Celebrating You!(California Society of Certified Public Accountants) (Brief Article)

• Author: DODSWORTH, JOHN

Madison Avenue will probably have none of it, but the AICPA is revising its tagline "Never Underestimate the Value," and I have a suggestion: "CPAs Are Great!" Catchy, isn't it? Well, maybe not, but consider this October marks the 100th anniversary of the CPA credential in California. One hundred years have passed since the first California CPA was licensed. Reaching this milestone and providing value to businesses in ways that those first CPAs would have never dreamed possible is reason for us to be proud.

So rather than spend so much time being defensive about what we are not, let's stand up and take credit for what we are.

THE LOCAL TOUCH

Remember when the Big Eight had offices in Fresno and Bakersfield? They tried to take on the local firms. It was an experiment that didn't last long. They retreated back to the major metropolitan areas when they realized they couldn't compete with local firms.

A few years back, during the peak of the merger hysteria, there was an underlying perception that bigger is better. But guess what? Your clients don't want a big firm. They want personal service from someone who really knows what they are doing, and sometimes that might be a big firm, but often, it's your firm.

The chief financial concern for most of your clients is having a business adviser who really understands their business. CPAs fill this role more than any other professional, because not only can we collect data, but we can turn that data into something useful. We bridge the gap between data and its application.

LIVING THE VISION

There has been considerable discussion, beginning with the CPA Vision project, about the profession's future and creating added value for clients. One outcome is that we now have more acronyms than the U.S. Navy -- XYZ, PFS, CITP, MDP. The AICPA even is trying to create a credential to rename what we already are doing.

However, I sense that in our quest for a better world, we have lost some pride in our core disciplines of accounting, tax and attest work. From all of the data that CAMICO collects, it is obvious that these disciplines still constitute a majority of what we do. They certainly are where most of CAMICO's claims come from. But we have come to believe, or have listened to too many experts tell us, that these are low-value commodities.

I don't think it's intentional, but the constant drumbeat has resulted in a loss of pride and satisfaction in our work and a lack of aggressiveness about getting adequate...