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About Patricia Werhane: https://giesbusiness.illinois.edu/profile/patricia-werhaneArticle About Patricia Werhane: https://giesbusiness.illinois.edu/news/2019/10/01/werhane-tackles-tough-ethical-issues-for-gies-studentsFULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch: (00:05)Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. We are here for you today with episode 65 of our series. As we've addressed in many recent episodes, the Coronavirus has affected various aspects of accounting and finance. Today you will hear Adam speak with Patricia Werhane and adjunct professor at the University of Illinois, Gies College of Business and a fellow for the Center of Professional Responsibility in business and society. Patricia is also a co-producer of an Emmy award winning documentary television series in the Chicago area titled Big Questions. In this episode she talks about the ethics of commerce during these difficult business times. Let's head over and listen to their conversation now.  Adam: (00:53)So today in the podcast we have Patricia Werhane with us. Patricia, thanks so much for coming.  Patricia: (00:57)Thank you for having me.  Adam: (00:59)Now, Patricia, you've been speaking lately about ethical dilemmas facing the global economy in light of the pandemic that we are in. So I was hoping you can share some of those insights with us today.  Patricia: (01:08)Let me start by posing the question and then I want to give a couple of quotes from people who support that. So the real question I think we're facing right now as you know, how should we balance public health with the pandemic and social isolation with the financial health where massive unemployment will be economically disastrous? In fact, it already is. So is this an either or and we see this in the news all the time or is there a middle path? Let me give you two contrasting viewpoints. The first is from a Lieutenant Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, and he argues that Americans should go back to work even if that causes the deaths of their grandparents who will willingly sacrifice their lives for the sake of economic growth. Well, I know some grandparents who may be not quite so willing, but we'll see. Now on the other side is Governor Cuomo from New York, and you know, of course who he is. He says, given the choice between economic prosperity and the preservation of human life, every life is worth saving at whatever costs to the economy. Now you can see these two balancing and contrasting views and we hear about them in the news all the time and we hear our governors and our presidents going back and forth about this and the center for disease control. We're just caught up in this dilemma, so I want us to think about the dilemma and then I'm going to make some comments about it and then we'll come to some sort of resolution. I hope.  Adam: (02:45)I was wondering if you could tackle the local identity versus the inner inactivity and the dependence on global commerce issue.  Patricia: (02:51)This one of the important things to think about in this dilemma, and you all know this, I'm sure and that is we live in this global world, although we focus locally on the people who are ill and some of them are our relatives and our friends,O f course. We are globally independent economically. There's an enormous interconnectivity in goods and services. For example, most of you are on your iPads or your cell phones or your computers. All of those are made with parts from many countries of the world. And I don't recommend taking them apart and looking whichI have done with an old cell phone and you can't tell where the parts are from actually. They're not all marked. But Dell computer for example, says their all their computers are made from parts from 22 countries. So you can see this interconnectivity and look at your clothes. I'm wearing clothes from Vietnam, Bangladesh, Korea, and Italy. I won't describe which ones. I don't have one single thing on me that is made in the United States. Over 20% of our food is imported. I hadn't realized that. The ventilators and the respirators and the other health care equipment we desperately need are made in parts from all over the world. Now this means that we have to think very carefully about this challenge. And as Martin Luther King actually said, some in the 1960s, if you can imagine, he says, we live in an inescapable network of mutuality. And that's that network in which this pandemic is, you'll remember that we all thought it was a China problem, but of course as we know it's a global problem. It's not just China.  Adam: (04:36)Then what's your theory on the perspective we should take on this issue?  Patricia: (04:40)How? How should we think about it? I'm a, I'm a business ethicists. I'm a professional ethicists. I think about these problems all the time. So I'm going to present us with kind of three perspectives from an ethical point of view that will help us think through this problem that I've created for us and actually I haven't created. It's been created and I'm just talking about it. The first is obviously we all know about this is basic human rights. In the United States, we have a bill of rights, but in 1948, the United Nations developed the universal declaration of human rights and everyone, every member country is supposed to sign onto it. Not actually they do sign onto it, but many of them forget after they sign on that they actually are supposed to enforce these rights. But anyway, the basic rights are obvious, the right to life, but also the right to survival. The right to survival means I have a right to work, to do whatever I can to survive. And then I have the basic freedoms, freedom to speech, freedom of movement, freedom of religion, or not, freedom to worship or not, freedom to work or freedom not to work actually, and many other rights. Actually United nations is very nice and said, we have a right to a vacation, but of course I love that, but I'm not many people honor that. Right. Actually. And then interestingly, because many of you are in business and commerce, in 2015, the United nations developed a protocol, a voluntary obviously for businesses arguing that the role of business is to respect, protect and remedy abuses of human rights wherever they are in operation, wherever they're operating. I think that's very interesting. It means that organizations as well as individuals have basic rights, but they also, we have obligations to each other. One of those obligations is to respect the dignity of every single human being. Sometimes, of course we don't. The second principle to think about is fairness. There are endless, endless literatures on fairness. I won't inflict on you, but one of the basic ones is to treat every person as an equal. Now that's the principle underlining delivery of healthcare. We don't have enough of anything. We don't have enough ventilators. We don't have enough respirators. We don't even have enough room in our emergency rooms to deliver healthcare to every person who needs it. So in the healthcare thinking, they do triage and you probably all know that that is, they take the, if you think about the people who are coming in, t...

