CPA Trendlines Podcasts

Less legacy infrastructure could mean faster adoption and outsized opportunity.Accounting ARCWith Liz Mason, Byron Patrick, and Donny ShimamotoCenter for Accounting TransformationIn their New Year’s episode, the hosts of Accounting ARC do something many industry commentators avoid: they revisit last year’s predictions, mark what proved accurate, and adjust what did not. Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA — founder and managing director of IntrapriseTechKnowlogies and founder and inspiration architect of the Center for Accounting Transformation— joins Liz Mason, CPA, CEO and founder of High Rock Accounting, and Byron Patrick, CPA.CITP, CGMA, senior product manager for Karbon, and co-founder and educator for TB Academy, to grade last year's predictions and discuss what's to come in 2026.  MORE Accounting ARC: Downgraded: What the DOE Said About Accounting | Savage: Using Your License as a Megaphone |  Baker: Interpreting Pricing Psychology | Don’t Get Fired by Your Own Automation | What Amazon Doesn't Tell You | Royalties, Residuals, and Reality Checks | ARC-SLC | Free Speech Is a Right; Respect Is a Responsibility | Cash Bags, Casinos & Audits: How First Jobs Shape Us | Gen Z Redefines Careers | Bootleggers, Baptitsts & CPAs: Rethinking Licensure The episode blends reflective scorekeeping with forward-looking speculation, centering on three forces that continue to reshape accounting: alternative licensure pathways, the pace of AI adoption, and the role of culture in firm competitiveness.

Firms that treat communication as strategy—not admin—move faster, scale smarter, and keep trust intact.MOVE Like ThisWith Bonnie Buol RuszczykFor CPA TrendlinesOn this episode of MOVE Like This, host Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk explores a deceptively simple question with Alice Grey Harrison, founder of AGH Consulting: Why do so many firm transformations stall—not because of strategy, but because of communication?With more than 30 years of experience in strategic communications and change management within the accounting profession, Harrison has seen firms navigate mergers, private equity investments, leadership transitions, system implementations, and cultural shifts.The difference between momentum and misery, she argues, is rarely technical. It’s human. MORE MOVE Her core insight is that culture becomes a growth engine only when people understand how their work connects to the firm’s mission, vision, and values. That clarity unlocks what she calls “discretionary energy”—the extra effort people put in when they believe in the firm's direction.

SALY isn’t useless—but it shouldn’t be lazy.The DisruptorsWith Liz FarrAudit has spent decades digitizing the past—paper binders moved to the cloud, workflows wrapped in prettier software, and manual testing dressed up as “innovation.” According to Jin Chang, that’s not transformation. It’s inertia.Chang knows because he lived it.Early in his career as an auditor, he found himself doing exactly what generations before him had done: matching evidence to samples, racing against the clock, and wondering why a four-year degree was being spent on work that machines should have mastered long ago. MORE STREAMING: Cannon: Busy Season is Self-Inflicted | Carroll: When One Person Can Break the Firm |  Rampe: Build a Roadmap Even When the Road's Not There | Chang: Killing SALY, One Agent at a Time | Vanover: 5-Star Firms Don't Bill by the Hour | Kless: Profit Is a Result. Flourishing Is the Purpose | Whitman: Build Culture on 'Progress,' Not Change | Shein: No PE? No M&A? No Problem | Hood and Weber: Time to RISE | Proctor: Turn Dumb Ideas into Brilliant Solutions | Carter-Gray: How 1 Poor Review Strengthened the Firm | Hartman: Upwork to “40 Under 40” in 3 Years | “Why aren’t computers doing this better and faster?” he remembers thinking.That question became the seed for Fieldguide—the audit platform Chang says he wished he’d had, powered by AI agents designed to work alongside auditors rather than replace them.

New repayment rules and borrowing caps are forcing a rethink of long-term planning.By Rory Henry CFP®, BFA™For CPA TrendlinesStudent loan debt has quietly outgrown its stereotype.What was once viewed as a challenge for early-career professionals is now showing up in family balance sheets, tax returns, and retirement plans. Parents nearing retirement—and retirees themselves—are increasingly carrying education debt, often on behalf of their children. For CPAs and financial advisors, student loans are no longer a niche planning issue. They’re a multigenerational one. MORE Rory Henry and The Holistic Guide to Wealth Management BUY the Holistic Guide to Wealth Management With more than $1.8 trillion in federal student loan debt spread across 42.5 million borrowers, the scale alone demands attention. But it’s the shifting who—not just the how much—that makes this moment critical for advisors.That shift is the focus of this episode of Holistic Guide to Wealth Management, featuring Alex Bottom, CEO of Finology, and Ryan Galiotto, CFP®, CSLP®, founder of the Student Loan Help Network. Their conversation unpacks how legislation, demographics, and delayed life milestones are reshaping student loan planning—and why advisors can’t afford to sit this one out.

CAS success isn’t accidental. It’s engineered.It's Not Just the NumbersWith Penny Breslin and Damien GreatheadFor CPA TrendlinesClient Advisory Services (CAS) continue to outperform every other service line in accounting. But firms that treat CAS as “enhanced bookkeeping” quickly hit a ceiling. The firms that scale profitably make harder—and smarter—choices: who they serve, how they staff, how they price, and how they explain their value in a world obsessed with automation. MORE Penny Breslin and Damien Greathead | MORE Advisory & Consulting | BUY "It's Not Just the Numbers" In this episode of It’s Not Just the Numbers, co-hosts Penny Breslin and Damien Greathead get refreshingly practical about what actually drives CAS success. Their message is clear: strong CAS practices are built intentionally, not incrementally.One question cuts straight to the tension many firm owners feel: Should teams see profitability numbers?Breslin and Greathead don’t argue for radical openness—or secrecy. Instead, they advocate for profit literacy.Teams don’t need to know margins by client. They do need to understand three things...

