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Overcome obstacles on your path to partnership

Published

9 months ago

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Only one in 50 accountants ultimately becomes a partner. If you ask most accountants what it takes to make partner, they’ll say it takes intense dedication to the job, outstanding technical skills, great leadership skills, outstanding communication skills, client development skills and maybe having a friend or mentor in senior management.

However, our research and skills assessment tests show there are five personality traits that significantly make or break your chances of becoming a partner. Some are inherent, some can be learned, some can be corrected. The list may surprise you.

1. Conscientiousness done differently

Overly conscientious persona: Taylor got promoted into a management role at a midsized accounting firm six months ago. Her diligent commitment to getting clients’ accounts done on time and exceeding the firm’s expectations of quality and attention to detail played a big part in Taylor getting that promotion. But, she has very little experience managing teams and it’s beginning to show.

Most people think conscientiousness is a positive attribute since conscientious people tend to be reliable, prudent, dependable folks who value planning, organization and structure. They typically adhere to well-established policies and processes. They not only meet deadlines but do so with quality output to meet their high personal standards.

It’s no surprise that conscientious employees are prized by accounting firms when the role requires meeting immovable external deadlines and producing quality output. But when highly conscientious accountants start moving up the ranks and begin managing people, they often struggle. Their rigid mindset can make it difficult for them to think outside the box and adapt when complex challenges arise — challenges that can’t be solved by sticking with the firm’s longstanding policies and procedures.

Since they’re hesitant to take shortcuts or look for “workarounds,” they generally don’t mind working late and coming in on weekends. But expecting team members to make the same sacrifices often creates resentment, erodes firm culture and can spike a rash of resignations and mental and physical health issues. 

When I speak to firms and organizations about “Conscientiousness Done Differently,” I tell them it’s not about setting immovable deadlines and work quality expectations; it’s about questioning the way things are done at one’s organization to see if their rigid mindset is adversely affecting their team in a profession that’s perpetually short of talent.  

Solution: With a preference for valuing and adhering to established methods, highly conscientious people who aspire to become partners must be trained to ask themselves if their adherence to old methods still adds value — or where the process could be streamlined and still deliver results. The Taylors of your firm must also be trained to ask themselves if they’re contributing to an unhealthy “long hours culture” at the firm. Help the Taylors keep the focus on results, not on maxing out billable hours. 

2. Let it go! Trusting and delegation

Trusting/delegation persona: Chris is a team leader who prides himself on the quality and accuracy of the accounts produced by his team. He spends considerable time performing quality assurance checks on all work produced by his reports.

During his last performance review, Chris was asked to reduce the time spent reviewing his team’s work so he could focus on developing his staff to be self-sufficient and grow their careers. Chris is clearly struggling with this request. 

Most accounting tasks require careful attention to detail and forensic levels of fact-checking and verification. Employers tend to hire accountants who have a healthy degree of skepticism to ensure they’re not accepting everything a client shares with them at face value or letting fraudulent or misleading data find its way into financial statements. But what happens when these wary accountants start moving up the ranks and managing teams of their own? They often struggle to delegate and evolve into micromanagers who scrutinize every single task their team members do. This naturally breeds resentment and erodes firm culture. 

Solution: If you think people like Chris have partnership potential at your firm, help them see the benefits of delegation and allow their reports to make their own mistakes — if mistakes occur — as long as those mistakes don’t irreparably harm the firm. 

3. Emotional Intelligence

We designed our firm’s Accountants Personality Profile Questionnaire to prioritize traits linked to EI. This allows accounting firms and corporate finance departments to assess the degree to which their emerging leaders build deeper, more meaningful relationships with their teams and clients. Our research shows most accountants would rather join a people-first culture than a me-first culture. 

Emotionally unintelligent persona: Wayne is a technical genius when it comes to accounting. Soon after joining the firm two years ago, he became the “go-to” person for solving complex accounting matters. Because of his technical acumen, the firm’s partners want to keep promoting Wayne, but the firm’s administrator and HR manager have reservations. Wayne would rather be right than make friends at work, and his personality has led to several tearful interventions by management and even a resignation or two.

Without improving his people skills, Wayne’s personality will likely do more harm to firm culture and retention than his technical expertise will add value.

Solution: From a coaching perspective, EI can be developed for professionals like Wayne, but it’s not a quick fix. He can start by showing more empathy toward his colleagues and take a genuine interest in their lives outside the office — remembering team members’ birthdays, kids’ names or favorite hobbies, and chatting with them about things other than work. When people feel their manager is genuinely interested in them, they are much more likely to stay at their firm and report satisfaction with their job. Widely used personality tests such as 16PF, Personality Assessment Inventory and Big 5/OCEAN call this the “warmth scale.” 

4. Self-confidence and resilience

Insecure persona: Ella has been with a large accounting firm for six years but has never hinted at wanting to progress her career. As a new hire, she recorded some of the highest critical reasoning test scores ever recorded at the firm and consistently produces high-quality work. But her manager and the HR team have seen her stymied at times by extreme anxiety when asked to take on new tasks. 