Contact Rohit Thakkar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carohitthakkar/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:Mitch: (00:00)Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host Mitch Roshong. And today we're going to hear about the popular topic of business partnering. Adam spoke with Rohit Thakkar, finance business partner at Adobe to define the role of a business partner and explain how you can guide the business with strategic decisions. So now let's head over and listen to the conversation.  Adam: (00:35)So Rohit, how has the business partner's role become a navigator or copilot for finance in the organization?  Rohit: (00:43)Yeah, it's a great question. So think about it this way, the traditional roles within finance are changing and evolving and one such role is that of an FP&A which is evolving, you know, into a finance business partner profile as well, from just a traditional FP&A a partner who was supposed to, you know, do reporting for the business. Now we are looked upon and rightly so should be the trusted partner for various business organizations that we support to succeed in this profile I'm absolutely convinced of being a friend. Now as they say a friend is not the one who is, you know, has been the longest with you, but who can be relied upon to keep various, you know, various teams grounded in expectations, show the true and fair picture and who can manage to tell the right business story and bring the right business conversation into context. Navigated by definition. You know, if you go to a dictionary you will find the definition itself by means that who can direct the course of the ship by using various instruments and devices. Now in a corporate setup, that role, the ship becomes a corporate, the corporate becomes the ship. The route is the direction we are heading to and finding ways, on where we want to reach that instrument and devices are, you know, the final business plans and the financial plans that we are talking about. And we develop through the course of, you know, our journey into the financial planning. Now a critical role is that, you know, it entails a lot of work in joining various dots within the organization. I'll give you an example here, we undergo extensive process of planning exercise that requires us to understand the overall market opportunity. It actually starts with, you know, understanding that time of the market. So, you know, time is nothing but total available market. So we need to understand as finance business partner, what our overall market opportunity is, you know, we need to have an extensive analysis and understanding around how much penetration do we have in those markets. Where do we stand?Where do we want to go? What kind of a product fit that we have in all those markets? What are customers? What kind of needs that we are trying to address with our products? What is our competitive landscape? Now that's where the actual financial planning activity should start. From finance business partnership point of view. Now it's easiest said in like two or three sentences, but it really requires a lot of work, you know, do analysiskind of get into the surveys and you know, get the survey results, interpret those surveys. And you know, I tried to create customer segmentation for your own products within the organization. So the second thing, you know in this product, you know in this roadmap is you know, understanding about the product roadmap is very important. It's essential for the business partner to understand the vision of the product managers and the business unit. It is important at this time also to factor in what it will take to realize the product goals during thisexercise of what we call you know the planning exercise or the partnership. It becomes important as next logical step to understand and work upon our pricing and packaging. That is where a close coordination is required.= with another dot in the matrix organization like say, Adobe, to work very closely with the product marketing management teams. We chart out our plans aroundt how much unit, how much do we want to drive, how much are we going to generate and achieve those targets R.ealistically.We need to chalk out plans around how we want to market the product. Suppose, you want to grow a product by say 40% in Iran. Now how many units should expect to sell? What kind of efforts would be required by say, you know, various other teams like web sales teams.go to market team, phone teams, partnership teams, that we will need to materialize and achieve those targets? Now joining these dots across organization and ensuring that various parts of organization understand their financial contribution responsibilities and in turn leadership signing off, giving them a priority to execute two plans is the most critical role as a finance business partner.  Adam: (05:37)So you've really kind of shown how finance becomes that business partner to the whole business, how it connects to each little section and that kind of goes to guiding the whole business. So what does that finance business partner's role when it comes to developing something like KPIs?  Rohit: (05:54)Yeah, it's a fantastic question. You know, let me kind of, you know, define what actually the KPI is. You know, KPIs by definition are those indicators that organizations should choose very wisely to reflect the actual performance. And they should be forward-looking. Theyshould be something that should be measurable, right? So, you know, it's super important for us to not just get bogged down by the financial KPIs, but to understand the relevance and the need of business KPIs. So business KPIs ideally should be forward-looking, especially in a matrix organization, you know, like, like Adobe. We tend to, you know, drive over planning activities by data key metrics, DCI. So what that stands for and it, you know, you can find that in six Sigma literature, but wedefinitely practice that is who's going to be the driver? Who is going to be there approver? Who's going to be the contributor? and do we need to keep informed when it comes to, you know, informing the reserves? So it becomes super important for us in matrix organization to ensure that we are able to derive responsibility assignment metrics as well from the Nike exercise. Now rule of finance is to sit across the table, bring folks from all across the organization and work to create those KPIs, to understand the role for themselves in setting up those business KPIs. Now we cannot just set up the financial  KPIs and say that, you know, we can't be the monitor and say that, okay, go get the results for us. We need to be super practical and understand what kind of business KPIs we need to drive to get to our financial KPIs. Financial KPIs, so there's a circular reference if you have to, you know, think about it this way. There is a circular reference between financial KPIs and business KPIs. At one end you have financial KPIs, which are kind of a derivative of the business KPIs and on the other end, you know, think about that financial KPIs should be influencing your business KPIs as well. So I'll give you an example on one of the key financial forward-looking metrics that we definitely look for in the subscription business. That's the  ARR, theannualized recurring revenue. That's considered to be much more forward looking compared to the revenue or the top line. Now the role of finance business partner actually goes beyond setting up this financial KPI. Think about it this way, it is kind of similar to ...

