Accounting
Vulnerability is the new strength for accounting firm leaders
One of the most powerful things an accounting firm leader can do is to reveal their human side, according to experts at this year’s Bridging the Gap Conference — whether that means revealing their own vulnerability and weaknesses, admitting a mistake, or working to connect more deeply with employees and fellow partners.
For Randy Crabtree, that meant acknowledging that he needed help in the wake of a stroke, and then having the courage to reimagine his career and firm.
In his opening keynote, “The Power of Vulnerability: Letting Go to Find What Matters Most,” at the 2025 BTG Conference, being held this week in Denver, Crabtree recounted his harrowing experience of suffering two strokes in quick succession in 2014, and the spiral of depression and mental health issues that followed, which he tried to manage on his own.
“I said, ‘I can fix this; I’m a CPA — this is what I do. I fix things.’ For the next two years, I left it up to me,” he said. “Bad decision.”
His depression refused to lift, an attempt at therapy failed because he refused to acknowledge that there were things outside of his control, and his dark thoughts got darker and darker until he had no choice but to open up.
“Finally, I decided it’s time to be vulnerable, to admit that I can’t do this by myself,” Crabtree said.
He found a second therapist, and with their help, “I took control of my thinking; I took control of my future; I took back my life.”
Paradoxically, vulnerability had given him back control — but it also opened up a whole set of questions about his professional career, including his role as managing partner of Tri-Merit Specialty Tax Services (a tax advisory firm that also hosts Bridging the Gap).
“I started thinking, ‘What have I been doing with my whole life? Have I been taking the wrong path all my life?'” he asked. “I looked at what I’d been doing at Tri-Merit. I looked at it and said, ‘Am I a managing partner? Is this who I’m supposed to be? Is this my passion and my skills? No.'”
His passion in life had always been entrepreneurial, not managerial — starting companies, not running them — and he decided he needed to make a change.
“I had to go to everyone and say, ‘I’m not equipped for this role. I’m not going to help us in the future if I continue doing what I’m doing,'” he explained. “It was a vulnerable leadership moment — and it opened up opportunities.”
His co-founder took over Crabtree’s role as managing partner — “and he was built for being an MP. I hadn’t known that. I realized I needed to know more about people.”
It turned out it wasn’t just his co-founder who was ready for a new role: “It was the entire firm — lots of people were able to move to new and different roles,” he said.
And with so many of his colleagues benefiting from being able to take on new roles, Crabtree began building a new role for himself, as a champion of mental health in the accounting profession. He featured it prominently on his podcast, and began presenting sessions on mental health and burnout across the country, including one in early 2023 at a firm in California, at the end of which the firm’s managing partner came up on stage and opened up about his own family’s struggles with depression.
“I could feel the change in the room,” Crabtree recalled, as the openness of their leadership modelled a new way of thinking for the staff.
A few months later he got a call from that managing partner, who had only recently suffered a stroke himself, and wanted to thank Crabtree for sharing his own story in a way that helped the managing partner get through his own issues.
When the call was over, Crabtree got his marketing team together and began laying the groundwork for Bridging the Gap, which places a strong emphasis on issues of mental health, burnout — and modelling a better kind of accounting firm for future generations.
A shared humanity
One key element of that better kind of firm is treating employees as individuals — not just because it’s the decent thing to do (though it is), but because it can also play a huge role in retention and creating a workplace where people can do their best work.
And vulnerability and openness on the part of leadership can play a major role here, too, as Shea Keats and Michelle Rose — the CEO and COO, respectively, of Breakaway Advising — shared in a session on “The Proper Care and Feeding of Accountants.”
They strongly advocated getting to know prospective and current employees much better through a framework of multiple questions about everything from their favorite show and their favorite place to shop, to the names and titles of the people closest to them, and even “How will I know when you’re mad?”
“The first step for getting good responses is to do it yourself,” explained Rose. “Answer these questions and share them with your people.”
The goal is to come away with a host of personal knowledge about your employees that allow you to shape your relationships with them in ways that make them feel seen and appreciated as individuals — as well as to keep from unintentionally killing them.
“How many times have we found out too late that someone has a hazelnut allergy?” Rose asked. “Or that you sent a microbrew kit to someone who was struggling with alcohol?”
“Knowing these things is so simple and silly, but it makes a big difference,” said Keats.
Sharing information about yourself to make staff feel comfortable sharing is useful, but so is sharing your mistakes.
“It’s important to model openness,” said Keats. “Recently, our chief of staff missed five things because issues came up with her kids, and that was fine — she shared with the team why she missed the deadlines and why it was OK because they would be taken care of, and we responded to show that it was OK, to model that for our younger employees.”
In the end, this kind of openness will take firms to the next level as workplaces of choice.
“We talk a lot about the Platinum Rule,” Keats explained. “We all know the Golden Rule — ‘Treat others how you want to be treated’ — but the Platinum Rule is about treating people how they want to be treated.”
“This is how you retain your team over time,” she said.
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