Automation deletes tasks, then dares accountants to create new value on purpose.Accounting VoicesWith Rob BrownArtificial intelligence is no longer a concept that accountants debate in panels or pilot projects. It is actively reshaping how firms hire, train, and define value.In this episode of Accounting Voices, host Rob Brown delivers a blunt assessment of what many professionals are already sensing, but few are saying out loud: AI is not coming for your job. It is coming for what your job does. MORE Accounting Influencers with Rob Brown That distinction changes everything.Brown frames the moment as an AI talent shock—a structural shift that is quietly altering career paths across public accounting, corporate finance, and advisory work. This is not about fearmongering or futurism. It is about reality on the ground.

Stop billing. Start thrilling.Gear Up for Growth With Jean CaragherFor CPA Trendlines In a re-energizing episode of Gear Up for Growth, Paul Dunn makes the case that the billable hour isn’t just outdated—it’s holding firms back. The four-time TEDx speaker and cofounder of B1G1 challenges accounting leaders to rethink how success is measured and to lead with purpose, not punch clocks.  Gear Up for Growth spotlights the best strategies for smart and efficient growth in today's competitive landscape. More Gear Up for Growth here | More Jean Caragher here | Get her best-selling handbook, The 90-Day Marketing Plan for CPA Firms, here | More CPA Trendlines videos and podcasts here Talking with host Jean Caragher, Dunn reframes the profession’s obsession with time as a distraction from what clients actually value. “It’s not about the inputs,” he says. “It’s about the outcomes.” When firms anchor their work to results—and to the human impact behind those results—growth follows naturally.More than two decades after coauthoring "The Firm of the Future," Dunn remains a vocal critic of six-minute increments. While some firms are inching toward value pricing and advisory-led models, he argues the real shift requires courage. Measuring work by time, he notes, is “the opposite of human flourishing.” Measuring by impact, on the other hand, elevates both clients and teams.Originally published May 2025

Break down the new law, the unanswered questions, and why waiting for certainty is a strategic mistake.Big 4 TransparencyBy Dominic Piscopo, CPAFor CPA TrendlinesWhat does it take to turn dense tax law into business wins? In this episode of the Big 4 Transparency, host Dominic Piscopo sits down with Mark Gallegos, tax partner at Porte Brown, to explore how a self-described “tax geek” became an eminence engine by teaching, writing, and speaking across the country while translating the new HR1 legislation into clear moves for clients.  MORE Dominic Piscopo | MORE Private Equity | MORE Pay & Compensation Gallegos serves on the AICPA Strategic Tax Reform Advisory Group (“strike force”), where volunteer experts parse bills, surface practitioner pain points, and help shape the letters and asks that go to Treasury, IRS, and Capitol Hill. That inside track, pressure-testing interpretations with national peers, feeds his day job: delivering 50,000-foot explanations that prompt the most valuable question in professional services: “What should we do next?” Gallegos and Piscopo dive into HR1’s planning levers. 

Exhaustion, chaos, and missed lives are the result of design choices—not destiny.The DisruptorsWith Liz FarrBrenda Cannon, co-founder of Cannon and Associates, has been pioneering a creative approach for taming tax season madness: every return is scheduled like an appointment. “We know how long it takes us to prepare a tax return. Why could we not control each week and the number of tax returns we prepare each week?” she recalls thinking after hearing Jason Staats introduce the concept on a podcast in 2022.   MORE STREAMING: Carroll: When One Person Can Break the Firm |  Rampe: Build a Roadmap Even When the Road's Not There | Chang: Killing SALY, One Agent at a Time | Vanover: 5-Star Firms Don't Bill by the Hour | Kless: Profit Is a Result. Flourishing Is the Purpose | Whitman: Build Culture on 'Progress,' Not Change | Shein: No PE? No M&A? No Problem | Hood and Weber: Time to RISE | Proctor: Turn Dumb Ideas into Brilliant Solutions | Carter-Gray: How 1 Poor Review Strengthened the Firm | Hartman: Upwork to “40 Under 40” in 3 Years Over the last three tax seasons, Cannon and her team, which includes her husband and co-founder, Randy Cannon, have been refining the process. Clients choose a date on a calendar on which they will deliver their documents to her office, with the understanding that their return will be ready three weeks after that date.  

Charitable gift financing has been IRS-validated for decades, yet many still avoid it.The Concierge CPAWith Jackie MeyerFor CPA TrendlinesIn this episode of the Concierge CPA podcast, host Dr. Jackie Meyer, CPA, puts a spotlight on a charitable tax strategy that sounds suspiciously modern — yet has been sitting in the tax code since 1978.The strategy is called charitable gift financing, and, according to Meyer’s guest, Aleksander Dyo, founder and managing director of Wealth Excel, it remains largely invisible to many accountants despite decades of IRS validation.More Jackie MeyerDyo frames the idea with a blunt comparison: Americans finance homes, cars, equipment — even vacations. So why not charitable giving?Charitable gift financing allows high-income taxpayers to make significant philanthropic contributions by combining personal funds with borrowed capital, while claiming a charitable deduction for the full amount transferred to charity in the year of the gift.This isn’t a loophole or a creative interpretation, Dyo says. It’s rooted in long-standing IRS guidance on the deductibility of charitable contributions made with borrowed funds, provided the funds are transferred to the charity in the same tax year.In practice, that timing is everything.