June 1999 Issue

President's Commentary

By Alan E. Weiner, CPA

Accounting is a great profession! Accounting used to mean debits and credits, financial statements and tax returns. It means so much more now. "Accounting" is an umbrella for the myriad of financial services available to the public, and the accountant, more particularly the certified public accountant, has "seen it all." Anytime a client has a problem, who does the client look to? The accountant. Why? Because through years of training and exposure to businesses and taxpayers of all types, the accountant has learned to work with securities, insurance (life, disability, health, and property), family problems, census reports, retirement, business and personal cash flow problems, and the happy times--births of children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, weddings and religious celebrations--as well as the sad times. In essence, the accountant has become part of the business and personal family, as well as its psychologist.

As you can see and feel, the business is changing.

The CPA has evolved from the stereotypical green shade and "bean counter" image to the person who helps the client plant the beans and sow the crops.

You have a responsibility to yourself and to your clients to continue to grow--to continue to learn--and, where necessary, to retrain yourself to move ahead. You must keep current by allocating time to read technical journals and take professional courses (preferably those sponsored by the Foundation for Accounting Education--it's the president's prerogative, they tell me, to plug our own, no, your own, educational arm) while at the same time learning a new aspect of the CPA business.

This advice applies to those of you in the largest firms and those of you in the smallest local practice. I know of what I speak having started in accounting at age 13, working for my CPA father on payroll tax returns and writing out the client's monthly check to my father; progressing to a 20-person CPA firm; then to a 50-person CPA firm that merged into a Big Eight firm eight months later; and then, five years later, partnering with the upstart three-person Holtz Rubenstein firm (organized by partners from my Big Eight sojourn), which, at the beginning of our 25th year, numbers 75 people. At each firm--at each stage of my career--I listened and learned. My partners, our staff, and our clients continue to force me to "retool" because while we can yearn for what was, and while we can look back, the forces of progress will not let us profitably recapture the past.

As a Big Eight (yes, I know that there are now five) staff member, supervisor, and manager, I had the technical tax and accounting world at my fingertips. I used that resource, at one point seeking and receiving advice from the adviser to the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee--a very big moment in a young professional's life, especially in the days when so much of what the Internal Revenue Service now discloses was still a secret. Nevertheless, I made time for the Nassau Chapter of the NYSSCPA because it enabled me to learn from the experience and knowledge of other CPAs. You cannot get experience from an article. You must interact.

Advice No. 1 for those of you in the larger firms--become active in a chapter, or in New York City join a committee (it's still not too late for this year). You don't have to be at every meeting, but I assure you that when you attend you will learn and prosper.

Advice No. 2 for those of you who are local practitioners--it's the same as Advice No. 1.

As a local practitioner, the chapters (Nassau and Suffolk) and the New York City committee structure became even more important to me because I no longer had the resources of the Big Eight. Through the chapters and committees, I would continue to remain on the cutting edge, and to help others do the same, of payroll taxes and sales taxes (both of which have always been and will continue to be so critical, and so costly, for business) as well as tax accounting methods, corporate reorganizations, and limited liability companies and partnerships.

CPAs are venturing into unchartered territories in the next few years with the coming of the "commission" age. Many of you will take the necessary tests to be able to sell investment and insurance products to your clients. As with computers for so many of you, you will not have grown up in the environment. Also as with computers, you will need to retrain yourself.

Do more than just sit for the licensing examination if you want to earn your commission and still be the trusted professional to your client. Continue to learn every aspect of what you choose to sell to your clients so that your clients' trust in you is not misplaced. Learning in the commission age requires more than technical knowledge. Learning also means studying the backgrounds of those with whom you choose to affiliate. That's so important because if you affiliate with the wrong investment or insurance person or firm, no amount of commission income will save your reputation. There's a difference between using a Bell Atlantic pay phone and the phone I recently used in a major airport that blocked some of my 800 calls. Bell Atlantic never lets me down. It's a known, well trusted name and you want to, and must, be the same for your clients.

I spoke of experience earlier. If you practiced in the '70s and '80s, you knew of, had clients invest in, or sold tax shelters. You may have been naive--hopefully, you were not greedy. Most of those shelters were scams, but you didn't know that then. They were packaged so beautifully, and their promoters would visit your home or office no matter where it was located. Many clients were burned. For those of you who practiced then, you'll be smarter in the commission age, which will be with us for the rest of our professional lives; but for all of you, I urge you to affiliate with the best. I haven't yet determined how to advise those who never will have known a "noncommission" age in which CPAs were knee-deep in ethics and gave clients the names of three insurance salespeople and clients knew that their CPA was objective.

Write me in care of the Trusted Professional if you have any suggestions for the soon-to-be CPA, and let me know if I can quote you.

Conclusion: Learn all you can so that you can be all that you can be.