2001-02 MACPA president, board set for a challenging year

As MACPA begins its 2001-02 fiscal year, we had the opportunity to ask our newly elected President, John I. Wilson, and members of the Board of Directors about some of the priorities and challenges they'll be tackling in the next year. Here are their responses:

What do you think is the most pressing issue facing Maryland CPAs and what can you do to help solve it?

Thomas J. Lantz, Sr.: Obtaining and retaining qualified staff is not only the most pressing issue for Maryland CPAs, but for all CPA firms throughout the nation. It is consistently cited as the number one challenge for the profession. There are no easy answers to solving this. Marketing research has indicated that the realignment of the profession in accordance with our Vision and the successful implementation of the XYZ concept could assist in attracting more qualified individuals to our profession. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a "quick fix" to the problem. It is going to take time and a tremendous amount of leadership to re-engineer ourselves.

Graylin E. Smith: What is required of a CPA today and the work of the CPA is much different from what it was 20 years ago, yet students think of it the same as they did 20 years ago. We must do a better job explaining what we do and the living one can achieve from the profession. We must make the profession more attractive so that more people want to join.

R. Samuel Griffith: The lack of qualified graduates is a real problem today. I think it will take the combined effort of the profession to attract the top high school students to select accounting as a major. I think we need to do a better job of recruiting the top students and I feel the five-year program makes that much harder. If the curriculum is more demanding then the rewards must be more attractive. Quality of life is a major issue and we must, as a profession, do more to promote a better lifestyle. The work environment must be more attractive and rewarding. When staff sees partners working 70-hour weeks, what is the incentive to want to become a partner? The profession needs to look for ways to reinvent the way we do business. We must improve our image and move away from the workshop branding that we have today to make the profession more attractive to the younger generation.

John Wilson: I like the program that we initiated recently (Career Awareness Program) where we're trying to reach out to people in high school. A major study ... indicated that the 150-hour requirement has nothing to do with people not wanting to get into accounting. They get an unfavorable message about what the future in accounting really is at a very early age and they just head in a different direction. I think we need more member volunteers to get out to these schools, spread the word. Just like Pat Reese, our current Secretary/Treasurer, recently volunteered to do.

Susan T. Sadowski: The most pressing issue for Maryland CPAs is the integration of our image campaign throughout the association and the profession. As a member of the Board, I can help facilitate the process of branding the CPA designation by forging stronger liaisions between educators and their students and the MACPA.

Salli Hartman: I think the biggest issue is technology and change. It is relevant to CPA's because we have the opportunity to embrace change within our organization and profession and use that as a model to help all the organizations we touch embrace and benefit from the new and exciting changes technology offers. We see the impact of technology everyday and know first hand how that has changed the way we as CPAs perform our daily tasks. We have the opportunity to provide support, experience, and guidance to our clients and employers as they face the changes if we practice and understand the impact of technology within MACPA and the profession as a whole. Because CPAs have always looked at issues from more than one side (i.e. cost/benefits, providing consistency and comparability, being conservative in estimates and maintaining high reporting standards) we can help others weigh the impact of technology and change. We can help them see the value of change while at the same time offering models to ensure the changes are well planned and executed.

How has your membership and/or active participation in MACPA benefited you?

Patricia A. Reese: My membership and participation in the MACPA has benefited me in numerous ways. First, it has broadened my network of professionals. Second, it has helped me stay current with our CPA profession. Third, it has provided me with opportunities to develop my leadership skills in a low-risk environment. Serving as the Capital Area Chapter's president and chair of various committees allowed me to experiment with leadership methods without fear of jeopardizing or harming my job. Plus, it helped me work with people who are different than myself and appreciate how their differences are complementary to my ways of doing things.

Tamara Basso Bensky: My membership and active involvement in MACPA has benefited me tremendously, both professionally and personally. Professionally, I now have a much better idea of what is going on in the profession, and how "hot" issues such as the XYZ designation and the portal, will affect the CPA community. I've had the opportunity to further develop my leadership and facilitation skills as the chair of the Under 35 group, and my strategic planning experience with the MACPA has allowed me to contribute significantly to several strategic planning initiatives at Clifton Gunderson. I hope to use these skills more in the future, perhaps as a client service. Finally, I have been fortunate to meet many interesting leaders in the profession and made several good friends within the association. As an incoming Board Member, I hope to give back to the association and to our profession just as much as I've gotten out of my membership and active involvement with the MACPA, if not more!

Salli Hartman: It has provided me with a network of contacts as well as providing excellent CPE opportunities. While Chair of the CPAs in Government Committee, I had the chance to meet and work with wonderful peers as well as providing a wide variety of topics at the annual conference. Many of the speakers were great people and working with them provided new insights to how they viewed the world.

Ingrid Lamb: I have reaped so many rewards from my MACPA membership! The rewards far outweigh the price of membership and the time spent on association activities. My involvement has allowed me to: (1) enhance my leadership, management, and negotiating skills; (2) develop a network of valuable professional contacts; and (3) learn about important professional issues and opportunities on a timely basis.