IMA's Website: https://www.imanet.org/Coronavirus Update from IMA: https://www.imanet.org/about-ima/jeff-thomson-on-the-coronavirus

International Management Accounting Day: https://www.imanet.org/about-ima/international-management-accounting-dayIMA's website: https://www.imanet.org/About IMA: https://www.imanet.org/about-imaFULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:05)Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world and happy international management accounting day. Every year. On May 6th,, IMA celebrates this global day of recognition to commemorate the important role management accountants play within their organizations to help bring more light. To this day, our cohost Rouba Zeidan spoke with IMA's President and CEO Jeff Thompson. Let's listen to what Jeff had to say about today and how the management accountant is even more vital during today's uncertain business environment.  Rouba: (00:43)So today IMA Institute of management accountants celebrates international management accounting day. This is a global day, which recognizes and commemorates the important role that management accountants play within the organization. What does this day really mean to you?  Jeff: (00:59)Well, the day it means quite a lot to me. from a relative perspective is up in my top three or four or five days. You know, my wedding anniversary probably, I have to say for the record goes up above. The day I earned my CMA is way, way up there. So way, way up there all seriousness, is international management accounting day because it tells me and it tells us that we've arrived as a community, we've arrived as a profession. We make a difference. We make a difference in people's lives, we make a difference in, organizational capability, as not only stewards of the business, but value creators of the business. And as we've seen through, the events of the Corona virus global pandemic, we make a difference for society, capital markets and you know, management accounting. I'm still in some markets it's not totally understood that accounting is that how, why do we call it management accounting? But the fact that we have an international management accounting day set tells me that we have long arrived as a profession that makes a difference and does a great things for individuals, organizations and society at large.  Rouba: (02:31)Excellent. So since its inception in 1919, so that's just about a hundred years ago. Ima's been actively supporting the evolution of the profession through thought leadership, bridging the skills gap and building a strong network around the world. But what is the core role the organization is really played in bridging the transition into this digital age that we're currently experiencing?  Jeff: (02:55)Well, number one, we're very, very proud to have just turned one hundred years, less than a year ago. So we call it 100 years and counting. But we're very, very proud of our first hundred years on the legacy that we've built contributions, service to society. But we're also very, very excited about the path forward. First and foremost, I would say that IMA has always stood for ethics and when you think about ethics and financial reporting, think about, ethics and, budgets and forecast, strategic plans and all the things that creative accountants do. Ethics, we've always stood tall on ethics. I've had an ethics committee for decades. We've had a, we've had a statement on ethical professional practice for decades. We've have educational programs and trainings, for decades and that has been one common denominator that has propelled us first 100 years.  Rouba: (04:05)Beyond having, I mean, this is a favorite part for me beyond having some of the coolest accounting figures in the world. So the likes of Robert Plant of Led Zepplin, Mick Jagger of the rolling stones and Janet Jackson who studied accounting in college. I mean is management accounting still an in demand profession in the face of automation and the likelihood of hundreds of thousands of jobs being annihilated from existence in the next decade.  Jeff: (04:31)There's a lot of risk and opportunity for our great profession of accounting and management accounting. I tend to be the optimist, but I'm only the optimist if we have a sense of urgency and a call to action. And here's what I mean. Accounting is actually a cool profession. We do very, very interesting, type of work. Some of it is could be routine and more mundane, sometimes, putting counts together, the financial reports and transactions. Sometimes that could be mundane. But, we also, do some really, really interesting work in data analytics, risk management, in technology. You know, the CFO team over time has evolved from being strictly in the accounting lane, the accounting zone of accounting for the past. But over time they've evolved to not only accounting but an interdisciplinary approach to the business. Talking about the CFO team, not just accounting, but finance, not just accounting and finance, but add operations add technology, add strategy. So today's accountant, today's CFO has to know something about all of those domains to create value across the supply chain. And so that requires not just an interdisciplinary approach to the business on how value is generated, but up-scaling.if we upscale, in data analytics, in data visualization, in strategic management, we will continue to have a relevant and influential profession.  Rouba: (06:15)So across every sector and industry around the world, CFOs, controllers, budget analysts and accounting managers use financial data to inform organizational strategy and value in the face of obviously intense competition, uncertain global economic conditions and disruptive technologies. But when you contrast this with the current global pandemic, which is unprecedented, and it's set to bring forth one of the worst and most challenging economic outcomes since the 1930s, what value can the profession continue to create, if at all?  Jeff: (06:48)Well, I think this is an opportunity actually, and a challenge, for the CFO, the CFO team to shine. This is happening at Ima with our CFO, Doreen Remmen, happening around the world. You know, in times of stress and disruption and grave grave challenges, whether it's a world health pandemic that started out as an outbreak, then became an epidemic and then a global pandemic that shut down essentially has shut down the world in many, many ways, very tragically. That of course that has dire and direct economic implications. The opportunity for the CFO, CFOs around the world are rising to is, you know, we rely on our CFO and the CFO team to enable and create strong balance sheets, strong working capital, liquidity options, sources and strong liquidity in general. You know, their day to day work, which sometimes doesn't get recognized, creating budgets and a cash position and sound investments and a pathway to the future. Sometimes that day to day work is not necessarily recognized, but in a global pandemic where you have to rely on your balance sheet, your cash position to, see you through the rough spots so that you come out of it stronger. CFOs typically have direct or indirect responsibility today or operations strategy, even human resources. So you think about, all that we can and should be...

CyberCecurity, LLC: https://www.cybercecurity.com/Video Training by Ray and Mitch: https://www.cybercecurity.com/media-and-speaking/ Mitch's Blog:  https://cybercecurity-mitch-tanenbaum-blog.com/ & https://mtanenbaum.us/ Contact Ray Hutchins: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hutchins/ Contact Mitch Tanenbaum: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitch-tanenbaum-2589663/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:05)Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. Cybersecurity is something that truly affects management accountants, but really all individuals and firms. So Mitch spoke with Ray Hutchins and Mitch Tannenbaum about what cybersecurity really means and how to acquire the appropriate knowledge to be of great value to your organization. To hear why you need to understand cybersecurity. Keep listening as we head over to their conversation now.  Mitch R.: (00:40)All right, so at a high level, how does cyber security really impact the finance department of an organization? You know, why does this stuff really matter?  Ray: (00:50)Well, from Mitch and my perspective, of course we're cybersecurity guys and we're also business professionals. So we've been in business all of our  life  we are a  couple of boomers. We've got a lot of experience and we know that and we deal with a lot of companies. Where the, all the cybersecurity, the risk questions, the risk questions are dealt with and delegated to many times. The finance department, finance takes control in a lot of organizations. They haven't spent a lot of time setting up their internal, authority around, well, who's gonna be responsible for the risk and compliance for the organization? Who's going to be responsible for cybersecurity and privacy. And so in a lot of organizations that falls naturally right onto the finance department and specifically the CFO. that's been a problem we've dealt with in the past many times in an organization saying really the CFO shouldn't be the one in charge of all of this. You know, there definitely play a role. Of course they're always important on it, but there's, there's more people need to be involved in this, but that's the nature of the beast. The finance department is involved, they pay for it, they're accounting for it, and therefore they need to understand something about it so that they can participate in an intelligent level in conversations around this risk category.  