A Wake Up Call For The Profession.

953.

A scientific formulae? Last week’s winning lottery numbers? Part of a phone number? Or, the meaning of life?

Nope.

It’s the number of successful UFE writers in Ontario this year. In all of Canada there were 2,327 successful candidates.

It seems the number of new UFE passers gets smaller and smaller each year, or at best has levelled out to a similar number to last year.

Why is it that such a rewarding profession that offers such variety of projects and interesting clients to work with cannot produce sufficient numbers of new CAs to meet demand?

Of course, a large number of these new CAs, when they get their thirty months experience in and become members, will move out of public accounting and into posts in industry, local government, academia, or apparently anything else but public accounting.

It’s a chronic problem that is getting worse with each year.

The CICA’s own statistics tell us that 26% of all members are in small to medium sized practices. Of these members, 46% are aged 55 or more.

So what does that tell us?

In ten years time there will be a dramatic increase in the number of practitioners looking to exit public accounting, at the same time when there are fewer and fewer potential buyers (CAs with around ten years experience – the typical stage at which members are starting to think about buying a block of fees or a practice).

So, remember back to your Economics 101 course. What happens to price when supply goes up and demand goes down?

Yes, it drops like a grand piano from a twelfth floor balcony!

Not good for those readers building a practice with a view to exiting in 10 years time.

I think the root cause of the problem is how we market the profession to University students and also to clients, and the public at large.

As Partners, many also set a poor example to their staff; in early, the last to leave, working weekends, stress-related illnesses, second or third marriage, and then they turn around to their seniors and say ‘If you play your cards right, one day all this can be yours!’

Little wonder, then that many decide that their future is not in public accounting long term.

It’s also connected to how accounting professionals market themselves.

When asked what they do for a living, many CAs will respond ‘I’m a CA’. Such a typical response doesn’t even answer the question! ‘I’m a CA’ is what you are, not what you do!

Better to answer that question with something a little more interesting, or head-turning.

‘I’m a tax cheat’ might not get the blessing of your professional body, but it will certainly get the interest of the person asking the question. There must be a better way.

If you work with owner-managers with the underlying purpose of helping them build their business so that they can sell out for a million dollars or more, then maybe you could answer the dreaded question ‘what do you do?’ with: ‘I help make millionaires!’

Now, as a client, you’d have my interest!

We, as a profession, are competing directly with Engineering and Sciences, Oil & Gas, The Law, Dentistry and many other career options for today’s ‘bright young things’.

And when compared to these, the ‘stereotypical accountant’ image we have inadvertently created doesn’t look very exciting. Indeed it looks how it is meant to – boring.

I say it is time for dramatic action.

It’s time to shake off the shackles we have created for ourselves.

It’s time to re-engineer our firms, how we work with clients, the value we add to businesses, the hours we put in and how we’re compensated for our efforts.

Of course, a part of our work is of a mundane nature. It’s a part of the job, but it doesn’t ALL have to be mundane.

I am very fortunate to work with some very visionary firms, who have worked very hard to create an environment of ‘fun’ at the office and an OAF philosophy (Out At Five).

Indeed, at the time of writing this, I just returned from a client who has a massive staff room in their Ottawa office, where they have a full sized pool table and have office pool tournaments, and they have a ping-pong table for the staff to boot. But even they have difficulty in attracting high calibre talent.

If firms like this struggle (which was why I was there in the first place) just imagine how ‘ordinary’ firms cope.

My point is that from our professional bodies right down to the new entrant to public accounting, we have a duty to recreate a new public image of ourselves, for the sake of the future of our great profession.

Accounting is exciting, it offers variety, it offers financial security for its practitioners at all levels and it’s, yes, sexy!

My challenge to you as we start 2008, whether you’re the president of the Institute or a new student is this; what are you prepared to do to reposition the accounting profession as an exciting career option that will attract quality people in greater numbers and start, ever so slowly, to turn the public perception of accounting around, so that it is seen as a thoroughly rewarding, exciting and varied calling that offers unlimited potential to those who choose to enter?