CPA Trendlines Podcasts

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739

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Oct 2026

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Exclusive information. Extraordinary insight. See all podcast episodes here: https://cpatrendlines.com/category/podcast/ CPA Trendlines is the world’s only research and advisory service focused solely on the tax, accounting, and finance professions. We use a time-tested, quality-proven, proprietary blend of data, analysis, community, experience, and imagination to produce extraordinary value for our clients. Elite decision-makers from all over the world look to CPA Trendlines for trusted advice, bold insights, and confidential access to exclusive intelligence and decision support. You’ll stay more focused, save time, grow revenue in a fast-changing global digital environment, and sleep better at night. Guaranteed. Facts. Figures. Insights. Implications. Here you'll find the data and analysis you can use for your practice and your career, plus exclusive research, insights, and commentary on the most pressing issues and fastest-changing trends. We are dedicated to delivering the actionable intelligence that tax, accounting, and finance professionals need in order to identify and act on emerging issues and opportunities. We specialize in high-quality, concise executive briefings designed to help busy professionals improve their organizations, advance their careers, and enhance their lives. Our reports are relevant, timely, and to-the-point, providing the most essential information, and are digestible often in under an hour. ]]>

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60 recent

October 16, 202645 min

Trent Yesberg: How AI Re-Builds Accounting Firms | It's Not Just the Numbers

Nontechnical teams can use AI-built scripts to automate repetitive work, reclaim valuable time, and turn an accounting firm’s operational problem into a marketable product. It's Not Just the Numbers With Penny Breslin and Damien Greathead For CPA Trendlines Most accounting firms talk about AI automation in the future tense. They're waiting for the right tool, the right vendor, or the right moment to start using it seriously. Trent Yesberg didn't wait. As director of Regional Business Services in Townsville, Australia, he started asking Claude and ChatGPT to write scripts that run his firm's internal workflows directly, with no ongoing subscription or per-task cost attached. MORE Penny Breslin and Damien Greathead | MORE Advisory & Consulting JOIN From Scorekeeper to Strategist CAS Workshop | BUY "It's Not Just the Numbers" What began as a way to save his own team a few hours a week turned into Twine Biller , a tool now used by other firms to fix one of accounting's quietest profit leaks: subscription rebilling that slips through the cracks month after month. His approach cuts against a common assumption, that AI automation in a firm has to mean either building an entire internal platform from scratch or renting one from a big software vendor. There is a middle path, and Yesberg has been living in it for the better part of a year.

October 15, 202642 min

The AI Demo Is Easy. The Rollout Gets Complicated. | Innovation Insights

Building an accounting tool with AI is only the beginning of making it useful, secure, and sustainable. Innovation Insights With Donny Shimamoto and Byron Patrick Center for Accounting Transformation An accountant builds a dashboard that pulls information from several systems. A proposal generator turns service selections into a polished PDF. A homemade utility eliminates a tedious step in the monthly close. Then comes the question that changes everything: How do I let my team use it? In this episode of Innovation Insights , Donny Shimamoto and Byron Patrick explore the distance between a promising personal tool and software an accounting team can depend on. More Donny Shimamoto AI makes building easier, they say, but sharing, securing, supporting, and maintaining what you build requires a different level of preparation. For accountants eager to experiment with AI agents and “vibe coding” — using natural-language instructions to have AI generate code — the conversation offers both encouragement and a reality check.

October 14, 202644 min

Kassi Rushing: Your Culture Is What You Reward | The Disruptors

Leaders must align everyday decisions with the flexibility, innovation, and growth they promise employees. MOVE Like This With Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk For CPA Trendlines Research In this episode of MOVE Like This , Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk sits down with Kassi Rushing, strategist and speaker with Kassi Rushing Consulting, to explore what future-ready accounting firms need from their people strategies, and why culture, caregiving, leadership development, and business performance are increasingly difficult to separate. Rushing, who has spent 20 years working in and with the accounting profession, says firms have made significant progress in recognizing people as a critical business asset. But understanding that people matter and creating an environment where they can do their best work are two different things, particularly as firms navigate AI, changing workforce expectations, and significant demographic shifts. MORE MOVE Like This | MORE CPA Trendlines Streaming Network One example came from a firm that added a simple question to its employee survey: How many employees identify as caregivers? Leadership expected some but was surprised to learn that more than half of its professionals did. Many weren't simply caring for children; they were simultaneously helping aging parents, stepparents, siblings, or others. The finding prompted the firm to reconsider everything from when it scheduled social events to whether its benefits, training, and leave programs actually reflected employees' lives. For Rushing, the lesson is simple: firms can't support people they haven't taken the time to understand.

