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Team vs. family | Accounting Today

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My nine-year-old daughter likes to play a game with me called: “Will you still love me, if?” I’m not sure how many more years we can play this game, but for now it’s pretty innocent. For instance, my daughter will ask me if I’ll still love her if she doesn’t do her homework or clean up her room or play nicely with her younger sister. As always, my response is: “Yes, I’ll still love you more than anything because I’m your dad.” It’s unconditional. We’re family.

I bring this up because in the intense war for talent in our industry, more and more firms are calling themselves a family. I think this can be dangerous. Maybe for some firms this is an intentional decision, and “family” is the word they want to use. But trust me, the specific words you use for firmwide communication matter a great deal.  As long as you understand the implications, great. So, let’s talk about what that means.

There are three important ways that work teams may be different from your family: 

The distinction comes down to purpose, expectations and commitment.

1. Purpose

The purpose of a family is to provide emotional support and unconditional love to kin. 

The purpose of a team is to accomplish an objective. If you’re the Kansas City Chiefs or Dallas Cowboys, the purpose of the team is to win football games. If you are a professional services firm, the purpose of the team is to provide exceptional professional advice to your clients so they can make better financial decisions. It’s not about providing people with unconditional love or making them feel good about themselves. 

2. Expectations

Expectations of a family: It doesn’t matter what family members do or say, the expectation is that they will always be loved. As a family member, you can always feel free to be yourself without judgment from your parents and siblings.

Expectations of a team: When you join a team, you will be (or should be) given clear expectations about what it takes to stay on the team. The expectations are more regimented. Each team member must be accountable. Each team member must honor deadlines and hit deliverables that help the team accomplish its purpose. Families generally don’t ask underperformers to leave, but teams do.

3. Commitment

Family commitment is unconditional. There is nothing my daughter can do to cause me to deny her unconditional love. I’ll always be her dad. It’s a lifelong commitment. 

Team commitment is more transitory. Sometimes you join a team for a certain reason. For instance, when starting your career, you may join a firm or team as an intern to gain a certain kind of work experience. It doesn’t mean you have to stay there for your entire life — it’s not your family. As you go through your career, you’ll find that certain firms, certain places and certain teams are good for you at a certain stage in your life. But then you reach a point that you may need to find a different team as you evolve.

If the purpose of your current team doesn’t align with what you’re trying to do, you don’t have to remain committed to staying with them. That’s why teams sometimes let go of their team members, and that’s why team members sometimes leave their teams. Their purposes are no longer aligned. If you’re clear about your purpose, you’re going to attract the right people, and you’re going to “graduate” the people who are no longer the right fit for your team. 

Language sets the tone

When you’re thinking about the language that you use at your firm, it’s important for every single person to know they’re part of a team. The team has a specific purpose that it’s trying to accomplish. That purpose should be clear to everyone on the team. Everyone from senior leadership to admin staff should have specific expectations about how they’re supposed to contribute to the team and help it achieve its strategic purpose. It doesn’t center around making everyone on the team feel good, although many people on well-run “championship” teams do feel inspired. It’s about meeting expectations.

For more about the importance of nuanced language, see my recent article Are you selling toothfish or sea bass?

In many workplaces, teammates develop relationships just like they do on sports teams. They become great friends and sometimes start to feel like family. The challenge is that people sometimes end up on a team to which they are no longer aligned, but they feel obligated to stay on a team out of loyalty. Or sometimes the team feels obligated to keep a team member on the payroll because they’re getting the concept of team and family confused. 

Work is not your family

If a teammate calls you on a Sunday when you’re out with your family, do you take the call and keep your family waiting? Do you invite them to come over to the house all the time? No, you probably don’t. That person is not part of your actual family. You shouldn’t take their call like you would from a family member late at night. There need to be boundaries, and failing to establish those boundaries can be detrimental to your team, and your family.

You need to have those important conversations and ask, “Are we aligned in our purpose? Do we have clear expectations? Are we committed to the growth of the firm? Are we aligned with committed expectations and purpose?”

Again, the purpose of a family is to nurture each other and provide emotional support and unconditional love. There’s no time limit on that. It’s forever. The purpose of a team is to accomplish its stated objectives by having the right people in the right seats at the right stages of their career. Teams must constantly reassess their lineup and depth chart.

If you feel you are aligned with your team’s purpose and are clear on the expectations, then it makes sense to stay if you feel you are growing. Otherwise, you need to think about moving to another team where you feel there’s better alignment between your respective goals and purpose. You are, after all, a free agent. Families don’t have free agents.

How are you keeping your team aligned with your firm’s expectations and purpose? I’d love to hear from you.

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Accounting

IAASB tweaks standards on working with outside experts

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The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board is proposing to tailor some of its standards to align with recent additions to the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants’ International Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants when it comes to using the work of an external expert.

The proposed narrow-scope amendments involve minor changes to several IAASB standards:

  • ISA 620, Using the Work of an Auditor’s Expert;
  • ISRE 2400 (Revised), Engagements to Review Historical Financial Statements;
  • ISAE 3000 (Revised), Assurance Engagements Other than Audits or Reviews of Historical Financial Information;
  • ISRS 4400 (Revised), Agreed-upon Procedures Engagements.

The IAASB is asking for comments via a digital response template that can be found on the IAASB website by July 24, 2025.

