Are Accountants Antisocial?

Source: The Marc Rosenberg Blog

The following includes excerpts, reproduced with permission, from a blog entry by Marc Rosenberg. The entry contains a letter Rosenberg sent to Yahoo! in response to an article entitled “Six Careers For People Who Don't Like People.” “Accountant” was at the top of the list. Following are highlights from his letter.

CPAs' existence is founded on the cultivation and nurturing of strong relationships. A CPA can be brilliant in his or her work and incredibly innovative in counseling clients, but these attributes are of little use if the CPA fails to establish a close working relationship with clients, inspire leadership, mentor the firm's staff and assist clients' attorneys and bankers.

With the exception of during recession years, the vast majority of CPA firms generate more revenue every year than they did the year before. Clients rarely fire their CPA firm. Would clients want to rehire their CPAs year after year if they came across as antisocial?

Ask any successful CPA firm which attribute of their personnel is valued the highest. It's not accounting and tax expertise. It's not rainmaking. It's not willingness to work long hours. It's interpersonal skills.

Baby boomer CPAs by the thousands are approaching normal retirement age and choosing to keep on working. It's not because they need the money. It's not because their firms need them to stay. It's because they realize that they enjoy what they do, mainly because of the love affair they have with their clients. And they don't want this to end. Does this sound like the kind of person who doesn't like being with people?

Sure, accountants have an image problem. Uninformed people might think of accountants as nerds. Well-informed people, including writers who do their research, know better.

For the original entry, read “Yahoo! Hits Accountants Below the Belt.”

From The Marc Rosenberg Blog, July 24, 2012, http://blog.rosenbergassoc.com.