What issues do you think are on the horizon that members should be thinking about now?

Patricia Reese: The biggest issue on the horizon for our members is the changing face of our profession. Although the traditional ways of CPAs have served us well, times are changing. Globalization makes it imperative that we change the way we look at the services we provide. To remain competitive, we must constantly look to what the future is bringing us. We need to be proactive in searching out ways CPAs can maintain the reputation we have built. Through the advent of the Internet, we cannot assume that what always worked for our profession in the past will still work in the future. Times are changing; we must also change. The only thing I believe should remain constant, are our high professional standards. It's what sets us apart from other professions.

Salli Hartman: The future of the CPA designation is clearly a big topic. I also think that technology will continue to impact our profession. The economy is continuing to move to a more global economy and that will continue to offer a number of challenges to all of us.

John Wilson: We're going to have continued scrutiny by the SEC on this independence issue, which can affect small business, both public and private companies. Our clients recognize we have to be independent and objective, for all they ask and require from us. Small businesses are 90% of the American economy and they rely heavily on those of us in public accounting. If the SEC makes those independence rules, it's going to be very tough on business, not just on the CPA.

I'm also concerned the latest tax reform will not go beyond 2004. So that's a 3-5 year concern. It could get reversed, slowed down, eliminated by the next administration and Congress. That would impact the profession in more tax laws, more workload. I think we did a very good job recently in meeting with senators and congressmen at the last council meeting in Washington, DC. I think our profession needs to be there every year on these issues.

Finally, the issue of a tax on professional and other services in Maryland may come up in the 2002 legislative session. A tax of that type on our services would put a horrendous burden on us as CPAs and would have an adverse affect on business. It starts to drive a wedge between the businessperson and the CPA: for the businessperson it would be another 5 percent on all their professional fees. However, I think the Maryland Association of CPAs, with our strong lobbying efforts and our grassroots program and our whole legislative support process, will do an excellent job of pushing that proposal right off the drawing board.

Lou E. Satchell: I was fortunate to be one of the more than 3,000 CPAs to participate in an AICPA forum to assist/contribute to the development of The CPA Vision Project in 1997. The result was the adoption by the profession of a Vision Statement, Core Purpose, Core Values, Core Services and Core Competencies. Although the project was adopted in 1998, I sense that there are many CPAs who are not familiar with or do not have a clear understanding of the results of The CPA Vision Project. I encourage all CPAs, especially those in public accounting, to be familiar with its contents to assist them in planning the direction of their firm and continued education.

What one thing could MACPA do differently to encourage more member participation?

Amelia Hillman: Focus and target CPA firms rather than individuals regarding benefits members receive and, therefore, the benefits firms would get when staffs are MACPA members.

Salli Hartman: This is a hard question to answer without seeing current data on the needs of our members. I think we will need to continually ask members what they need and how we can best serve those needs. If something needs to be done differently, is that because the needs have changed or that we were not meeting the needs before. That is a challenge in itself because we need to be in a proactive role of staying ahead of the members in identifying the issues that we need to address to ensure we are providing a strong and valuable organization for them.

John Wilson: Through a vote of the Board of Directors last spring, MACPA has agreed to support the CPA2Biz portal. This is going to be a real opportunity for practitioner members and their clients as well as members in industry, government, and education to purchase products and services more competitively. I think the major challenge for us, as a profession is to educate the businessperson on how to take advantage of these opportunities. But I think MACPA can do it. Not through an ordinary continuing education course, but more along the lines of what the Business Learning Institute (BLI) is doing — a live, practical application of how the portal works. We're going to have to encourage our members to participate and learn about it.

These last two questions are for John Wilson. You'll serve as president during what could be a year of dramatic change within the profession (CPA2Biz, global designation, and et. al.). How do you plan to guide MACPA and its leaders through these changes?

John Wilson: By maintaining constant and clear communication and seeking feedback from members as often as possible. I was really energized by our June 18 Leadership Day and I look forward to more face-to-face sessions like that throughout the year. We have chapter meetings, we have CPE sessions. There is no reason that we can't spend a short period of time communicating and getting members more involved in what we're doing through face-to-face opportunities that are already planned. I think it has to be a process that starts with the board and the officers, and chapter representatives and then reaches out to as many people as possible. I expect in 2002, we will develop an effective method to get detailed member feedback as to their degree of satisfaction with MACPA and what it does for its members.

If you could accomplish just one thing during this year, what would it be?

The one thing I want to accomplish in the next year is to increase member value while assessing service to the members. At our Officers' Retreat this year, we did, what I call an ROI, Return on Investment, analysis of all our different activities and programs. And, we set a strategy concerning which of those we're going to really heavily pursue, which ones we're going to continue to develop, which ones we're going to set aside, which ones we're going to maximize opportunities from. And our budget is built around that. And, in the end we have to then ask the members, "How are we doing?"

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