Financial Leadership Forum: excellence, leadership and vision delivered to CalCPA members.

• Position: Conference news - Cover story

At the heart of California's world-class economy are multitudes of talented business and finance professionals. And over the past several years, the demands from regulators, shareholders and employers to keep the businesses these professionals serve thriving and transparent have been unprecedented.

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CPA Sarah Gatenby, a controller at Santa Clara University, says the recent deluge of pronouncements and auditing standards makes her feel like she's back in public accounting.

"Our auditors used to alert us to new standards and reporting requirements, but now there's much more pressure for us to do that ourselves and stay current," she says.

Enter CalCPA's Financial Leadership Forum.

"CPAs in industry need to stay current," says Patricia Cochran, CFO for Vision Service Plan in Rancho Cordova and president of the California CPA Education Foundation board of trustees. "For the past two years, CalCPA and the Education Foundation have been talking to business and industry CPAs to better understand their needs and develop a program to meet those needs. The Financial Leadership Forum is that program."

The Financial Leadership Forum is a special CalCPA membership group developed to enhance the support provided to CPAs and non-CPAs in the business community through tailored programs and resources that better meet their professional needs.

The Forum's key tenets are a commitment to ethical responsibility, excellence, strategic innovation and best practices in financial and business management. Additionally, the Forum supports financial leaders and executives through powerful advocacy, thought leadership, executive education and essential resources.

"We're interested in many areas a CPA in public practice wouldn't be," says Laura Weisshar, controller for Kaiser Permanente in Pasadena. "The Forum presents an excellent opportunity for CPAs, who aren't practicing public accounting, to have the issues they want addressed and discussed."

BUILDING PRESSURE

Through surveys and interviews, California business and industry CPAs sounded off about issues that affect their businesses daily, including internal controls, leadership, mergers and acquisitions, growth and profit, cost analysis, capital investments and ethics. But that is only the tip of the iceberg.

"B & I CPAs have an ongoing commitment to being a business partner, which goes beyond just keeping the books," says Cochran. "We really get into strategy and risk assessment, as well as being another set of eyes and ears to help move the business forward."

Weisshar adds, "You have to be engaged with operational personnel about financial implications from borrowings to financial reporting that, quite frankly, as managers, they may not be familiar with."

Or, notes Gatenby, "In higher education we're confronted with financial aid issues, and loan program concerns. There's also the pressure of disclosure and dealing with the IRS Form 990T-as well as a push at the moment to have good fraud detection programs."

For some, the addition of rules and...