The Disruptors with Liz Farr

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Corey Schmidt's Take-Aways

Offer your staff different paths to being successful.

Pinpoint the talents you have on your staff, and nurture those special skills.

Carve out time for people to work on those skills, not just the backlog.

Challenge your people earlier in their careers so they have three years of experience rather than one year repeated three times.

Create roles for the kinds of skills your people have.

A forgotten metric is client happiness. If we provide a service that makes them feel good about what they’re getting, they’re going to be willing to pay more and will stick around much longer.

Firms should own who they are. A firm with a hard-driving culture that values working long hours should seek out team members who like that kind of work culture.

Think about where you want to be in five years, and start hiring people who fit that kind of work culture. Build in the people, processes and systems around that end goal.

Stop doing what you did last year. Start with a blank slate. Following SALY is easier than figuring out how to do things differently. This requires carving out the time for meaningful planning.

Challenge everyone on the audit team to come to the planning meeting with ideas for doing things differently, whether that’s using data or being efficient.

Start rewarding the behaviors that are in line with the vision of the firm you want five or ten years in the future.

Partners with high billable hours send the message to younger people that the way to get ahead in a firm is to do that, even if those same partners also talk about building a flexible data-driven culture.

Let people pick their own career paths that make sense for them and for the firm.

The need for a historical financial statement will be gone sooner rather than later.

Firms need to adapt to the needs of the stakeholders.

Banks only care about a few key metrics on the financials, so providing those on a real-time basis rather than an entire set of financials three or four months after year-end may be more useful.

About Corey Schmidt

Corey Schmidt, CPA, Manager of Audit Innovation, joined ACCOUNTability Plus, LLC with a decade of diverse public accounting experience, focused on providing audit and assurance services to clients in a variety of industries. He is dedicated to finding provocative and inventive ways to help move accounting firms and A&A practices into the future. Corey relies on his analytical abilities to assist his clients in gaining a thorough understanding of their financial situation and how certain decisions will impact their organization. He is passionate about working with all levels of the organization to provide accurate financial data and improve future results. Outside work, Corey likes to golf, fish, travel, and spend time with his family.

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05.19.25 Hedge of Protection