Accounting
Show financial leadership via the art of storytelling
Think about people who have captured your attention with a great story. How did the narrative influence your connection to that person and help you understand the wisdom and insights they were sharing with you?
When most people hear the word “storytelling,” they think about movies, novels, theater and folklore. But storytelling has many practical applications for accountants. As financial professionals, we can use storytelling to connect financial data to real-world scenarios, customer needs, and industry trends. By doing so, those connections become more vivid for the listener and easier to understand. Our profession is so used to talking in numbers that we sometimes forget to explain the story that those numbers are telling us. As a financial leader, you can use storytelling to engage and inform your audience on a deeper level and become a better business partner for your clients.
When an organization veers off track, accountants must become truth-tellers who hold the organization accountable to its mission. That means setting reasonable guidelines. It also means throwing out the script and not letting an unnecessary process kill creativity. By the way, a firm’s best storytellers are often not in the executive suite. They are often the employees closest to the action and on the front lines of service.
In my new book,
7 storytelling hints
As an accountant, how do you tell a compelling story? Here are a seven storytelling hints:
- Know your audience. This first step is crucial. It helps you determine how long the story should be and which topics they can relate to.
- Make them care about the characters in your story.
- Set the scene with visuals that they can almost feel.
- Know your punchline or point that you need to make.
- Engage your audience with energy. Let them see how passionate you are about a topic.
- Use tension, conflict and discourse to demonstrate the need for urgency.
- End with a heartfelt and impactive conclusion.
During one of my IPO roadshows in the late 1990s, the CEO of my employer at the time was a great communicator who mastered the seven story-telling tactics above. He told a great “story” to potential investors about the dangers of Y2K and the risks of a catastrophic technology meltdown due to the quickly approaching Year 2000 changeover from 1999. He would tell potential investors that several Fortune 500 chief technology officers were scrambling to find talent to correct the Y2K problem but faced a significant shortage of IT professionals in the U.S. due to work visa issues.
Our company in Barbados had a new near-shore IT staffing solution with over 700 software engineers from India at a cost-effective price. Those engineers would save the day for many of our CEO’s chief technology officer friends. I got to see firsthand how sharing compelling stories with your audience makes it easier for people to relate to you. As a result, you can form better working relationships and secure significant investor capital.
Likewise, in my book Green Shade$, I try to grab the reader’s attention right from Page One with a compelling story: “A public accounting audit partner was being pulled by his feet behind a new Aquariva Super, an Italian speedboat capable of 41 knots. The ski rope was taut. His hands were tied behind his back and his head was bouncing off the water” (see excerpt of Chapter 1 at
Storytelling builds trust
Storytelling is also about building trust. As accountants, how can we expect people to trust us and be influenced by us when we don’t let them know who we are? We should create stories that demonstrate our trustworthiness in different situations by adding personal characteristics that prove our trustworthiness. For example, we can share a story about previous stakeholders who trusted us and who had success. Or we can share personal volunteer experiences that demonstrate our willingness to serve others. It’s imperative that you make the connection with your personal story before trying to earn trust.
CPAs, accountants and auditors often need to drive qualitative and quantitative outcomes by using data to tell their story. It’s common that finance mavens use storytelling to guide their associates to the “why’s” and “benefits” of an idea. Your story should start with a vision or principal change. From that vision, you can create components that can be used to move the audience toward a movement. The goal is to make people feel more comfortable and committed about a decision or process based on numbers and dollars. One good storytelling method taught by my employer, the
- Situation: Identify a situation that will be the central theme for the story.
- Problem: Link a problem that is associated or resulted from a situation.
- Action: Add the solution and actions that you took to remedy the problem, keep it clear and concise.
- Results: Find the return on investment, which speaks to your organization’s focus on solving a problem.
The SPAR model enables accountants to tell the truth first and then allow objections to be aired later in an organic manner.