I’m guessing you have people at your firm who are trustworthy, reliable and highly competent at their jobs, but don’t have the confidence to seek out promotions or advocate on their own behalf. This reticence could have been caused by toxic bosses undermining them at previous jobs, or it could go back earlier in life to parents reminding them they weren’t as smart as their siblings, vindictive teachers not recognizing their talents or “friends” who betrayed them in childhood. 

As much as you feel for the Ellas of the world, they won’t make good partners or help you move your succession plan forward if they’re still haunted by ghosts of their past failures and embarrassments (real or imagined). Also, widely used personality tests such as MBTI and DISC don’t measure a respondent’s coping style or stress tolerance. However, our personality questionnaire (APPQ) extensively measures a team member’s stress tolerance, self-confidence and emotional stability, which combine into their coping style. 

Solution: Resilience-based coaching can help the Ellas of your firm address their fear of failure and lack of confidence. Addressing emotional instability and apprehension may also require the help of an outside mental health professional. We’ve found that most employees are receptive to coaching if it shows them how much the firm or company values them and wants them to succeed. And when the highly competent Ellas of the firm have more confidence to be leaders, this tends to improve the motivation and morale of all those around them. 

5. Assertion and social boldness

Non-assertive persona: Sam is being considered for promotion at a Midwest accounting firm with many clients in the agricultural sector. Clients are experiencing challenging conditions. They’re straight talkers who often question the accounting advice and don’t mince words. If Sam gets promoted, he will move out of back-office support into an advisory role in which he will need to communicate persuasively with clients and sometimes challenge the accounts they submit.   

As accountants move up the ranks, they must spend more time interfacing with clients, massaging egos, defending the firm’s work and challenging clients’ business practices. Without being assertive and confident, accountants like Sam could be coerced into doing something unethical or not addressing questionable behavior or risk losing the client unless their unreasonable demands or expectations are met.

Solution: Provide Sam with the coaching he needs to get comfortable with these situations when much of his early career has been back-office support should be an early coaching priority.

Becoming an accounting firm partner requires more than long hours, personal sacrifice and technical expertise. By recognizing and addressing the five personality traits above, accountants can overcome hidden obstacles and significantly improve their partnership prospects.

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Accounting

SEC’s Semiannual Reporting Proposal Faces Investor Pushback: What CFOs Need to Know

Published

1 week ago

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August 25, 2026

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U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

A proposal from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to potentially shift some public companies away from quarterly financial reporting toward a semiannual model is drawing significant pushback from investors, even as it continues moving through the regulatory process. The debate has direct implications for corporate finance teams, auditors, and the broader transparency of U.S. capital markets.

What the SEC Proposed

According to a summary published by accounting advisory firm Cohen & Co., the SEC issued a proposed rule on May 19, 2026, aimed at simplifying financial reporting requirements for many U.S. public companies. The proposal would potentially reduce the frequency of certain mandatory disclosures from quarterly to semiannual, a structural change that has not been made to core U.S. reporting requirements in decades.

The proposal follows an extended debate within U.S. policy circles, with proponents arguing that reduced reporting frequency could lower compliance costs and free up management time for longer-term strategic planning rather than quarter-to-quarter results management.

Why Investors Are Pushing Back

Comment letters submitted in response to the proposal have been extensive, and according to Cohen & Co.’s review of the public record, investors “appear to be largely opposed” to the shift, viewing frequent interim reporting as a core benefit of U.S. capital markets relative to other jurisdictions.

Accounting and law firms have taken a more measured position, generally urging any changes to remain aligned with the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), whose existing disclosure requirements and guidance are built around a quarterly reporting cadence. A shift to semiannual reporting without corresponding changes to FASB guidance could create friction between SEC filing requirements and GAAP-based disclosure expectations.

Lessons From the U.K. Experience

The debate is not without precedent. The United Kingdom moved away from mandatory quarterly reporting for listed companies in 2014, returning to a semiannual disclosure requirement. According to Cohen & Co.’s analysis, that experience offers a cautionary data point: there was no measurable increase in capital expenditure or R&D investment following the change, while analyst coverage of affected companies declined as reliable interim information became less available — a particular risk for smaller and newly public companies that rely on analyst coverage to maintain investor visibility.

Practical Implications for Finance Teams

Beyond the debate over disclosure philosophy, the proposal carries practical complications. Many companies have debt covenants and credit agreements structured around quarterly financial delivery; a shift to semiannual reporting could require renegotiating those terms. Reduced reporting frequency would also extend the “window of market silence” between disclosures, a factor that governance and investor-relations teams would need to manage carefully to avoid information asymmetry.

Separately, and unrelated to the reporting-frequency debate, the SEC and FASB have continued finalizing more routine updates this year. New Accounting Standards Updates are taking effect for December 31, 2026, fiscal year-ends covering income tax disclosures, credit loss measurement, induced debt conversions, and stock compensation, according to Eide Bailly’s review of 2026 ASU activity. Additional guidance on paid-in-kind dividends and environmental credits is also on the near-term horizon.