Mitch T.: (02:30)Let me add something to that. Every organization has a chief risk officer. Now, in many organizations, that person doesn't have that title. But in every organization there is, somebody is responsible for that. Whether that's the CEO, the COO, or more often the CFO. If we assume that cybersecurity is a business risk that needs to be mitigated, just like every other business risk. And if we assume that the CFO, is the chief risk officer, in fact, then it makes perfect sense that the CFO and the finance team needs to understand cyber risk to be able to lead the conversation. They don't need to be the experts, but they need to understand how that ties to business risk.  Mitch R.: (03:19)So these are all really great points and I really like the idea of, you know, grouping this together as a true business problem. It's not an it problem. And if the CFO is going to act as this chief risk officer, as you said, really manage, you know, the risk initiatives here. What specific type of information do you think the CFO or their finance team needs to acquire in order to effectively lead this risk mitigation and implement these cybersecurity procedures for their organization?  Ray: (03:53)Good question. And it brings up something, you know, both Mitch and I have, my Mitch, my partner Mitch as opposed to you, Mitch. But, both Mitch and I have of course spoken at multiple IMA meetings at this time and we're familiar with IMA as an organization, as something that we find out there in the IMA organization. You've got a lot of executives and transition from one company to another and within they're moving up in their career and whatnot. And something that I have found to be the case is when I'm talking to these people out there is that, and I make the point that as a financial services professional, no matter what your rank, no matter what your position within the organization you can make yourself much more valuable to the organization if you have a business grasp of cybersecurity and privacy and is in business implications and you can speak the language, you've got some jargon, not technical jargon, just general jargon about it. Perhaps knowing some of the regulatory environment, knowing some of the regulations and the standards that affect all businesses, kind of understanding that and being able to engage on that companies have a terrible shortage of anybody who can talk the talk of cybersecurity and privacy. So if you can demonstrate any level of competency, any level, well that changes your value proposition within the company.  Mitch T.: (05:27)So I would say that, just like any other risk problem, you want to create a governance risk and compliance framework, a GRC framework. And the good news is the federal government and the guys of the department of commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology has created a great governance framework, which is the NIST cybersecurity framework. And as of this past January, it's partnered the NIST privacy framework. These are governance frameworks, high level governance frameworks that every organization needs to be looking at. And I will tell you, and we do a lot of work with this, nobody is a hundred percent when it comes to these frameworks, but the framework provides a set of guidance for organizations big and small. So if you go look at policies for example, and it ask questions about policies, well a small organization is gonna need a different set of policies than a big organization, an organization that operates in multiple States and multiple countries might need different policies than  one that doesn't. But if you all lay this into that framework and then you can go off and say, as the chief risk officer, okay, you know, this is a network problem or this is an IT problem or this is a, you know, what level of risk are we willing to assume problem? And you can go off and assign different part, different people in the organization to go help you complete this framework and see where you stand. The first thing that I would always do, and we do a lot of these, is a GAAP analysis. Let's go look at where we are versus where we want to be and we have these conversations and we generate a a list of of gaps and then it becomes a business conversation for the C suite and for larger organizations for the board. Very importantly, the board has to provide guidance on this to say what is a level of risk we're willing to take? And the risks could be a compliance risk. It could be a legal risk, it could be a reputation risk, it could be a whole variety of different risks that we could be takin...

Contact Dr. Doug Boyle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-douglas-m-boyle-dba-cpa-cma-4004468/Dr. Boyle's Articles and Resources:https://sfmagazine.com/post-entry/june-2019-do-you-have-emotional-intelligence/https://sfmagazine.com/post-entry/april-2019-leadership-skills-at-every-career-level/https://www.imanet.org/-/media/977a1a6d07d3439588094827fdb768f0.ashxFULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:05)Welcome back to Count Me In. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and today you're going to hear how emotional intelligent plays such a key role in the success of management accountants. Mitch spoke with Doug Boyle, the accounting department chair at the University of Scranton about this topic. Doug also serves as the director of the doctorate in business administration program, the nonprofit league program and the high school business scholars program. He is an award-winning researcher and teacher and recently researched and wrote about the components of emotional intelligence as they relate to accounting and finance professionals. Let's hear him explain what it means to be an emotionally intelligent accountant.  Mitch: (00:47)So today we're looking to talk about the emotionally intelligent accountant. And I would first like to kick things off and ask you how important is it for finance professionals to have emotional intelligence?  Doug: (00:59)Yeah. Research has shown that a financial managers who have mastered emotional intelligence are the ones who typically reach the highest levels of the organization. For example, a chief financial officers along with, you know, superior technical skills. What really sets them apart from their peer group is that their ability to master emotional intelligence and connect with individuals. And there's several research studies that support that. So it's really important if one wants to advance especially to the higher ranks of an organization that they engage in and starting emotional intelligence in developing themselves and that area.  Mitch: (01:37)And I think this is a good opportunity to really establish a common understanding for the rest of our conversation here. I know you mentioned connecting with others, you know, but how do you actually define emotional intelligence?  Doug: (01:50)Yeah, emotional intelligence is a pretty complicated construct and we'll talk about the components later on from a high level. It's really someone's ability and capability to be aware of their own emotions and control those emotions and express their emotions in a way that facilitates strong interpersonal relationship with others. So for example, if I'm a CFO and I'm presenting to a group of analysts, it's very important for me to connect with them and really, express trust in confidence in a way that makes them believe, you know what I'm saying? Makes me credible, makes me convincing. So it's really all around controlling an individual's emotions, understanding emotions of others, and being able to manage those emotions too to build very strong lasting trustful relationships.  Mitch: (02:45)Well, you just kicked off that answer right there with my next question. I know a little bit about emotional intelligence, but I'm hoping you can kind of identify and define the components that go along with emotional intelligence.  