Firms that translate AI-driven data into clear insight will lead the next era of advisory.

By Rory Henry CFP®, BFA™
For CPA Trendlines

Few people have been able to bridge the gap between emerging technology and the accounting profession the way Dr. Sean Stein Smith does. A CPA, researcher, Forbes contributor, and professor at Lehman College, Stein Smith serves on the advisory board of the Wall Street Blockchain Alliance and has spent more than a decade helping practitioners make sense of blockchain, crypto, and artificial intelligence.

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And CPAs can no longer afford to ignore it.

Poor onboarding frustrates clients, burns out staff, and kills profitability.

It's Not Just the Numbers
With Penny Breslin and Damien Greathead
For CPA Trendlines

Winning the client is exciting—but in Client Accounting Services (CAS), that’s just the opening act. The real work, and the real success, depends on what happens immediately after a prospect says “yes.”

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In this episode of It’s Not Just the Numbers, hosts Penny Breslin and Damien Greathead make the case that onboarding is one of the most overlooked, underdeveloped, and business-critical functions in CAS firms today.

“Too many firms have no clue what actually happens when a client walks in the door,” Breslin says. “You sold the work, but what happens next? What experience does the client have? And what does your team do first?”

Two-thirds of current firm leaders risk being obsolete within three years.

Accounting Influencers
With Rob Brown

A stark warning is shaking the accounting profession: 65% of current firm partners will be considered “digitally obsolete” within three years. The unsettling part? Private equity (PE) investors are not planning to retrain them—they are preparing to replace them.

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On the latest episode of the Accounting Influencers Podcast, host Rob Brown uncovers how private equity–backed firms are redrawing the profession’s leadership map. The digital divide is no longer theoretical. It is already defining who will lead the future of accounting and who will be pushed aside.

Partners who cap their own comp can solve staffing, retention, and motivation in one bold move.

Gear Up for Growth

With Jean Caragher

For CPA Trendlines

When public accounting firms talk about “leadership challenges,” the conversation often turns into a soft focus on communication styles or vague culture issues.

Michael Meihaus goes straight for the hard truths.

On Gear Up for Growth, hosted by Capstone Marketing president Jean Caragher, Meihaus—owner of Meihaus CPA in Escondido, California—lays out the structural leadership failings he sees across the profession: outdated ownership models, harmful work expectations, broken incentives, and leaders who resist change because the current system works for them, even as it burns everyone else out.

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“It’s simply that we don’t change unless we have to,” he tells Caragher. In a profession that’s been “stable, profitable, successful” for decades, too many people at the top have little incentive to transform how firms actually operate.

One of Meihaus’s most provocative arguments is that many “partners” aren’t really owners in any meaningful sense.

“Being efficient got me more work, not more money. So I left.”

Big 4 Transparency
By Dominic Piscopo, CPA
For CPA Trendlines

When Mike Maksymiw first joined the Big 4 Transparency podcast, listeners were struck by his candor, clarity, and willingness to challenge the profession’s long-standing norms. Now, as host Dominic Piscopo welcomes him back as the show’s first repeat guest, Maksymiw brings even more insight—this time shaped by Aprio’s rapid growth, his own unconventional career path, and a message for accountants who feel stuck in roles that no longer fit.

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Maksymiw currently serves as executive director of the Aprio Firm Alliance, a national network of nearly 100 firms that share resources, expertise, and support across specialties and geographies. And—thanks to Aprio’s recent acquisition of the PS Plus Alliance from RSM—the Alliance has nearly doubled in size.

“It broadens how we can go find answers,” he explains. “Now there are a hundred people you can ask, and maybe fifty have done what you’re trying to do. Maybe there are seven different ways to make it work.”

Embracing empathy helped build a healthier, more profitable firm with a smaller, stronger team.

The Disruptors

With Liz Farr

After decades in public accounting, years emceeing national conferences, and a long stretch coaching college softball, Dawn Brolin has learned something most leadership books bury in footnotes: empathy drives performance.

“Empathy is, to me, the number one characteristic that a leader should follow,” she told host Liz Farr in her return to The Disruptors. Her latest book, The Elevation of Empathy: Leading for the W.I.N., digs into why the accounting profession needs a different kind of leadership—one rooted in awareness, humanity, and intentional care.

• MORE STREAMING: 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

Accounting firms often reward technical strength or revenue generation with leadership titles. But Brolin argues those metrics don’t create leaders; they create what she calls “appointed leaders.”

“You could be appointed a leader because of a skill or the amount of revenue you bring in. That doesn’t mean you are one,” she says.

Real leadership, in her view, has less to do with credentials and more to do with emotional intelligence, personal responsibility, and daily behaviors that elevate the people around you.

*Originally published August 2025

Culture isn’t an initiative—it’s a strategy that drives retention and results.

MOVE Like This
With Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk
For CPA Trendlines

In this episode of MOVE Like This, host Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk talks with Stacie Kwaiser, CPA and CEO of Rehmann, about the firm’s nearly three-decade journey toward building a culture where people stay, grow, and lead.

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Kwaiser began her career in public accounting at Coopers & Lybrand before joining Rehmann, a firm that now employs more than 1,100 professionals across 22 offices. She rose through the audit practice and into firmwide leadership roles, ultimately becoming CEO in 2023. Along the way, she experienced—and helped shape—Rehmann’s evolution into one of the profession’s most recognized firms for women and equity leadership.

Rehmann’s reputation didn’t happen by accident. Nearly 20 years ago, the firm launched its Women’s Career Advocacy Program to address attrition among rising female professionals. That effort has since expanded into a firmwide Career Advocacy Program that embeds mentorship, sponsorship, and structured development into daily culture.

Kwaiser is clear that these supports aren’t optional. “You can’t treat talent development like an initiative that comes and goes,” she says. “It has to be part of how you operate.”

Originally published October 2025.

Get more value from the technology you already own.

It's Not Just the Numbers
With Penny Breslin and Damien Greathead
For CPA Trendlines

When accountants and bookkeepers talk about building a scalable, profitable firm, the conversation often jumps straight to technology. Which workflow app is best? Should we move payroll into a dedicated platform? Is our practice management system due for an upgrade?

But as Penny Breslin and Damien Greathead emphasize in the latest episode of It’s Not Just the Numbers, software is only as good as the processes that support it. Without consistent policies and documented procedures, even the most advanced tech stack will fail to deliver efficiency or profitability.

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This lesson is especially crucial for firms offering Client Advisory Services (CAS). Advisory work depends on reliable, timely data and standardized outputs. If every accountant on the team closes the books differently, it doesn’t just create inefficiency; it undermines the consistency and trust that clients rely on.