the route that I appreciate that I took. What’s funny is when I went to school for accounting, I said, well, I don’t want to be an accountant. I want to get in the FBI. I was talking to my friend’s father, who was a detective in the local police force, and all my friends were going to school to be cops. My friend’s father said, you go to school for accounting. We’ll get you into the FBI. I got two guys over there that can help get you in. You go to the FBI, so then when you come back to town, you can tell my son and all the other friends of yours, “Out of the way, I’m in charge” every time you show up to a crime scene. I’m like, OK, I’m totally into that. Didn’t know anything about public accounting. But then, once I learned about it, that’s the direction that I decided to take.

Whether you take business and industry as your channel or it’s public accounting, I think the opportunities are endless. And you can get into your passion project. You can find organizations that you’re passionate about it. Maybe it’s a technology around a particular passion project and you go to be CFO of that particular technology. I’ve encouraged people to get the credentials first and foremost, have something behind your name that’s going to set you apart from others.

I’m proud of the fact that I have the CPA and the CGMA, and I’m able to tout that globally. It’s a namesake. It’s important. I would do it all over again and I encourage everybody to do the same. If it’s these U.S. students that I’m talking to, I tell them, get the CPA. It’s one thing they can never take away from you. You will always have some level of work that you’re able to do. I think we can say the same on CGMA as we continue to build that the FLP program and what we’re hearing from the Future of Finance [Summit] and what CFOs are looking for.

There’s a lot of opportunities out there, and it’s a good living. As far as the work/life balance, Jeff, I never liked the word balance because I think you’re setting yourself up for failure to think that you’ll ever have balance in any way. But there’s work/life integration. There’s work/life management.

I remember being at my firm when my son was born, and my son was born a preemie. He was in the intensive care ward, and the managing partner of my firm. I told him about it. My wife’s at one hospital, my son’s at another hospital. I’ve got to go get her and then bring her back and all these things. He said, whatever you need, take it.

The flexibility of public accounting actually is pretty extreme, and it can be. There’s client needs that happen along the way, but just that type of support for me – I don’t know if I would have gotten that in all organizations, and so that became really important. Thinking about that, you fast-forward two years and work/life balance, as you say.

My wife was an editor. She was an English major. She was an editor for a professional services company, doing proposals – an environmental firm. She comes in one morning and she says, “Ben’s sick, he’s going to have to stay home from daycare.” I looked at her, and I said, “Wow, that’s a real problem for you. She looked back at me and she said, ”No, that’s a real problem for us. This is what my day looks like. What does your day look like?”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her I was going to go golfing with the client for the afternoon. But I’m like, I can figure it out. I think in that work/life balance, as we talk about it, the balance isn’t just between the individual and the employer. The balance is with family, and it’s having the courage to say when you need help. I think there’s a lot of help that’s available out there, and there’s a lot of ways to be incredibly flexible.

All the firms that have gone hybrid now, I think that’s helpful. Some firms, they’re fighting that a little bit. But I think if you talk to the next generation, some level of hybrid has been better for that. But it’s a pretty darn flexible profession, and I think we need to take advantage of that, we need to market that more.

Amato: You mentioned brand value just then. As kind of a closing thought, one of the things that’s happening is client advisory services for accountants. There’s new offerings, there’s adding to the brand value. What is the future of that, and how do you see it progressing?

Koziel: Client accounting has erupted. Even though I left AICPA, I was still involved in CPA.com’s CAS 2.0 Advisory Group. And seeing what our member firms, I got to see it firsthand inside of Allinial and the member firms that were there, and we were providing support to firms to really advance where that is. But, CAS is not your mom and dad’s bookkeeping shop. It is a much different service today.

Again, you mentioned about automation. This is where we automate the heck out of the routine transactions that take place. Then we can spend more time with our clients around advisory. We can get into FP&A, watching how firms were using three-tier pricing to move their clients upstream into, let’s say, controllership-level or CFO-level services that went far beyond just the routine of booking transactions and having a financial statement at the ready every month-end. That is not what client accounting is about. Those are the table stakes. It is the advisory piece.

Again, that’s where the CGMA comes back into play to strengthen the CPA. If you have the CPA and CGMA, you can talk about those things together. But this whole idea of globalization as an aspect, and when you talk about CAS, I mentioned the billion-dollar client that we had inside of Allinial. I’m sure many firms are like, you know what? That’s way too big for me. My clients never had that problem. Well, my $10 million firm in Buffalo, N.Y., 25 years ago, I had a foam manufacturer. They produced foam. They had these big pieces of foam. Inventory observation was like Romper Room. It was a lot of fun.

But they took these big pieces of foam, and then they cut them down, and they made the foam rollers for Xerox machines, Xerox, IBM. They also made the foam applicator on the Kiwi shoe-polish kits. Whether it was a little round one or the bigger one, this is what they produced. They sat right in between Buffalo and Rochester, and they serviced both markets.

They were talking about the challenges 25 years ago. They said, tell me how to stay close to my customer when my customer was right next door and now my customer is in China and Mexico and Hong Kong and Europe and in all these different places, tell me how to stay close to them. That’s where the advisory piece really started to come into play and how they could move distribution centers and what all these things tend to look like. It’s amazing to see all the opportunities that are out there. Client accounting will continue, but it’s going to be more in the advisory space than it will be in the day-to-day transactions.

Amato: Again, thanks to Mark Koziel and JofA editor-in-chief Jeff Drew. For both parts of the two-part podcast interview, you can find the full Q&A transcript on the JofA podcast landing page.

And, in the March digital edition of the JofA, look for a consolidated version of the conversation. Thanks for listening to the Journal of Accountancy podcast.