Chair's corner.

AuthorFletchall, Randy

I am honored to have taken the baton as the new chairman and l am looking forward to continuing the profession's positive momentum. Through my CPA Letter columns, l will keep you informed of our progress but in this first one, I will cover three areas of focus on which I plan to spend much of my time in my year as chairman.

* Recruiting and retaining new talent.

* Never overlooking the importance of burnishing our reputation through excellent work.

* Using our collective voice for the public good.

The talent pipeline is an issue that affects every area of the profession. The services that CPAs perform are in such high demand that most of us simply cannot hire as many good people as we need. The AICPA is doing a terrific job to help resolve this problem. Its efforts include our award-winning "Start Here. Go Places." student recruitment campaign, the work of our long-standing Minority Initiatives Committee, the AICPA Foundation's programs to address the shortage of accounting professors and the initiatives of the Young CPA Network.

While these efforts are important, 1 believe that our exemplary reputation may be the most significant element in convincing young, financially talented people to join the CPA profession. If we don't demonstrate that we are an exciting and relevant profession that makes a difference in the world, then we will lose them to other careers. The good news is that our profession today is a highly interesting and visible part of the financial reporting chain and the capital markets.

CPAs provide great value by performing their jobs or providing their services in a high-quality manner and acting with integrity, honesty and objectivity. We are the voice of expertise and common sense in a complex economy. We bring our employers or our clients--whether corporate or individual, public or private a deep level of knowledge and sophistication about financial matters.

But even if we continually demonstrate our value through exemplary work, we still must go one step...

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