Good storytelling is everyone’s responsibility and co-creating stories are among a company’s greatest assets. So go ahead, create an energetic story that galvanizes your fellow employees to action and motivates them to get on board with a vision. As Franklin Roosevelt said, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
The House unanimously passed four bipartisan bills Tuesday concerning taxes and the Internal Revenue Service that were all
- H.R. 1152, the Electronic Filing and Payment Fairness Act, sponsored by Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Illinois, Suzan Delbene, D-Washington, Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, Brad Schneider, D-Illinois, Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pennsylvania and Jimmy Panetta, D-California. The bill would apply the “mailbox rule” to electronically submitted tax returns and payments to allow the IRS to record payments and documents submitted to the IRS electronically on the day the payments or documents are submitted instead of when they are received or reviewed at a later date. The AICPA believes this would offer clarity and simplification to the payment and document submission process while protecting taxpayers from undue penalties.
- H.R. 998, the Internal Revenue Service Math and Taxpayer Help Act, sponsored by Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, and Brad Schneider, D-Illinois, which would require notices describing a mathematical or clerical error to be made in plain language, and require the Treasury to provide additional procedures for requesting an abatement of a math or clerical error adjustment, including by telephone or in person, among other provisions.
- H.R. 517, the Filing Relief for Natural Disasters Act, sponsored by Rep. David Kustoff, R-Tennessee, and Judy Chu, D-California. The process of receiving tax relief from the IRS following a natural disaster typically must follow a federal disaster declaration, which can often come weeks after a state disaster declaration. The bill would provide the IRS with authority to grant tax relief once the governor of a state declares either a disaster or a state of emergency and expand the mandatory federal filing extension under Section 7508(d) of the Tax Code from 60 days to 120 days, providing taxpayers with more time to file tax returns after a disaster.
- H.R. 1491, the Disaster related Extension of Deadlines Act, sponsored by Rep. Gregory Murphy, R-North Carolina, and Jimmy Panetta, D-California, would extend the amount of time disaster victims would have to file for a tax refund or credit (i.e., the lookback period) by the amount of time afforded pursuant to a disaster relief postponement period for taxpayers affected by major disasters. This legislative solution would place taxpayers on equal footing as taxpayers not impacted by major disasters and would afford greater clarity and certainty to taxpayers and tax practitioners regarding this lookback period.
“The AICPA has long supported these proposals and will continue to work to advance comprehensive legislation that enhances IRS operations and improves the taxpayer experience,” said Melanie Lauridsen, vice president of tax policy and advocacy for the AICPA, in a statement Tuesday. “We are pleased to work closely with each of these Representatives on common-sense reforms that will benefit taxpayers, tax practitioners and tax administration and we’re encouraged by their passage in the House. We look forward to continuing to work with Congress to improve the taxpayer experience.”
The bills were also included in a recent Senate
The House also passed two other tax-related bills Tuesday that weren’t endorsed in the recent AICPA letter.
- H.R. 1155, Recovery of Stolen Checks Act, sponsored by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-New York, would require the IRS to create a process for taxpayers to request a replacement via direct deposit for a stolen paper check. If a check is determined to be stolen or lost, and not cashed, a taxpayer will receive a replacement check once the original check is cancelled, but many taxpayers are having their replacement checks stolen as well. Taxpayers who have a check stolen are then unable to request that the replacement check be sent via direct deposit. The bill would require the Treasury to establish processes and procedures under which taxpayers, who are otherwise eligible to receive an amount by paper check in replacement of a lost or stolen paper check, may elect to receive such amount by direct deposit.
- H.R. 997, National Taxpayer Advocate Enhancement Act, sponsored by Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, would prevent IRS interference with National Taxpayer Advocate personnel by granting the NTA responsibility for its attorneys. In advocating for taxpayer rights, the National Taxpayer Advocate often requires independent legal advice. But currently, the staff members hired by the National Taxpayer Advocate are accountable to internal IRS counsel, not the Taxpayer Advocate, creating a potential conflict of interest to the detriment of taxpayers. The bill would authorize the National Taxpayer Advocate to hire attorneys who report directly to her, helping establish independence from the IRS.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Missouri, applauded the bipartisan House passage of the various bills, which had been unanimously passed by the committee.
“President Trump was elected on the promise of finally making the government work better for working people,” Smith said in a statement Tuesday. “This bipartisan legislation helps fulfill that mandate and makes improvements to tax administration that will make it easier for the American people to file their taxes. Those who are rebuilding after a natural disaster particularly need help filing taxes, which is why this set of bills lightens the load for taxpayers in communities struck by a hurricane, tornado or some other disaster. With Tax Day just a few days away, we must look for common-sense, bipartisan ways to make filing taxes less of a hassle.”
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