Indiana's Super CPAs: our first annual listing of the state's leading CPAs, chosen by their peers.

SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEURS and executives know that the CPA is an integral part of that "trusted advisor" team that also includes a banker and a lawyer. And beyond the green eyeshade, the CPA may wear any number of hats--auditor, accountant, corporate or personal financial planner, business and management consultant, maybe management information specialist, perhaps manager of the employee benefit plan.

So how do you choose the CPA that's best for your company? For starters, those other trusted advisors may have suggestions. Word-of-mouth is a tried and true method. And the Indiana CPA Society has a handy "Find a CPA" tool right on its homepage at incpas.org.

You can also heed the suggestions of other CPAs, and that's what we did in compiling our first listing of "Indiana's Super CPAs." This is a survey of CPAs about CPAs, a peer review, so to speak. Inspired by a popular feature in Virginia Business magazine, we set out to gather the opinions of our own state's CPAs, asking them who they view as the top practitioners in a number of key categories.

The 2008 Indiana Super CPAs were determined through an online survey process, which we conducted with the help of the Indiana CPA Society. We asked members of the society to cast votes for outstanding Indiana CPAs in 12 categories.

In doing so, we were well aware that CPAs know their closest peers the best, and figured that they would in many cases desire to honor a respected CPA from their own firm. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but for our survey we required that any time CPAs cast votes for members of...