Accountants, Are You OK?

While I am genuinely asking for the state of being of the accounting profession, I am also advocating that you all ask yourselves, as well as your colleagues, this question. Moreover, I don’t think it is asked enough, and if the profession is to progress, and invite more in, state of being needs to matter.

Too often over the years, I see and hear accountants discuss and share how long they work, how many hours they are on the phone with the IRS, and how clients don’t always seem to understand what it is they really do. The problem here, to me, is not entirely that it is happening, but that it is somehow allowed to happen and almost touted as this morose badge of honor.

Ask yourselves, is this why you got into accounting? To deal with all that you take on throughout the year. To not advocate for the value of your work and absorb the hours, frustration, and general lack of communication that “comes with the job?” Now, I ask you, when is it going to be enough?

I am doing some survey work with the great Randy Crabtree, CPA of Tri-Merit Group to try and shed a bit of light on not only how accountants work, but their satisfaction with it and how much of what you do is accepted as “part of the job.” We’re ultimately trying to get to the bottom or shed some light on why accountants are leaving the profession, and in order to do that, we need to start by looking at how you work.

For too long, accounting professionals accepted that they take some level of abuse in order to do the job they signed on to. The aforementioned crowing about it only lends credence to the fact that somehow it is built into the culture of being an accountant.

Let me tell you this, from where I sit (and have sat for decades, now) no change will happen in accounting unless there is enough collective consciousness to make it happen. To me, this starts by simply asking yourself and your colleagues, even from time to time, “How are you doing?”

There are likely multiple root causes for accountants leaving the profession, not the least of which is the aforementioned. Rather than working to change work habits, and the kind of work you do from volume to value, many seem to have decided they’ve just had enough.

Other conversations I’ve had seem to indicate the hours put in are acceptable if (and only if) they enjoy the work they do. Which again begs the question of why you got into accounting in the first place.

Make match up. Work doesn’t have to happen to you, not entirely. Check in with yourself, and your colleagues, and the great work you do for the financial health of your clients may seem more in line with why you do what you do.