CPA NARRATIVE CHANGING THE

By Bill Sheridan, CAE

2023-24 MACPA Chair Christine Aspell hopes to reconnect members with the purpose behind their work — and help them share that purpose with a new generation of CPAs

The issue that’s on every CPA’s mind these days also sits squarely at the top of new MACPA Chair Christine Aspell’s agenda for the coming year.

It’s the pipeline — the declining numbers of students who study accounting and the shrinking pool of candidates who are studying for the CPA exam in the hopes of obtaining their license. The shortage of new talent entering the profession has left leaders scrambling to meet their staffing needs. It’s also left experts wondering about the quality of future audits and other accounting and finance work.

Debates continue throughout the profession about possible solutions to the pipeline issue, many of which seem to center on educational and regulatory requirements for becoming a CPA. But Aspell is taking a different tack. She wants to reconnect CPAs with the purpose behind their work, and to convince them to share that purpose with students and young professionals who are hungry for work with meaning.

“Our profession continues to change rapidly as technological advancements, regulatory changes, and demographic trends reshape what we do and how we do it. But even amid that change, one thing remains constant — our purpose,” said Aspell, managing partner and audit partner with KPMG’s Baltimore office who was elected as the MACPA’s 2023-24 chair at the association’s annual meeting on June 22. “The what, how and even who of our great profession will adapt and change, but what won’t change is our why.

“We are at an inflection point in our profession when it comes to human capital and our next generation of leaders,” she added. “Changing the narrative and shifting the focus — especially for our talent and future talent — from the everadapting day-to-day work to the purpose behind that work is an opportunity that we can’t afford to miss.”

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With talent issues and the future of the profession at the forefront, Aspell sat down recently with MACPA Editor Bill Sheridan to talk about her priorities for the coming year, and how the MACPA can take the next step toward future-readiness — both for itself and its members.

HERE’S WHAT SHE HAD TO SAY.

Bill Sheridan: Tell me a bit about you, Christine. Where are you from originally?

Christine Aspell: I’m from Baltimore originally. I’ve only lived in two ZIP codes my entire life! That seems to be a Baltimore thing. I grew up in the Parkville area. I went to a Catholic grade school, went to St. Ursula, and then I went to NDP, and then I went to Loyola. I stayed local for my college years as well. My family’s from this area and we’ve never really moved, so, here I am.

Bill Sheridan: It’s funny ... I moved to St. Louis a number of years ago. My wife is a native of St. Louis, and the similarities between Baltimore and St. Louis are eery, right down to the question everyone asks each other.

Christine Aspell: “Where’d you go to school?”

Bill Sheridan: And they’re gleaning all kinds of information from that answer.

Christine Aspell: A quick assessment of who you know, the kind of the things you did.

Bill Sheridan: How about your family, Christine? Brothers? sisters?

Christine Aspell: I have one sister, so a small family. She lives in Houston. My mom passed away nine years ago, so it’s just my dad. I have two boys and my husband. So, not a huge family, but two is enough.

Bill Sheridan: Why accounting for you? What drew you to the profession? What was it about accounting that lit your fire?

Christine Aspell: At first I thought I wanted to be a doctor, and then I worked at a pediatrician’s office and realized I don’t like the sight of blood. But I liked numbers. I liked trying to solve things. At the same time, but when I worked at the doctor’s office, I realized I loved being around people. I loved talking to the patients. And I thought to myself, “I’m really going to miss this part of the job.”

I had a misconception that accounting is just about sitting behind a desk crunching numbers. But I quickly learned that was not the case. When I started at KPG, I realized how much interaction with people is required (in accounting). To be successful, you really need to be able to talk with people.

Bill Sheridan: What do you see as the MACPA’s priorities as you start your year as chair? Where do you want to focus a lot of your time and attention this year?

Christine Aspell: It’s pipeline, pipeline, pipeline. Getting people to understand what we do and why these roles are important — returning to our purpose as CPAs. Years ago, KPMG offered what I call the purpose program — showing that it’s not just crunching numbers, it’s not just auditing, it’s not just tax. There’s a purpose to what we do that goes beyond what you see. Companies need our services because they’re filing for grants that will help them do, for instance cancer research. We approach those services with an understanding that we’re not just auditing cash; we’re auditing this financial statement because this company needs this to accomplish *their* purpose. At the same time, we’re creating confidence in the capital markets through what we do. It’s a bigger purpose than I think most people realize.

Bill Sheridan: Our CEO, Rebecca Brown, spoke with a group of students recently and asked that question: “Why accounting? What attracted you to the profession?” A young student had a very similar answer. He said it’s the fact that what he does allows his clients to do what they do. The example he gave was this: Let’s say one of his clients is a not-forprofit that serves the community; what he does allows that not-for-profit to improve the lives of people in the community.