What to Watch Next

The semiannual reporting proposal remains in the comment and review phase, and no final rule has been adopted as of this writing. Finance leaders should monitor the SEC’s regulatory agenda for further movement, while treating the current quarterly reporting requirement as the operative standard until any final rule is issued and an effective date is set.

Given the extent of investor opposition documented in the comment file, a full shift to mandatory semiannual reporting appears more likely to result in either a scaled-back compromise or continued study rather than swift adoption — though the SEC’s ultimate direction remains uncertain.

 

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Accounting

AI-Driven Automation and Continuous Accounting Frameworks

Published

3 weeks ago

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August 15, 2026

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The accounting profession is undergoing a fundamental structural transition as enterprise finance departments shift from periodic month-end closes toward automated continuous accounting models. By integrating specialized machine learning algorithms directly into enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms, chief accounting officers are transforming financial reporting from a retrospective exercise into a real-time operational asset.

The Shift from Periodic Close to Continuous Financial Reporting
Traditional accounting workflows heavily relied on manual data reconciliation, spreadsheet calculations, and multi-week closing cycles at the end of each fiscal period. In contrast, continuous accounting frameworks utilize automated software agents to process, validate, and post transactional data in real time as business activities occur.

Automated bank reconciliation tools cross-reference incoming bank feeds, invoice records, and purchase orders automatically. By resolving transactional variances instantly throughout the month, corporate accounting teams eliminate the traditional workload spikes associated with quarterly and annual closes.

Machine Learning in Audit Trails and Anomaly Detection
Advanced natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning tools are redefining internal audit and financial control environments. Automated systems analyze 100% of general ledger entries, identifying anomalous transactions, duplicate payments, and unauthorized journal entries in real time.

Rather than relying on random statistical sampling, corporate internal auditors can focus their attention on high-risk flags automatically surfaced by algorithmic monitoring platforms. This continuous risk assessment strengthens internal controls over financial reporting (ICFR) and significantly reduces fraud risk.

Evolving Roles for Accounting Professionals
As routine data entry and manual reconciliation tasks become fully automated, the skill set required for accounting professionals is shifting toward data analysis, system design, and strategic business advisory.
– Systems Governance: Accountants are increasingly responsible for monitoring algorithmic accuracy and managing data integration pipelines.
– Business Partnership: Finance professionals leverage real-time financial dashboards to advise operational leaders on margin management and working capital allocation.
– Regulatory Compliance Management: Accounting teams utilize automated platforms to ensure compliance with dynamic tax codes and international accounting standards.

Core Implementation Recommendations
1. Deploy Automated Reconciliation Tools: Integrate continuous transaction processing modules into existing enterprise ERP architectures.
2. Establish Algorithmic Governance Controls: Implement strict internal testing protocols to ensure automated accounting rules comply with GAAP/IFRS standards.
3. Reskill Accounting Teams: Invest in training finance staff on data analytics, workflow automation, and predictive financial modeling.

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Accounting

Global ESG Reporting Standards and Double Materiality Compliance

Published

4 weeks ago

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August 9, 2026

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Corporate accounting departments face expanding reporting expectations as international sustainability disclosure standards achieve regulatory enforcement across major global jurisdictions. Chief Accounting Officers (CAOs) and corporate controllers are establishing rigorous internal accounting controls to treat Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) metrics with the same data precision, auditability, and governance as traditional financial statements.

Regulatory Harmonization Under Global Sustainability Frameworks
The implementation of standardized sustainability reporting frameworks—notably rules established by international sustainability accounting boards—has created unified expectations for public and large private enterprises. Corporations must report standardized metrics covering greenhouse gas emissions (Scope 1, 2, and material Scope 3), energy utilization, workforce demographics, and supply chain governance.

In Europe and other participating international jurisdictions, double materiality principles are mandatory. Under double materiality, organizations must report both how external sustainability risks impact corporate financial performance, and how internal corporate operations affect surrounding environmental and social structures.

Integrating Sustainability Metrics into Core ERP Systems
To provide auditable non-financial data, enterprise organizations are integrating specialized carbon accounting and ESG management platforms directly into core ERP systems. Automated data collectors capture energy utility invoices, logistics fuel consumption metrics, and vendor compliance records in real time.

Establishing automated, traceable data pipelines ensures that non-financial reporting is supported by clear audit trails. This structured approach allows external financial auditors to provide reasonable assurance on sustainability disclosures during annual corporate reporting cycles.

Financial Impacts and Capital Market Disclosure
Accurate ESG reporting directly influences corporate cost of capital and institutional credit ratings. Commercial lenders and institutional asset managers systematically incorporate sustainability metrics into risk pricing models. Companies that demonstrate transparent, verifiable progress in operational energy efficiency and climate risk mitigation benefit from expanded access to green bond markets and lower debt pricing.

Action Steps for Accounting Leadership
1. Implement Double Materiality Frameworks: Conduct comprehensive assessments to identify material financial and operational sustainability metrics.
2. Build Auditable Non-Financial Data Pipelines: Automate ESG data collection within core accounting software to ensure data integrity.
3. Align Sustainability with Annual Financial Filings: Prepare non-financial disclosures concurrently with financial statements to satisfy regulatory audit expectations.

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