Doug: (02:59)Yeah, there's four major areas and you don't have to master all the areas at once. Some of us are stronger in some areas naturally, and some of us have to work on other areas. The good thing about emotional intelligence is everybody could work on it and you get better. So there's four really big buckets with subcomponents. I'll walk through them, pretty briefly, but, you know, we could spend more time talking about individual ones later if you want. Now the first one is self-awareness. So that has two components, which is emotional awareness. So are we aware of our emotions and how we're reacting in a given situation? Next one is self-confidence under any self-awareness. So am I somebody who's confident in myself, somebody who makes people around me more comfortable because they believe I'm confident in what I'm doing and why I'm saying so that's the first component. The second component is self management. So then there's a little more, elements here. The first one is self control. So when I'm under pressure, am I able to maintain, control and control my emotions in a way that are effective instead of destructive? A second is trustworthiness. So am I somebody who delivers on what I say I'm going to do, can I be relied on and dependable? And that's a big part of emotional intelligence. Next one is  is conscientiousness. So am I somebody who follows up, am I somebody who is into the details enough to make sure things are getting done without being a micromanager? But I need to be conscientious. Next component is adaptability. So am I somebody who could adapt the situation or am I rigid and I try to solve all problems the same way every time? Cause maybe that was successful for me in the past, but it would probably be limiting in the future. And then the last one is innovation under self-management, which is am I somebody who's always questioning the status quo and trying to figure out new and better ways of doing things. So self management has the most components. The last two components are social awareness, which is empathy. This is really important, especially for accountants because as accountants, sometimes we tend to be very analytical. where in business it's very important to show empathy towards your employees, empathy towards your shareholders, empathy towards your lenders or bankers to really let them know that you care about them and their interests as well as the company's interest. So empathy is one that's very important for accountants. And sometimes it's an area where, you know, there could be some skill development. last one under social awareness is organizational awareness. And this one is when you tend to need, when you get higher up in the ranks. So, not only do I understand my own emotions and my little group around me, but do I understand the entire organization and the various cultures and protocols across different geographic boundaries? And how do I respond in those different areas. The last bucket is relationship management. And in a lot of these are very important when you get to the higher level. So for example, the first component is influence. So am I able to be convincing and get folks to move in a certain direction that you know, I need for them to move forward, you know, a company's success or organizational success and how do I do in a way where I bring them along where they're part of the decision making as opposed to me just, you know, mandating orders. Next is conflict management. Cause as we could just senior management is lots of conflicts between divisions, between employees, maybe conflicts with the vendors or even competitors. How do we manage that conflict in a way that's productive and that's, you know, destructive or, cannibalizing, the situation. Next one is, teamwork as again, as you get higher, your teams get bigger. So we got...

Contact Jose Zavala: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jzavala03/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch: (00:00)Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's a podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm Mitch Roshong and I will be your host for this episode. Today, you're going to hear Adam talk with Jose Zavala about how automation is the key to success of accounting and finance professionals. Jose explains the benefits, but he also addresses the challenges and pitfalls. He regularly helps firms save time and money through automation and has a great first and perspective on the topic. So to hear more, we'll head over to their conversation now.  Adam: (00:35)So Jose, as we begin 2020, it seems that automation is a key word in accounting and finance, whether it's through RPA or machine learning. How have you seen automation in general impact the accounting and finance industry?  Jose: (00:56)You know, that's a really good question. For me, what I have seen is it, at least personally on my level, it allows you to essentially provide a better service to our clients. You know, cause within this industry, at least my take on it is we need to be client facing. You know, they're our clients. We need to make sure they're getting, it's about customer service, you know, and if we're too busy in the weeds or heads down, you know, doing a lot of this taking care of kind of a lot of these administrative tasks or you know, doing a lot of stuff that we can maybe push off to a bot or to a software to do that takes away time from us to be able to be face first in front of our clients and helping them with those meetings as far as, you know, growth and things like that. So I think it's going to have a huge positive impact because it's going to essentially give us back our time to then to provide those better services to our clients and start being that advisor, you know, that investment for our clients to sort of be in what you don't have. A lot of clients see us as an expense. Oh, I got to talk to my accountant and I talked to my tax rep, I talked to my CPA. You know, where instead of doing that, they should be like, Hey, I want to make this move. Let me call them to get their take on it before and make it instead of, you know, making the move and then later trying to figure out, Oh, well did I do it right? Well, it's kind of too late. It's already done. So that's how I think go as far as automation is going to, help us in this industry. Because like I said, you know, give us back that time to be able to then give that time to our clients and provide them much better service.  Adam: (02:35)So as we look at that impact that you just mentioned of automation, you know, what about a more holistic view of its benefits? What are some ways that an organization can cut costs through those and through that automation?  Jose: (02:45)Yeah, no, I think that's another great question, man. So I was actually on the surge (Just want to make sure that is the appropriate way to spell the Podcast title)  podcast with JJ, the CPA, and what are the conversation or topics we hit on there was invoicing. I know, and my background is public accounting, worked at CPA firms my whole career before I went out on my own. And I remember one of the big things was always billing. So you would take two or three days to sit down, go through the bills and then having to do follow up calls and it was usually the managers, doing a lot of that work do that. So that was a lot of, to me admin time,  un-billable time that you could have. One of the things that just by, inputting something like a proposal software or automatic payment software that that builds your clients automatically, let's say on a monthly basis for a monthly recurring revenue, you can go ahead and eliminate that. The need to have to build that, to have to sit down and have those conversations and okay, this is what we need to do. We need to build this. We need to build that same thing as well. It removes, if you're printing invoices, stuffing them into envelopes, mailing them out, and then having to do followup calls and have an admin person doing followup calls. I'm trying to lock down those invoices. I feel like it takes a lot of time and there are too many people, too many hands touching it whenever it can be just one person making sure that these looking at the software, making sure the software is correct and then using that time, that person's time instead of non billable work, maybe move them into a little bit more billable work and, and you know, get a little more out of them that way. So that's how I think it can essentially cut cost is, is we can look at software and some of these, your friend's bots and things that are available to us as a way to, instead of paying a full time employee, we would pay them at and a third, a fourth, a fifth of the cost. And then make sure that the staff we do have, and not to say to replace a staff, but take the stuff we do, have them give them more higher value work and actual billable work that we can bill back to the client, which then in turn will keep them happier because you know, they're moving away from just entering checks into an accounting software or just entering deposits. You know, they're doing a lot more maybe client facing or maybe doing something else that you can play to their strengths. And then again, you know, you increase essentially their output, and by output is more essentially, you know, the billable output of them. So that's how I think it could cost that way.  