When you think about it in those terms, it turns everything about this profession on its head and makes you stop and think about accounting in a different way.

Christine Aspell: And it makes it more appealing to people than just crunching numbers. But when you think about that higher purpose that you’re serving, it connects and inspires people in a way that the numbers don’t.

Bill Sheridan: Outside of the pipeline, what are some of the biggest challenges you think our profession is facing today?

Christine Aspell: There are so many things right now. Artificial intelligence is a big one. We don’t know enough yet about where that’s going, but that’s a question on a lot of people’s minds, especially young people who are exploring college majors and careers. If those students are going to select accounting, they need to be able to think through what the job is going to look like in five years, and what skill sets they’ll need to do that job. The future vision of our profession has changed a lot recently, but I think the change we’re experiencing now is much more rapid than what we saw in the past.

Bill Sheridan: Exactly. The Gartner Hype Cycle — which maps the path that new technologies take as they go from hype to productive tools — is compressing because of how quickly these new technologies are evolving. That gives us less time to reimagine what our profession and our careers will look like going forward.

Christine Aspell: I don’t know if we have the answer to all of that. Look at where we’ve come with the audit. When I started, we were taping spreadsheets together. We had 54 columns of spreadsheets, and our audits were based on that. We had to put those columns together and fill them in. Looking back, we were in the dark ages, chiseling tablets. It was all manual. You accumulated all the numbers, you created a spreadsheet for what prepaid assets look like, or your client gave you the details and then you audited them. Controls weren’t a thing — nobody talked about controls. And now look at what we’re doing. We’re all about controls and the IT aspect of it, and we have specific programs that help us look at risks and our assumptions we’re making for auditing. It’s very different from what we did before, and the technology has a lot to do with it. And because of that, our first-year people aren’t doing the things that we did back in the day, so the skill sets they need are very different.

Bill Sheridan: And that’s a great question:

Are new CPAs being trained in the skills they’re going to need going forward? Our foundational technical skills are never going to go away, but a lot of that is being automated. In many ways, what differentiates us going forward are those relationships -- the people side of the profession. It’s a whole new ballgame when you’re talking about what you need to learn in order to add value.

Christine Aspell: Also, the need to think critically will never change. Putting those skills together -- the people skills and the ability to think critically think — is, I think, one of the things that will set us apart going forward.

Bill Sheridan: How about opportunities, Christine? What opportunities await us in the very near future?

Christine Aspell: I’ll take it back to that critical thinking skill. Accounting gives you such a broad skill set. It can be very specific at times, but it’s also very broad and teaches you to think critically. An accounting major can do a finance job, but a finance major can’t necessarily do an accounting job. It’s very broad, and you can do so much with that skill set.

Bill Sheridan: What does that mean for your clients? Looking at a situation through that type of lens — how does that benefit the folks you’re working for?

Christine Aspell: That’s what we’re hired to do, right? We’re questioning everything. That’s what we do as auditors. We question.

Bill Sheridan: That’s another skill that keeps surfacing in many conversations I’ve had recently — the ability to ask better questions. So many people seem to believe they need have all of the answers to the problems they face. But the way you arrive at those answers is by asking insightful questions -- peeling back the layers of that onion until you eventually arrive at the heart of the problem.

Christine Aspell: Doing that gives you other viewpoints to consider: “Oh, I never thought about it that way.”

Bill Sheridan: That’s the whole point of asking those questions. They open your mind. That’s an intriguing way of looking at what we do.

Christine Aspell: Judgment plays such a big role in audit. Take impairments — goodwill impairments or valuations. There’s lots of judgment that goes with all of that. It’s not just black or white. It’s being able to look at all of that and say, “Well, that doesn’t make sense.” Or, “Did you think about it from this angle?” It’s a fun job if you like solving problems or putting puzzles together. I always thought about cashflow in that way — it’s like a puzzle.

Bill Sheridan: And that’s strategic and critical thinking in a nutshell.

Christine Aspell: Absolutely. I’ve always said that I could be a private detective, given how I was trained.

Bill Sheridan: Pulling it back to the MACPA for a moment, Christine: What’s the value of membership in your mind?

Christine Aspell: I’ve always been an MACPA member, but coming from the Big Four, I initially had the impression that you needed the MACPA from a training perspective. That’s how it was always talked about — CPE. But I quickly realized that there is so much more to being an MACPA member than that. It’s a community of people who work together in so many amazing ways — sharing insights with one another, speaking at schools, showing our value to our lawmakers in the General Assembly. It goes way beyond that piece of paper, that certification we’ve worked so hard to obtain. There’s so much that happens behind the scenes — community, advocacy, filling our pipeline and strengthening the profession. There’s so much more to membership than just training.

