Accounting
DEI goes into stealth mode
Diversity, equity and inclusion is on the chopping block at accounting firms.
In a February media flurry, big firms like Deloitte and KPMG said they were scrapping their DEI goals and initiatives amid the current political landscape.
As big firms pull back, and presumably more firms quietly do the same, it can be easy to assume that this is the end of DEI as we know it. But things may not be as bleak as they seem, some leaders say.
“You have to look at the profession through a number of different lenses to really understand the impact,” said Jina Etienne, CEO of Etienne Consulting.
Staying the course, quietly
The wave of pullbacks — in the accounting profession and across broader
In particular, firms that are government contractors, or firms with clients who are federal contractors, risk losing their funding by keeping their “noncompliant” DEI programs up and running.
“Organizations probably can’t really boast about what they are doing anymore,” said Crystal Cooke, director of diversity and inclusion at the American Institute of CPAs. “It’s not in their benefit if they’re trying to protect the people in their workplace, because if they make too much noise that makes them a target.”
“I hear a lot about people saying, ‘Why isn’t everyone being loud and proud?'” Cooke continued. “I feel you don’t have to be loud and proud to show your actions and how you support this. If you still see that organization doing things that support programming, if the people who work there feel like they are still being supported, then they are achieving their goals. We can’t always shout things from the rooftops, especially in this environment, because we just don’t know how it’ll affect people who could be impacted. But that doesn’t mean the work’s not being done.”
Accounting is a risk-averse profession by nature. Firms may not want to expose themselves to the reputational risk, or the possibility of losing clients, by publicizing their DEI efforts.
“As accountants, predominantly in public accounting, you have to stay under the radar. We do not want to attract attention to ourselves and give rise to questioning the quality, the independence,” Etienne said. “The assurance work that we do will no longer feel like assurance if we were under attack.”
Many firms, Etienne speculates, will minimize the publicity surrounding their DEI programs while still maintaining them internally. Some firms may drop the name “DEI” and swap it for less politicized language such as “culture,” “inclusion,” “wellbeing” and “belonging.”
“The letters in a sequence D-E-I have become a word. That word has a meaning. It is so much more complex and nuanced than that,” Etienne said. “I’ve always struggled with and invited clients to decouple the terms and really think about the body of work that is behind diversity, equity and inclusion because they’re distinctly different things.”
“But everyone is responding to ‘DEI,’ which the term now has been co-opted,” she continued. “It has been co-opted to mean reverse discrimination — that people who are not qualified for jobs are getting jobs, and people who should have jobs don’t have those jobs — and it’s all coded for race.”
The silver lining
Accounting firms have
(Read more: What can
“I think firms are kind of caught between a rock and a hard place because clients are looking at this and they don’t want to alienate clients,” said Jennifer Harrity-Cantero, ESG and sustainability director at Top 100 Firm Sensiba. “But the accounting world over the last few years has really seen what DEI can do for employee satisfaction, for lowering turnover rates, for employee engagement — and that is something that is hugely valuable to accounting firms.”
DEI improves the bottom line, research shows. Companies in the the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams are 25% more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the bottom quartile, and companies in the top quartile for ethnic and cultural diversity outperformed by 36% in profitability, according to
Etienne sees an unexpected silver lining in the crackdown on DEI. In the past, she sensed an aspect of performative activism fueling firms’ DEI efforts. Following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020, corporate America renewed its commitments to DEI initiatives, such as implementing diverse recruitment practices, increasing pay equity, establishing employee resource groups, and hosting trainings on topics such as unconscious bias and microaggressions.
But in her work as a consultant, she has found, “Many leaders felt that the demonstration and the evidence of their commitment is the fact that they’re talking to me right now. ‘Yeah, I’ve hired you. How much more committed can I be?'” she said. “So I don’t think there was a deep understanding, or an interest in having a deep understanding, of how DEI is already woven into the ecosystem of an organization. It touches everything. But they didn’t want to do that.”
By removing the social reward of championing DEI, Etienne explained, “We can all stop patting ourselves on the back and putting pretty words on the website and saying, ‘Yay, yay, yay,’ and we can do the work.”
The federal government’s financial condition worsened by $4.7 trillion in the past year, according to a new report released to coincide with Tax Day.
The annual
“Our country’s financial condition continues to spiral out of control, and taxpayers are left holding the bag,” said TIA CEO Sheila Weinberg in a statement Tuesday. “On a day when Americans are asked to be transparent and accurate with their finances, their government fails to do the same.”
Despite the enormous size of its commitments to Social Security and Medicare, the U.S. Treasury Department only reported $241 billion of them on the official balance sheet because, according to government documents, recipients aren’t legally entitled to benefits beyond the current month, allowing future payments to be reduced or eliminated by law.
The report’s release comes amid efforts by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency to slash the size of the federal government, virtually eliminating entire agencies while threatening cutbacks in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid offices and personnel to aid seniors.
The report warned that due to inaccurate and nontransparent budgeting practices, Congress and the American people lack the information needed to make informed decisions about taxes, spending, and long-term policy. Weinberg is advocating for full accrual budgeting and accounting, which would include the true cost and projected growth of government programs. “This kind of transparency would be the first step in regaining control of our nation’s finances,” she said.
The Financial State of the Union report gives the federal government an ‘F’ grade for its fiscal health and asks Congress to adopt honest accounting standards to provide long-term financial sustainability. Truth in Accounting is also encouraging citizens to
Rep. Young Kim, R-California, and Haley Haley Stevens, D-Michigan, reintroduced bipartisan legislation to recognize accounting as a STEM field like other science, technology, engineering and mathematics-related subjects and enable K-12 STEM funding to be used for accounting awareness and education.
The legislation, known as
“STEM educational opportunities are vital to our economy and national security, helping students get good paying jobs and boosting our nation’s competitiveness,” Kim said in a statement Tuesday. “Accounting is a STEM field important to all U.S. industries, and building a CPA pipeline is more important than ever in our dynamic, 21st century economy. I’m proud to lead this bipartisan bill to uplift students with the skills they need to contribute to our workforce and support our future economy.”
Proponents hope the bill will pass this time and encourage more young people to pursue accounting careers.
”Quality, accessible STEM education is the path to a good paying job and all students should have access to it,” Stevens stated. “That’s why I am introducing the Accounting STEM Pursuit Act of 2025, which will introduce students to opportunities in the accounting profession early on to strengthen the future of this vital industry and ensure that accounting, a field increasingly intertwined with technology, is accessible to all students.”
The AICPA noted that over time, technology has evolved and many professions, including accounting, have evolved with it. Digital technology tools are automating and improving many old accounting tasks, opening up avenues for more creative work such as data analysis, advising on business decisions and hunting down fraud. STEM recognition for accounting at the K-12 level, in tandem with the potential for existing STEM K-12 federal funding to be used for accounting awareness and education, would affirm that the accounting profession is qualified to assess the technological world businesses are in today and expose a larger cross-section of students to potential careers in accounting, while growing the profession’s pipeline.
“For years, STEM curriculum has been a driving force in our education system, providing students with the education needed to develop critical skills that will allow them to compete in a global economy. Accounting has always embodied the values of STEM education, and we believe now is the time to recognize accounting as a STEM curriculum,” said Susan Coffey, CEO of public accounting at the AICPA, in a statement. “STEM recognition for accounting will help expose students from all backgrounds to the profession, strengthen the accounting pipeline and provide increased opportunities for students in various communities. We thank Representatives Kim and Stevens for their leadership and dedication on this issue and urge members of Congress to support this legislation.”
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