In December 2023, the IESBA approved an exposure draft for proposed revisions to the IESBA’s Code of Ethics related to using the work of an external expert. The proposals included three new sections to the Code of Ethics, including provisions for professional accountants in public practice; professional accountants in business and sustainability assurance practitioners. The IESBA approved the provisions on using the work of an external expert at its December 2024 meeting, establishing an ethical framework to guide accountants and sustainability assurance practitioners in evaluating whether an external expert has the necessary competence, capabilities and objectivity to use their work, as well as provisions on applying the Ethics Code’s conceptual framework when using the work of an outside expert.  

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Accounting

Tariffs will hit low-income Americans harder than richest, report says

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President Donald Trump’s tariffs would effectively cause a tax increase for low-income families that is more than three times higher than what wealthier Americans would pay, according to an analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

The report from the progressive think tank outlined the outcomes for Americans of all backgrounds if the tariffs currently in effect remain in place next year. Those making $28,600 or less would have to spend 6.2% more of their income due to higher prices, while the richest Americans with income of at least $914,900 are expected to spend 1.7% more. Middle-income families making between $55,100 and $94,100 would pay 5% more of their earnings. 

Trump has imposed the steepest U.S. duties in more than a century, including a 145% tariff on many products from China, a 25% rate on most imports from Canada and Mexico, duties on some sectors such as steel and aluminum and a baseline 10% tariff on the rest of the country’s trading partners. He suspended higher, customized tariffs on most countries for 90 days.

Economists have warned that costs from tariff increases would ultimately be passed on to U.S. consumers. And while prices will rise for everyone, lower-income families are expected to lose a larger portion of their budgets because they tend to spend more of their earnings on goods, including food and other necessities, compared to wealthier individuals.

Food prices could rise by 2.6% in the short run due to tariffs, according to an estimate from the Yale Budget Lab. Among all goods impacted, consumers are expected to face the steepest price hikes for clothing at 64%, the report showed. 

The Yale Budget Lab projected that the tariffs would result in a loss of $4,700 a year on average for American households.

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Accounting

At Schellman, AI reshapes a firm’s staffing needs

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Artificial intelligence is just getting started in the accounting world, but it is already helping firms like technology specialist Schellman do more things with fewer people, allowing the firm to scale back hiring and reduce headcount in certain areas through natural attrition. 

Schellman CEO Avani Desai said there have definitely been some shifts in headcount at the Top 100 Firm, though she stressed it was nothing dramatic, as it mostly reflects natural attrition combined with being more selective with hiring. She said the firm has already made an internal decision to not reduce headcount in force, as that just indicates they didn’t hire properly the first time. 

“It hasn’t been about reducing roles but evolving how we do work, so there wasn’t one specific date where we ‘started’ the reduction. It’s been more case by case. We’ve held back on refilling certain roles when we saw opportunities to streamline, especially with the use of new technologies like AI,” she said. 

One area where the firm has found such opportunities has been in the testing of certain cybersecurity controls, particularly within the SOC framework. The firm examined all the controls it tests on the service side and asked which ones require human judgment or deep expertise. The answer was a lot of them. But for the ones that don’t, AI algorithms have been able to significantly lighten the load. 

“[If] we don’t refill a role, it’s because the need actually has changed, or the process has improved so significantly [that] the workload is lighter or shared across the smarter system. So that’s what’s happening,” said Desai. 

Outside of client services like SOC control testing and reporting, the firm has found efficiencies in administrative functions as well as certain internal operational processes. On the latter point, Desai noted that Schellman’s engineers, including the chief information officer, have been using AI to help develop code, which means they’re not relying as much on outside expertise on the internal service delivery side of things. There are still people in the development process, but their roles are changing: They’re writing less code, and doing more reviewing of code before it gets pushed into production, saving time and creating efficiencies. 

“The best way for me to say this is, to us, this has been intentional. We paused hiring in a few areas where we saw overlaps, where technology was really working,” said Desai.

However, even in an age awash with AI, Schellman acknowledges there are certain jobs that need a human, at least for now. For example, the firm does assessments for the FedRAMP program, which is needed for cloud service providers to contract with certain government agencies. These assessments, even in the most stable of times, can be long and complex engagements, to say nothing of the less predictable nature of the current government. As such, it does not make as much sense to reduce human staff in this area. 

“The way it is right now for us to do FedRAMP engagements, it’s a very manual process. There’s a lot of back and forth between us and a third party, the government, and we don’t see a lot of overall application or technology help… We’re in the federal space and you can imagine, [with] what’s going on right now, there’s a big changing market condition for clients and their pricing pressure,” said Desai. 

As Schellman reduces staff levels in some places, it is increasing them in others. Desai said the firm is actively hiring in certain areas. In particular, it’s adding staff in technical cybersecurity (e.g., penetration testers), the aforementioned FedRAMP engagements, AI assessment (in line with recently becoming an ISO 42001 certification body) and in some client-facing roles like marketing and sales. 

“So, to me, this isn’t about doing more with less … It’s about doing more of the right things with the right people,” said Desai. 

While these moves have resulted in savings, she said that was never really the point, so whatever the firm has saved from staffing efficiencies it has reinvested in its tech stack to build its service line further. When asked for an example, she said the firm would like to focus more on penetration testing by building a SaaS tool for it. While Schellman has a proof of concept developed, she noted it would take a lot of money and time to deploy a full solution — both of which the firm now has more of because of its efficiency moves. 

“What is the ‘why’ behind these decisions? The ‘why’ for us isn’t what I think you traditionally see, which is ‘We need to get profitability high. We need to have less people do more things.’ That’s not what it is like,” said Desai. “I want to be able to focus on quality. And the only way I think I can focus on quality is if my people are not focusing on things that don’t matter … I feel like I’m in a much better place because the smart people that I’ve hired are working on the riskiest and most complicated things.”

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