CEO’S MESSAGE SUSAN SPEIRS, CPA

Welcome to 2023! Congratulations to you all for making it through the longest, most stressful and most chaotic busy season ever. We’ve learned new skills in organization, technology, time management in our workplace environment. We have delved deeper into the pipeline challenges we’re all facing and are strengthing our foundation regardless of whether we’re CPAs or work in a different occupation.

The CPA Pipeline Initiative is one of the legs of our strategic plan. As we’ve had the opportunity to converse with our members, university faculty, and employers around the state, we’ve learned that pipeline challenges are more than just recruitment. Pipeline challenges cannot and will not be fixed in a couple of years. The challenge is ongoing. To boot, we’re in for another hurdle in 2026 as we hit a decline of university age students due to the decline in birth rates that began in 2008.

A deep dive into recruitment challenges shows the following:

• Universities continue to see a decline in accounting majors; accounting majors are questioning the relevancy of our profession. To combat these issues, the AICPA is updating the CPA Exam to include more technology and data analytics. Curricula are being modernized so that students are prepared for a technology-driven job environment.

• To entice high school students who are being asked to decide on majors as early as their sophomore or junior year, we are advocating for accounting to be part of the STEM initiative at a national level. Accounting would be a part of the “T” — technology — of STEM.

• We also need to address why students are choosing not to sit for the CPA Exam. Research is indicating that approximately 27% of respondents see themselves spending their careers in public accounting. Nearly 33% see themselves working in business while about 24% don’t see themselves working in the accounting field at all.

• A study compiled by the Illinois CPA Society indicates that the top two challenges of potential CPAs are workload time commitments and personal time commitments. In many current models, it’s tough to earn a CPA license while working in a CPA firm due to long staffing hours that are year-round. Finding time to balance work, study time and life is difficult at best, especially with lower initial earnings.

As an organization, we cannot do much to change the workplace environment. However, we can certainly impress upon the minds of our high school students and young CPAs the relevance of our profession and the potential for myriad opportunities as they continue to grow their skills within the profession. Our ask is that you become more actively involved as we create collateral for our students at the high school level. We need to tell our stories of the good we do and the opportunities that have opened up to us as part of the professional designation we hold. n

Mystory of becoming a CPA began in my childhood. The adults I had interactions with — school teachers, neighbors, church leaders, sports coaches, etc.— are the ones who influenced me mostly for good. The two adults that had the greatest impact on me were my parents, especially my father. He spent his whole career in banking which meant I, too, spent time in that environment. My father would teach me how to read the Wall Street Journal and we talked business all the time. He would often speak about various jobs in business and one that he mentioned most often was accounting: specifically CPAs. When a beginning accounting class was offered in high school, I excitedly enrolled in the class. The teacher made it interesting and brought it to life. It was a natural fit for me and therefore I excelled in the class.

When I entered college, my declared major was business, more specifically, accounting. I enjoyed my accounting classes, but as their complexity became more difficult, I wondered if I could handle the workload. Through guest lecturers, I learned what it would take to become a CPA and the exam that would be necessary to obtain the license. Additionally, I took an auditing course and began wondering to myself if this is how I really wanted to spend my life? I