Bill Sheridan: We’ve had members who have said one of the biggest values of their MACPA membership is that community — being a part of an association, being able to connect with other people, asking questions of fellow members and getting answers to those questions from the community.

Christine Aspell: There’s something very powerful about that, from a membership point of view. What we’ve been able to accomplish as CPAs is pretty incredible. It’s not an easy thing to do. There’s a lot to being a CPA, and there’s a lot that you need to do to continue to add that value. We need to share that value and make people aware of the value CPAs bring to their organizations and their communities. Doctors and lawyers value that certificate and tout it, talk about it. We don’t do enough of that.

Bill Sheridan: We need to get better at telling those personal stories and showing the connection that, for example, you, Christine Aspell, has with this profession. That story might turn the tide for another person out there to say, “Hey, this is something I ought to consider.”

Christine Aspell: The experiences that I’ve had over the years at KPMG have helped me grow professionally, but they’ve helped me grow personally, too. This profession can do that for you.

Bill Sheridan: What does the future of this profession look like to you, Christine?

Christine Aspell: It’s everything we’ve been talking about. It’s the right people, the right skills, getting the colleges to make sure they’re teaching those right skills, and thinking critically about how we can solve the problems that our clients and organizations are facing. Take a look at the professions. We’re all fixing something. A doctor is fixing a patient. A lawyer is fixing a legal problem. CPAs are solving financial issues. Regardless of where the future takes us, we all have that role to play. It comes down to keeping our eye on the ball and thinking critically about the issue at hand. Whether it’s taxes, accounting, valuation — whatever the issue may be. Our future is about doing the things machines can’t do — thinking critically and applying our expertise in ways that will solve problems.

Bill Sheridan: It’s funny how these conversations all come back to the relationships we’re building with our clients and customers. It’s all about asking better questions, thinking critically, using new technologies when needed, and applying what we know to the issues at hand. That’s the future of the profession in a nutshell.

Christine Aspell: It is, and those relationships point to the importance of connecting physically as well -- getting back together in the same room. It’s about that personal connection. You can get some of that by being virtual, but you can’t get all of it. When I was younger, I benefited greatly from being in a room and hearing the conversations taking place from those who were more senior than myself. I was watching how they interacted and I was able to listen. We need more of that. People need to understand the value of that.

Bill Sheridan: I spoke with a thought leader in the future of work, and she told me that one of the things we missed most in our move to remote work during the pandemic is what she called “accidental knowledge” — the stuff you pick up just by being in the same room with other people, hearing conversations and interacting with other people. That’s stuff you don’t pick up when you’re working in your office at home. I think there’s something very critical about all that.

Christine Aspell: I completely agree. It’s also about being able to focus when there are 10 people talking around you, learning how to tune it out and focus in an audit room. That’s where I worry a bit about our first-, second- and third-year people. They haven’t experienced a lot of that (in a remote environment), and now they’re getting some of that (in the office). I also think the pace at which you’re learning changes.

Bill Sheridan: Exactly. It’s almost like you’re picking up more and learning faster by virtue of that physical connection.

Christine Aspell: I’m sure younger people would say, “I’m fine,” but it’s possible that they don’t know what they don’t know. You might say I’m one of those “I walked to school uphill both ways” people, but I do think there are a lot of things they’re missing by not having that connection. When I was working in Philadelphia, a staff person once told me, “I don’t know how you did this -getting dressed, driving to work five days a week.” How quickly that has changed! That was the norm. And now their view is, “I don’t know how you did that,” with the impression being, “I’m not ever going to do that.”

Bill Sheridan: It’s almost as if the way we work is advancing at the same rate as technology. We’re having to learn on the fly and figure it out as we go along.

Christine Aspell: KPMG built a training facility in Florida that opened up right before the pandemic. Today, that’s a way for all of us to come together and learn, and we have. Fortunately we have that, but it doesn’t take the place of the daily interaction you get sitting side by side with somebody.

Bill Sheridan: What would you like the MACPA — and Maryland CPAs in general — to accomplish over the next year? What does a good year as MACPA chair look like to you?

Christine Aspell: I really want to focus on making sure people understand the value of a CPA and how you can get personal worth out of that. For me, that personal worth is purpose. I’ve spent pretty much my entire career in the financial services world. Now, most of us have bank accounts or a 401(k) or something like that to help drive our personal finances. I’ve been fortunate enough to connect what I do with these important financial instruments that I see externally. I would love for CPAs to look at this profession not as a job but as a career, and to find the purpose in what they do and share that purpose with students, so that students can see that and experience it and understand the value that CPAs offer.