COVID-19 and the accounting profession: The impact, the challenges, the future
From a fundamental shift in the nature of work to significant mental health impacts for its members, COVID-19 brought with it a plethora of challenges for the accounting profession. It has also provided the opportunity for reinvention, panelists told attendees at a discussion hosted by Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business on October 16.
The panel event, entitled “Public Accounting Profession and COVID-19: Changes to the Nature of Work and Implications for Mental Health,” brought together public accounting professionals and leaders to discuss the challenges and opportunities for accountants due to COVID-19.
The event was organized in collaboration with Sprott’s Professional Accounting Research Group (PARG) and featured:
- Greg Boddy, manager, assurance and advisory services at GGFL;
- Micheal Burch, managing partner at Welch LLP;
- Kristy Carscallen, Canadian managing partner, audit at KPMG; and
- Carol Wilding, president and CEO of CPA Ontario.
The discussion was hosted by members of Sprott’s accounting faculty, Merridee Bujaki and Francois Brouard – who is also the director of PARG.
“We all know the world changed on March 12 this year,” said Greg, a Sprott alumnus. “One day we’re in the office and next day we’re all working from home.”
The profession as a whole faced a range of challenges and had to face them while combatting added pressure due to the fact that the pandemic struck at the busiest time of the year for accountants. The discussion explored how the changes to how we live and work impacted firms’ audit and tax practices, client services, as well as employee engagement.
“From the tax perspective, a big issue for us was these changing, shifting deadlines,” Micheal said. “And, how we keep our staff engaged, how we move through these shifting deadlines, how we stay productive when we have half the information?”
Greg added that for GGFL their primary challenge was ensuring that they had all the technological necessities in place for their employees to be able to switch seamlessly to working from home and avoid any interruption in the provision of services to their clients. From providing the necessary equipment to adjusting VPN capacity, their technology team worked to meet this challenge as quickly as possible. The firm had to create and implement processes and procedures which would allow them to take their primarily paper-based operations completely online.
For CPA Canada, and the provincial organizations, the most pressing challenge was how to conduct the Common Final Examination (CFE) – which is the final exam in the process to become a Chartered Professional Accountant.
From contributing ideas to offering their services as proctors, CPA members from across Canada came together to contribute however they could to ensure that the exam would proceed.
“I’m really proud of how the profession responded to that.” Carol said. “It’s an example of resilience and innovation.”
Carol also highlighted the Accounting for Bravery program as an example of the profession coming together in difficult times. This program brought together CPAs from across Ontario to support frontline healthcare workers, and prepared tax returns for over 4,000 of them and their families, free of charge.
“You want to talk about a profession that tends to be risk averse, and managing risk, and looking at it all the time, and then we asked our members ‘hey, can we put our arms around these frontline healthcare workers and do something that’s unique to us as a profession and give back?’ And, everybody put their hand up, really quickly, and worked through all the potential challenges of what that could be,” Carol said.
One thing which all four panelists said their organizations struggled with was working out how best they could support their employees through this period of difficulty and change, and keep them connected with the organization and one another.
“We spent a lot of time thinking about how to maintain the culture we all love so much,” Greg said.
“How do I literally, virtually, put my arms around 300 people and say: ‘you’re gonna be okay. I don’t know what tomorrow brings, but you’re gonna be okay’?” Carol asked herself at the time.
At GGFL they made a practice of having regular social calls with all their employees to talk about everything but work. Kristy, who is also a graduate of Sprott, added that at KPMG they created a system of “pop-up” support networks for employees who may be sharing similar challenges, such as single parents or people who are living by themselves through the pandemic.
Micheal said that they have been making a concerted effort to convey the importance of mental health and self-care to their employees.
“From an employer’s perspective, we just absolutely have to be way more human. We need to be way more connected, and we need to get our managers, and our HR people, and our partners trained into recognizing, and into being a bit more honest with themselves and that in turn might bring it out from our staff as well.”
They wrapped up their conversation by discussing what the future looks like for accountants and the profession of accounting itself.
Kristy expressed that she believes technology will become an even bigger piece of their day to day work, while Carol added that they need to move towards online learning in the pre-certification process.
Carol also said that this has provided the profession with an opportunity to think about the skillsets that they need in the CPA. She said there is a need to reconsider what competencies future CPAs should be trained in.
“We’re gonna have to say some of the things that perhaps some of us learned traditionally and were tested on are really not the core competencies that we need to be putting in place in terms of an assessment in the earlier days of coming into a CPA – that they are just going to become more of a rote task.”
Merridee is part of a research team, the Professional Healthy Worker Partnership, that is conducting a major study to address fundamental issues around mental health in knowledge professions, such as accounting. The results of which will provide valuable information on employee well-being and offer up best practice policies and interventions for implementation.
Given this work, and Francois’ work with PARG, they realized the importance of having this conversation.
“Also, in general, business schools are seen as leaders, and to the extent that we can signal to people that these conversations are okay to have,” Merridee added.