October 13, 202656 min

David Marquis: AI Can Do More Work But Auditors Still Make the Call | The Disruptors

A five-layer “AI trust stack” helps auditors put AI to work while keeping professional judgment at the center. The Disruptors With Liz Farr For CPA Trendlines As AI takes on more audit work, David Marquis sees professional judgment becoming more valuable. The Caseware CEO argues that the opportunity extends beyond faster document reviews and automated analysis. Firms can rethink how audits work while strengthening the consistency, accountability, and trust that clients and capital markets depend on. MORE Disruptors with Liz Farr | CPA Trendlines Streaming Network In The Disruptors , Marquis explains why putting AI to work requires more than a powerful model — and why the profession’s human responsibilities remain central to its future. “They’re not simply knowledge industries, they're actually workflow industries,” he says of audit and accounting. Following those workflows consistently is how professionals deliver work that clients, regulators, and capital markets can rely on. AI creates an opportunity to redesign that work, “and not just do it faster, but also do it differently and do it better.”

October 10, 202612 min

The Quiet Fear Behind Accounting’s Growing Divide | Accounting Voices

Leaders face growing questions about influence, identity, and professional relevance. Accounting Voices With Rob Brown An accounting firm can keep its clients, meet its deadlines, and remain profitable while the people inside it quietly wonder whether they still belong in its future. As technology, ownership models, and expectations reshape the profession, Accounting Voices examines the questions that software demonstrations and strategic plans often leave unanswered: Who gets to make decisions? Whose expertise still carries weight? And what happens when the career someone works toward becomes a career they no longer want? MORE Accounting Voices with Rob Brown The episode presents accounting’s growing divide as a realignment of power, relevance, and leadership. For firm leaders and professionals preparing to lead, understanding that realignment means looking beneath the most visible changes.

October 9, 202637 min

Your Next Hire Might Not Be an Accountant | It's Not Just the Numbers

An AI engineer can help accounting teams tackle bottlenecks, streamline workflows, and build capacity. It's Not Just the Numbers With Penny Breslin and Damien Greathead For CPA Trendlines For years, accounting firm owners have treated the "next hire" question as a simple one: bring on another accountant. However, that assumption is starting to cost firms real time and money. In this recent case study, MoneyPenny, LLC shares what happened when their newest hire wasn't an accountant at all. She was a recent graduate with a degree in AI, and within her first weeks, she had built a tool that solved a problem the whole team had been living with for years. MORE Penny Breslin and Damien Greathead | MORE Advisory & Consulting JOIN From Scorekeeper to Strategist CAS Workshop | BUY "It's Not Just the Numbers" She graduated in the first AI cohort to come through her university and joined the firm knowing nothing about accounting. What she did know was how to watch a process and ask why it worked the way it did.

October 8, 202653 min

Hannah Hood and Joey Kinney: Your Accounting Career Starts Before Your First Job Offer | Accounting Conversations

Practical experience, thoughtful questions, and strong communication help students build careers that reach beyond the classroom. Accounting Conversations With Chayton Farlee Center for Accounting Transformation A perfect GPA can open a door. It cannot explain a client’s financial story, replace practical experience, or demonstrate how someone responds when there is no answer key. For accounting students eager to distinguish themselves, that difference matters. On Accounting Conversations , host Chayton Farlee welcomes Hannah Hood and Joey Kinney, co-hosts of The Young CPA Success Show , for a candid discussion about preparing for an accounting career. Drawing on their work in virtual CFO services with Summit Virtual CFO by Anders, the guests challenge students to look beyond familiar recruiting paths and consider what makes an accountant valuable to the people they serve. MORE Center for Accounting Transformation | MORE CPA Trendlines Streaming Network Their advice starts with a seemingly modest assignment: Get close to the books. Students may picture their future in consulting, financial leadership, audit, or tax. Hood and Kinney argue that those ambitions make understanding everyday accounting more essential.

