HOW TO BE A SUCCESSFUL ACCOUNTANT?

Are you considering a career in accounting? Like many people, you may think that accounting involves a little more than working through rows of numbers to determine a “bottom line.”

The basic skills you need to be a SUCCESSFUL ACCOUNTANT include the following:

• Math.
  
  

Yes, first and foremost, you must be good with numbers, including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, percentages and fractions. No calculus or trigonometry is needed, thank goodness. But a good handle on algebra is essential, as a lot of accounting involves problem solving.

• Details.
  

It helps for an accountant to have a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Accounting is a very “micro” world, and you need to learn to sweat the small stuff. This is a field where even seemingly insignificant errors can come back to blow up in your face – or your client’s.

• Memorization.
  

Many people have compared accounting to law. There are a lot of concepts to master and formulas to memorize. Fortunately, once you’ve worked in accounting for several years, these concepts become second nature.

• Research.
  

Very often, the answer to a problem may lie beyond what you have already studied. In that case, you have to go look for it. Fortunately, research today is not nearly as difficult and frustrating as it was in the decades before the Internet. But you still need to know where to look and the proper questions to ask.

• People.
  
  

Although the popular image of accountants holds that they are dry, bland and humorless, having well-developed people skills is a must for success. First, it’s important you develop trust and rapport with the clients you serve. Second, people often become highly emotional when it comes to the subject of money – particularly their money – and to make sure your clients do the right things with it can often require a high degree of tact, nuance and diplomacy.

• Business Focus
  
  
  

Pricing, value pricing, questioning each task that you are doing or not doing from the profit perspective, asking yourself whether the task you yourself are doing requires your CPA (or any other higher) qualification or someone else with lesser education and/or lesser experience can do it more economically (again, effect on profit), adding new services by partnering and so on.

• Writing and Speaking
  
  
  

Accounting is a precise science. When talking about your work, you need to be equally precise, specific and to-the-point. Your speech should be clear and informative with no room for ambiguities. Not all of your communication is going to be face-to-face. Very often you will have to put your thoughts, analyses and recommendations in writing. Therefore, it’s essential to be able to write in a style that is clear, confident and persuasive. As in law, much of your job involves making a case.

• Confidence
  
  
  

Are you a control freak? Some CPAs admit this pretty honestly. It is an expression that tells me that they know themselves well. Some are great with tax planning rather than managing the process details to get there. The moment you accurately know yourself, you also know what you need to get done from others. And that also means you need to understand others to get those things done from others. No point asking someone to crunch Excel spreadsheets when you know the person has more “people skills” than data discipline.

• Creative Thinker
  
  
  

I met a CPA who will prepare a tax return for free, if the client works with him for tax planning assignment! He says “I know when I prepare a tax return for a business what that business can achieve. And I want to share that value with the business owner.” If you take a look at your standard service deliverable, what can you do to create more value from them, for the client?

• Delegator

Isn’t this the most difficult thing to do for accountants, for a reason? Accountants carry a huge burden of compliance and delegating to a less experienced person can mean a huge, irreversible risk of compliance failure. But the key is to identify “process” and “validation” separately. Delegate the process and review for validation (against applicable rules). It could save you as much as 90 percent of your personal time. Someone expressed this so clearly in “Have a Delegation SYSTEM i.e. Delegation Saves Yourself Time Energy and Money.”

• Determination
  
  
  

Determination and perseverance is one of the best strengths of accountants. It could be partly due to legal deadlines that act like goals that one has no choice but to achieve. But having worked with ambitious CPAs, I know that CPAs have gone through almost practicing overcoming difficult obstacles.

• Independent
  

How often do you hear yourself say, “Don’t give me reasons for why it can’t be done…”? Or are you creating excuses for your increased success, e.g.: the economy, limited software, a talent shortage, tough competition and so on? I’m inspired by the woman CPA from Florida who told me, “Whatever it takes!”

• Knowledge Seeker.

No one more than CPAs seeks knowledge as intensely. Yet, technical knowledge about accounting is not sufficient anymore. Today, you need to know social media, marketing automation, customer psychology, new-generation habits and beliefs, leadership and, of course, technology.

• Promoter.
  

As an accountant, you are the best spokesperson for your business. It is nice to have clients to be your spokespersons – you do get referrals – but the fact that most firms don’t grow beyond 20 employees could be a pointer that more accountants need to get out there.

• Relationship Builder.
  

As an accountant must have high social awareness and an ability to build relationships that are beneficial for the firm’s survival and growth. People skills. Period. Talking to prospects and clients may be one of the most dreaded activities for too many accountants. Of course, that just creates immense opportunities for the rest.

• Risk Taker.
  
  

Successful accountants know that risks must be taken and managed, not avoided altogether. So many accountants have already taken the biggest risk possible – to be in a business – which means uncertainty. And there is no bigger risk than uncertainty. So what is holding so many of them back?