Adam: (05:14)So what if you've mentioned all this to somebody and they're like, Jose, I am still not convinced. You know, you've given me these cost cutting measures, you know, the general impact. Okay, I can see the impact. But what are the real benefits to me as an organization? And how does that trickle down to my employees? You know, you mentioned one thing as a giving the employees more high value work, but what else? What else, what other benefits can they see?  Jose: (05:39)So I think one for you as a business owner, essentially it takes what it does. It eliminates a lot of those mundane administrative tasks that we have to do. Right now it's tax season we're having to, we're doing tax returns where, you know, if you're in public accounting you're in the grind right now. And one of the big things is, you know, having to go in and, and one having to make sure to okay do we have all our work papers in, you know, having to send emails and going through emails and trying to make sure you have all that information or same thing as well. You know, kind of going back to one of the things that I see a lot is trying to lock down lets say client meetings. So you're trying to do, have a client meeting and you spend three or four emails emailing back and forth. Are you free this day or you're free that day. And next thing you know, you know, when something could have been scheduled that week, it gets pushed two or three weeks ahead because you know, you're going back and forth and just little things like that kind of can help you save a little bit of time and bring a little bit of back of sanity back to you. And as far as your employees go, you know giving them the ability to essentially again go back to the higher level work, you know, so instead of actually going in and, and having to input deposit slips or doing just basic data entry, you can move that away from them and have them do a little bit more of the actual review...

Contact Chris Clulow: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-clulow-3832911/Cummins: https://www.cummins.com/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:05)Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast of all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I am your host, Adam Larson, and today's episode covers a few different topics. Chris Clulow, Corporate Controller of Cummins, talked with Mitch about leadership technology trends in the industry and the combination of the two for managing challenges associated with today's crisis and its working conditions. At the end of their conversation. Chris also shares a unique perspective on the future of the accountant. Let's head over and listen to the conversation now.  Mitch: (00:40)So I know in recent times we've seen a number of changes to the role of the accountant and the controller. So from your perspective and your roles and responsibilities, how has technology really impacted the job that you do on a daily basis?  Chris: (00:56)Yeah. It has changed dramatically over the course of my career, particularly as within Cummins. I've been here about almost 16 years we've invested a lot in technology and using tools, where in the past, we may have, may have used a lot more human effort, a lot more things like Excel, a little bit, more archaic, technology tools to help drive our decision making and now we have tools and processes that enable us to spend more time doing analytics and doing, doing the work, doing the thought and I think that's really, really key where you spent a lot more time in the past, pulling information together, compilation, and you didn't have as much time putting the data to work and that's, that's the real value you can add, both in an accounting and a greater finance area where you provide, some, just some analysis to the business to help them drive better decisions, to make them aware of trends that maybe imperceptible, to those outside of the accounting or finance arenas. So it is really become quite powerful things that we rely on. And it's gradual in some ways. I mean, we've seen the change, but sometimes you don't even notice how much, you know, how different it is now than it was say, a decade ago.  Mitch: (02:28)Right. And you've just touched on it slightly where you said it's really about presenting this information to those who may not be as familiar with the financials. So from a leadership perspective, somebody who is, you know, in the front of the finance function, what is your leadership style in bringing other functions up to speed and how do you go about communicating this information, these new insights to them?  Chris: (02:55)Yeah, I think the key is to really understand what they need, what they really need to know. So oftentimes, you know, when you're working with business partners, they'll ask a question or they'll ask for an analysis, a piece of information, without maybe an understanding of the effort that is involved or really what they're asking. So being able to kind of dig into that and ask the questions back to make sure you understand what they're looking for, is really critical, to kind of come back and say, Oh, you're asking this question, but I think you really mean something quite different. Something that could take you, you know, right off the, off the top of your head, you can answer versus doing 40 hours of analysis. So I think being that good business partner really is, pushing back at times, and making sure you can provide things. But going back to the first statement with, with technology and tools, what I've found is they've enabled our business partners, people outside of accounting and finance to understand finances and even the accounting side, better because it's just more consumable. It's easier to understand when you see things in more standard formats or things that are just, calculate for you. People are more adept at, being able to understand those, what was very complicated finance and accounting. There's still areas certainly within accounting that, people do not understand and it's breaking it down to what do they really know, need to know instead of going into the depths and plumbing, the depths of what came out from the FASB and why these things are important. Oftentimes a business partner doesn't need to know that level of depth. You can just kind of bring it up to more of a 50,000 foot level of what they need to know and why.  Mitch: (04:48)That's great. And I think obviously today, everybody dealing with the crisis that's going on in the remote work, you know, I'm sure the technology that you're implementing has certainly enabled business continuity and you're able to just kind of go about your day, business as usual. But there is a little bit of a setback I would guess when it comes to the interaction and the communication and the leadership cross-functionally because you might not be able to have these face to face conversations or these explanations. So I'm just curious if you've noticed anything along those lines at Cummins and what your experiences have been since kind of shifting to this new remote work style?  Chris: (05:34)Yeah, you definitely miss out on the informal, communications and the, and certainly the nonverbal, oftentimes you may do some video conferences here or there, but you're oftentimes talking on the phone and talking on Skype or zoom and you miss out on the bumping into somebody in the hallway or just seeing somebody at lunch where you have the conversations where, you can actually keep things moving forward at a greater pace and you can kind of make sure you're understanding the needs of the business. I am at the same time, very pleasantly surprised at the continued progress we can make in that is somewhat open to technology, but also to the creativity of the people, of being able to continue to do their jobs, working remotely and finding different ways to connect. Whether it's, you know, just having informal zoom sessions daily with their teams, using WhatsApp or text or anything under the sun from a technology perspective. I know even teams, within my group are having FaceTime happy hours just to keep that connectivity together and making people feel like part of a team. And I think that's really important. it is definitely more difficult. I think one of the, this sounds strange to say it in this way, but one of the advantages we have colleagues, within China who've been through this, just very recently and they've been incredibly helpful in how they steer it through it. Many of them are still in lockdown for those. We have some plants in locations in Wuhan that are just coming out of it now after over over eight weeks, but they found a way to communicate, to keep the business going, and to really keep it moving forward and I think that was, their coaching has, has helped us a lot.  Mitch: (07:37)You actually beat me to my next question because I know Cummins is global and particularly your role. Overseeing a lot of the global accounting. You touched on it a little bit, but have there been any global challenges since going to this, you know, remote work and, I assume much of what you did was done obviously remotely anyway, but was there any part of this, that maybe your global offices are feeling the effects and you're kind of coaching them through it also? Is there any reverse to this, ...