October 7, 202612 min

Loyalty Tax: Accounting's Lose-Lose Incentive System | Big 4 Transparency

Employees lose stability and firms lose money through churn Big 4 Transparency By Dominic Piscopo, CPA For CPA Trendlines A growing body of compensation data suggests that accounting firms may be unintentionally penalizing their most loyal employees. In a recent solo episode of the Big 4 Transparency, founder Dominic Piscopo unpacks what he calls the “loyalty tax” — the pay gap between internally promoted employees and externally hired peers performing the same role. Drawing on 2024–2025 compensation data from thousands of U.S. and Canadian professionals, Piscopo outlines how this structural imbalance is reshaping career incentives across the profession. MORE Dominic Piscopo | MORE Private Equity | MORE Pay & Compensation The loyalty tax, as defined in the episode, is the percentage difference in pay where externally hired employees earn more than internally promoted employees at the same level. According to the data, that gap is far from trivial. In the U.S., first-year senior associates hired externally earn roughly 6.3% more than internally promoted seniors, while first-year managers see an 8.9% premium. Even at the senior manager level, the gap persists. Canadian data shows a similar pattern, with especially pronounced spreads at the senior and senior manager levels. The disparity is even more striking in consulting and advisory roles.

October 6, 20261 hr 5 min

Karen Reyburn: Use Your Creativity as a Competitive Advantage | The Disruptors

Curiosity, problem-solving, and creative habits help strengthen marketing, improve client experiences, and bring more humanity to an AI-driven profession. The Disruptors With Liz Farr For CPA Trendlines Karen Reyburn, managing director of We Are PF and author of the new book Accountants, You Are Creative , wants accountants to embrace their innate creativity. Reyburn's first book, The Accountant Marketer , laid out the building blocks of marketing for accounting firms based on what worked for the firms that she and PF worked with. She noticed that just having a playbook and structure for marketing wasn’t enough. “The accountants who were seeing the greatest success, the greatest transformation for themselves and their clients, were the ones that either knew that they were creative human beings, they knew they had creativity within them, or at least they were open and curious about what that looked like, and willing to try,” she explains. MORE Disruptors with Liz Farr | CPA Trendlines Streaming Network As she watched AI’s rapid advancements over the last few months, she nearly shelved the manuscript. “Is this even relevant anymore? With all this stuff about AI, does anyone care about this mindset of creativity?” she wondered. But as she thought about AI and talked to accountants, she realized she was seeing a “both, and” moment. “You're seeing leaning into AI to help you with tasks and repetition, and you're seeing people want more humanity, more opportunity to trust you, more case studies, more in-person events,” she explains.

October 3, 202611 min

Would You Fire Your Firm as a Client? | Accounting Voices

Technology, consolidation, and changing expectations expose weaknesses in business strategies. Accounting Voices With Rob Brown Accountants help clients plan for growth, manage risk, and prepare for uncertainty. But what happens when they turn that same scrutiny on their own firms? The answers may be uncomfortable. In this episode of Accounting Voices , reflections from 48 interviews conducted in late 2025 reveal a recurring concern: The profession’s ability to solve other people’s business problems does not always translate into a willingness to confront its own. MORE Accounting Voices with Rob Brown The discussion centers on a deceptively simple question: What changes your thinking about accounting? Across conversations with firm leaders, technology specialists, coaches, consultants, and others, familiar assumptions begin to unravel — about who should run a firm, what makes advisory services valuable, and how much protection technical expertise actually provides. One challenge, attributed in the episode to leadership and organizational development specialist Alice Gray Harrison, brings the issue into sharp focus: If your firm were your client, would you fire yourself for lacking a five-year strategic plan? It is a question that makes the episode less a reflection on the past than a test of what leaders are willing to change now.

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