Why you need to be more than just an accountant

To stay relevant, you must offer strong business advice. But you can’t call yourself a ‘business advisor’ without earning the title, says tax specialist Steven Strauss, managing partner at Simmons Gainsford LLP…

It’s time we stopped thinking of ourselves only as ‘accountants’. It puts us in the wrong mindset from the off. Accountants do the bookkeeping. Accountants crunch numbers. Accountants file and organise. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with those things – compliance is crucial ­– but we must not be content to stop there. I believe that the best accountants can only fulfil their true potential by becoming business advisors.

However, have you noticed how many accountants call themselves business advisors these days? Ambitious accountants should think of themselves as accountants and consultants, with a view to becoming advisors first and accountants second, but professionals now use those two terms almost interchangeably – so much so that people are starting to believe that they are one and the same. They are most definitely not.

The profession is becoming more polarised. Some firms focus on compliance; others provide advice. Increasingly, clients are choosing either a high-quality advisory service, or a cheap and cheerful compliance service. The middle ground is fast disappearing. We as Managing Partners, therefore, need to plan our firm’s future based on this reality. Over the years, I’ve brought more and more advisors into my firm, and that’s the route I will continue to take, as my vision is to create a consultancy firm with exceptional accountancy services as part of the mix.

Against that backdrop it’s not surprising that so many accountants now refer to themselves as business advisors. But, just because you call yourself something doesn’t make it so. If you change your job title, you also have to change what you do. Labelling yourself as a business advisor requires you to offer so much more than traditional accountancy services. Genuine business advisors think, interact and work differently.

I have recruited many excellent ‘advisor accountants’ over the years and the best are more like business consultants. They also share certain characteristics. Good advisors certainly do not look down on compliance work; they see it more as the starting point to actually advising a client: it’s the first step. For example, completing a client’s tax return is a fantastic way to understand what you can do for them; it’s a fact-finding mission that will provide you with the information you need to help your client in more creative ways in the future.

True business advisors are also fantastic listeners and forensic questioners; rare qualities which enable them to provide the right kind of help. Of course they need the technical skills but they’ve also honed their consultative powers. For me, consulting with clients is the most rewarding part of the job. If you see your professional role as helping people to achieve their goals, it’s so much more rewarding.

Many accountants go through their careers repeating the same things on a daily basis. They might have 20 years of experience on their CVs but that actually translates to one year of experience repeated 20 times. By contrast, those who become the best advisors push themselves to improve every day by regularly tackling things outside their comfort zones. Continually challenging yourself helps you to improve and advance your technical and advisory skills. This can be daunting, but, in my experience, a problem is only daunting when you first look at it. When you get stuck in and try to solve it, it’s never as difficult as you think.

This is where mid-tier and smaller firms have the distinct advantage. I believe that smaller firms create the best advisor accountants because they offer richer and more varied experience. They require their teams to be nimbler and smarter and to make more entrepreneurial decisions. At very large firms ­– the big six for example – accountants usually have very specialised roles and so gain a narrower range of knowledge and skills. As a small cog in a behemoth with a huge bank balance they are insulated from risk, so they do not gain a real-world understanding of the huge pressures that clients face. That’s neither useful nor beneficial because clients want to feel that they are receiving advice from people who can genuinely understand and empathise with them.

Many of these opinions stem from my tax background, which has been instrumental in developing my business-advisor skills. After qualifying with Lubbock Fine many years ago, I realised that accountancy – at that time being even more compliance driven – was not for me. I had the choice of either leaving the profession for good or trying tax, so I went for tax. I later joined BDO and became head of tax in one of their business groups, and it was there I realised that the market was increasingly demanding advice, not compliance. As a result, my vision has always been to build a consultancy firm, not an accountancy firm.

So, next time you hear someone bandying around the term ‘business advisor’, think twice. To use that label truthfully you need to demonstrate more than traditional accountancy skills. Also, think about why accountants today use the term so frequently. The answer is because the market is increasingly demanding strong consultative advice. Are you in a position to offer it? If not, what are you doing to boost your advisory skills and your credentials in order to be who you say you are?

 

Written and edited by the BDLN.com