Contact Danetha: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danethadoe/ hello@moneyandmimosas.com Money & Mimosas: https://www.moneyandmimosas.com/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch: (00:00)Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host Mitch Roshong. In this episode we will hear from the creator of Money and Mimosas Danetha Doe. Danetha is also a freelance writer for financial institutions, a consultant and a former accountant who now strives to help clients elevate their self-worth and their net worth. Keep listening to hear how this entrepreneur has excelled by taking leaps and maintaining a business savvy mindset.  Adam: (00:33)Danetha, I know you have a very interesting and wide-ranging background and I know some of that background includes accounting. Can you just give us an overview?  Danetha: (00:47)Absolutely. Well, thanks so much, Adam, for having me on. I do have a varied background and I think that that's becoming more and more common in all industries and also in the accounting space. My accounting background, it started in undergrad. I studied economics with a concentration in accounting. We didn't have a formal degree in accounting, so I just took all the classes I could within accounting and made it my informal concentration. After I graduated from undergrad, I went on to work for a home health care company and I worked in the accounts receivables department. Their accounts receivables, this was prior to companies moving to the cloud, so our accounting systems were all desktop legacy system and we had a lot of paper, a lot of invoices that were mailed out, invoices of checks that were mailed in for payments. And so my job was a lot of data entry and a lot of um, keeping track of all the paper. We had files upon files of papers. After that position that was in Indiana, I moved to California where I got another job working in the accounting department for a ski resort. And I started off being a billing coordinator. My background, well my previous job was in accounts receivable. So the role was similar in that I was managing the invoices for the catering and conference services department. And from being a billing coordinator, I moved up to being more of a staff accountants, helping them with cashflow and forecasting and other things that went along with making sure that their accounts receivables processes were in place. When I got into the role, we were about 180 days in aging accounts receivables and my job was to reduce that and I got that down to 30 days and that was my entire focus. After that role, I moved from the ski resort to the San Francisco Bay area where I am now. And my first position here was as a controller slash CFO for a small creative agency. And it was a really small company. So I wore both hats of being a controller and CFO. And a lot of my role was very much focused on accounts receivables. We had a lot of business, which was great, but our processes were not streamlined. And so we had cashflow challenges that were related to, you're not invoicing accurately on time. And so that was really my focus was to help that agency get that under wraps so that the cash was, we were in a healthier cast position. From there I was bit by the entrepreneurial bug. I was bit by the entrepreneurial bug then, but I knew from a young age that I always wants to run a business. So after that role, I just I had to start my own business doing bookkeeping for other small businesses. I focus in the beauty and fashion space and, and that's where my careers as an entrepreneur started.  Adam: (03:45)So, you know, being an entrepreneur, obviously you need to have a wide variety of expertise and knowledge to run your own business. So how did your background in accounting and the things that you were doing help you get into that entrepreneurial space?  Danetha: (04:00)It helped me tremendously. A lot of business owners do not have an accounting background. Certainly if you start a business as an accountant or a bookkeeper, you have that background. But the people that we serve don't necessarily have that background. And so my expertise in that space really helped me be able to build a business because I had a service that business owners needed. My skillsets outside of understanding different systems, doing the actual accounting work. Some of the skills that I picked up along the way of being an accountant were things like organization keeping on top of financial transactions. The paper, thankfully we're now evolved to using less paper and more cloud-base, but there's still some paper that goes back and forth. So being able to have a system in place to be able to keep track of all that information helped myself as a business owner and also helped my clients organization. As I mentioned, project management's huge. Also having an understanding of how cashflow works. I think as accountants we take that for granted. That's, for a lot of us it comes naturally to think about things in terms of net 30 net, net 60, how to balance the expenses with the cash going out. Something that I would do immediately with all my clients was to get them on a single day payout. Meaning one day out of the month was the only day that we sent payments out. So if they had recurring bills every month we would choose a date where those bills were paid. Usually it was the 18th or the 15th because of how their income would float in. It made sense from a cash perspective to do it usually the latter half of the month. So something like that as a really simple implementation. But for a lot of business owners, it's not something that even their mind, and here they are wondering why they're struggling with their cash, when it's a simple a process that can be implemented, in this case, just a single payout date to help them manage their cash flow and overall business operations. And so my background in accounting has helped me tremendously.  Adam: (06:20)That's just great to hear. Now, outside of the accounting, what was it like going from being in the corporate world, you know, doing all these different things to taking that leap of faith to be an entrepreneur? I can imagine that would probably be scary. Just, you know, going from a regular paycheck to your being the one running everything.  Danetha: (06:37)There was definitely, it was a mixed bag. I always wants to be an entrepreneur. I asked my parents for business cards for my eighth birthday. At the time I wanted to be a nail artist and so I've always wanted to be a business owner, so that leap from me was more of a homecoming, if you will. It was coming back to my, my true nature of being a creative and being a risk taker and carving out my own journey. With that said though, I do have my accounting side, which is very methodical and pragmatic and to your point about receiving a paycheck on a consistent basis to now I'm figuring out how that paycheck is going to come in and oftentimes it's not consistent, so that was, that's definitely a big part of the challenge with being an entrepreneur is realizing, Oh my gosh, the buck really does stop with me. What helps me with that transition was applying some of the things that I've learned in accounting. One of the things that I learned, that we all learn in this space, is you have to know your numbers. You have to know how much it co...

Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization(TAGORG) https://www.linkedin.com/company/talal-abu-ghazaleh-organization/Talal Abu-Ghazaleh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/talal-abu-ghazaleh-95b298/Joa'an Abu Ghazaleh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joa-an-abu-ghazaleh-701a9788/FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:05)Welcome back for another bonus episode of Count Me In. For today's conversation, we're going to hear my co-host Rouba Zeidan conduct a very special interview with the godfather of Arab accounting. Let's listen in now.  Rouba: (00:22)So hello, this is Rouba Zeidan. Tonight I have a very, very special guest, Dr. Abu Ghazaleh, who's an accountant by profession and one of the greatest and most influential minds in the Arab world. He's a graduate of the American University of Beirut, which is a pride for a Lebanese, or for someone with Lebanese origin like myself, but you also had honorary degrees and PHDs from various other universities throughout your career. You've also been honored by numerous diplomatic figures and presidents throughout your life. You also have a very longstanding series of friendships with the likes of Kofi Annan and anymore. You're major advocate of intellectual property, education, knowledge, economy and information technology. And you're known for your forward-thinking business projects and ideas and the Arab world and globally. So, one of your universities in Jordan, actually has no testing. In order to graduate, you just need to innovate as a student, which we found quite interesting. How do you feel the educational system in the region is working to promote and encourage innovation in young minds?  Dr. Talal: (01:31)You may be surprised, or you may know more than I that this is not a unique problem in this region. It is international. I was invited by Harvard university, Columbia, and MIT, to make public speeches and I told them, that it is unfortunate that these great institutions who are supposed to be the best in the world, have made themselves redundant. Because what they do is still what was happening in the “Kuttab” (an old-fashioned method of education which used to be prevalent in the Arab world). They used to in “Kuttab” sit on the ground. Teacher, books, lectures, exams. The exams are for testing how good is your memory. How much do you remember of what we taught you? This is the same now in Harvard or any great university, not just in this part of the world. And we produce job seekers by giving them certificates that they are good at remembering what they were taught. It's a test of “Hifth” (memorization in Arabic) how good you are at remembering what we have taught you. Incidentally, I don't remember anything I learned at school or at university, and a great school and a great university I went to. I don’t remember anything. Because they used to teach us what is the highest mountain in the world? What is the longest river? what is the oldest city? Information now that it is a pity to use and dwell on, on our memory space, instead of using our memory space for useful thinking and production. Now I don't remember anything and unfortunately our part of the world, because it follows the American and the Western culture in teaching, is in the same way. I believe it's time. And I told everybody that it's time for universities to realize that, in the fourth of revolution, the industrial revolution, what is needed is innovators and not graduates who are job seekers. Why? Because an innovator, sets up the business and employs others. Our current job seekers, they go around looking for jobs, like I did. I applied when I graduated to something like 700 schools and companies to work. I got 500 refused. Not interested. I don’t have experience. We will look you up once we review, etc. and 200 even ignored my letter.  I keep these letters for memory to teach myself, I keep reminding myself. I keep them in a luggage bag. And I carry them wherever I travel. If I change locations, like I did to Canada or to Cairo or to Amman. When I move from place to place, I move this bag. Why? Because it is a good reminder that a university degree is useless. Even at the time when I graduated in 1960, there were people who were making money and had no degrees, and making successes, who had no degrees. And as I said in my speech today, that a job prevents you from being poor, but it also prevents you from becoming rich. That is a fact. Now, our educational system is very wrong. Basically, because, sorry, look at, doctors. A doctor will not give you a medicine without examining you. In schools, we treat all brains with the same medicine and there are no two brains which are equal. This is what the scientists tell us, every brain is different. And how do you feed my body, as my body needs, but when it comes to my brain, which I think is more important than my body, you feed the intelligent, the idiot, the slow thinker, the very fast thinker, the man with the critical mind, the man who is lazy, we feed them the same education. The president of Harvard, former president of Harvard said, “The Tsunami of modern education, this Tsunami is going to wipe all schools and universities who do not adapt to the needs of change in the knowledge age. Now, that is why the leadership of change in education shifted from the US, Canada, Britain, Australia, whatever, France, to the Scandinavian countries. Finland today is the leader in innovating education and they are now realizing it now and implementing in many, schools. First, the decision now is that there is no government education organization. It's not the business of government to teach and they are moving all government education to private sector. Number 2, the private sector should not teach you. Their job is to make sure that you know how to learn. Not to be taught. To learn, you learn what is suitable to you, what is adaptable and convenient for your brain. So we have to realize that in the knowledge age where the only source of income and wealth is through knowledge creation and that's why at the Talal Abu Ghazaleh College for Innovation, which I think is the first in the world, not only in the region, there isn't any college in the world which says, I don't examine you to graduate. You have to submit an acceptable innovation, not just any kind. And we know because we are the largest and the leading intellectual property company in the world. We know what makes an innovation. So, you have to invent something. And invent doesn't mean that you have to do something new. Any change to your mobile, in size, in design, in numbers, in program, is a new invention. That is what the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) says, one which board I served, as an expert. So therefore, what we need now is to invent in order, to make this movement of progress in the right direction. There is no place in the future for anything except innovators. And when I say innovators, I mean every individual. The telephone operator can innovate. A painter innovates. Innovation is any addition or change or improvement that has value and is ‘commercializable’. It can be commercialized. And that is what we do. So, what we do in our company, and this gives us an added value is in this school, we test your invention and say, great, this is an innovation. Then we can register it and protect it for you as an intellectual right for the student, for their own right. It’s their ownership. Then comes a third stage, the commercialization of inventions. We help to put them, we help them to...