Riddle me this, Batman: What do you get when you cross exponential advances in technology with an unrelenting regulatory environment? The answer is no joke: what you get, oftentimes, is one big headache. These “hard trends” or “future facts” that futurist Daniel Burrus talks about — the things that we know will happen, with absolute certainty — they’re hard enough to come to grips with individually. But when they cross borders and join forces... well, that’s when our lives really start to get co...
Nov 11, 2019•43 min•Ep. 76
Halloween is over. Autumn is kicking into full gear. And you know what that means — it’s time to talk about audits! Because the future of audit is... uncertain, to say the least. Luckily, we had an opportunity to talk to Mark Miklosovic, the Customer Proposition Strategy Lead for tax professionals at Thomson Reuters, who spends much of his time thinking very critically about the future of this profession. We talk about where audit has been, where it is now, where it is going — and most imp...
Nov 04, 2019•35 min•Ep. 75
Pretty much every survey under the sun identifies recruitment and retention as one of the top five issues facing accounting and finance organizations today. Everyone is struggling with this and nobody seems to know how to solve it. There are a lot of suggestions being put forward throughout the profession — communicate, be a role model, make your expectations clear, offer a safe working environment, provide a clear career path, build leaders — and that’s all great advice. Yet, no matter how many...
Oct 28, 2019•46 min•Ep. 74
Today we’re going to talk about something that most accounting and finance professionals probably never give a second thought — writing. Writing is one of those skills that we all take for granted. We all do it in some way, shape, or form every day, so we all assume we’re awesome at it. Maybe even better at it than some of our peers? This is a misconception that happens all the time, in different areas of our life. We can’t all be better than mostly everyone else at most things, but we’ll learn ...
Oct 14, 2019•41 min•Ep. 73
Pascal Finette is co-founder of be radical , an organization that teaches leaders how to create new business models for success, positively embrace disruption, and prepare their people to be future-forward and future-ready. He is also chair for Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation at Singularity University , which is a global learning and innovation community that uses exponential technologies to tackle the world’s biggest challenges. He previously held leadership positions at Google, Mozilla, a...
Oct 07, 2019•33 min•Ep. 72
Summer’s over, October’s here, and things are changing. But that’s the state of our world today, isn’t it? And not just when it comes to the weather. Change is the new normal, and that can be an uncomfortable thing, especially for CPAs. But for those who are ready to embrace it — to adapt a more nimble and flexible mindset — there are a lot of opportunities just waiting to be taken advantage of. The question is, then, how do we do that? How do we start embracing flexibility and fluid...
Sep 30, 2019•34 min•Ep. 71
We’re jumping back on the culture train today. As you can probably tell, we’re big believers in getting your culture right. We’ve had conversations on the topic with Tom Peters , Karl Alrichs , Jamie Notter , Richard Silberstein , and David Barrett — and that’s because it’s a REALLY important conversation to be having! Really, there might not be a bigger or more important differentiator in business today than your culture. If you get it right, you’re going to have a leg up in recruitment a...
Sep 23, 2019•29 min•Ep. 70
Today’s episode is all about Color Accounting — and if you’re not familiar with Color Accounting yet, you need to be! So, we invited Peter Frampton, co-founder of Color Accounting, onto the show to teach us all about what Color Accounting is and why it’s so important to the future of our profession. To learn more, and for the complete show notes, visit blionline.org/blog . Resources: ColorAccounting.com LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/peterframpton How Color Accounting works: https://youtu.be/QeoC...
Sep 16, 2019•30 min•Ep. 69
Today we’re going to talk about something you probably didn’t expect from this show: Cannabis. But legalization for both medical and recreational cannabis products is growing at the state level. At this point, it seems like a hard trend. So it’s high time we talked about this stuff (pun intended) if we want to future-proof this profession. To help us come to a joint understanding, if you will, about how we can best serve our clients in this area, we are joined by Emily Burns, who pro...
Sep 09, 2019•37 min•Ep. 68
We’ve been talking about the cloud for so long now that it’s easy to assume that everyone already has it figured out – but that’s the wrong assumption to make with our profession. There are exceptions, of course. There are some accounting and finance pros out there who take pride in getting ahead of new technologies early. But a sizeable part of the profession hasn’t made that leap yet. So Blake Oliver, co-host of the Cloud Accounting Podcast, joins us to assess where we’re at in the profession ...
Sep 02, 2019•36 min•Ep. 67
How do you transform your organization into a truly digital organization? It’s not as simple as it sounds. You can’t just about employ some digital technologies and think that you’ve made it. Doing digital and being digital are not the same things. Not even close. So, we’re joined by Matt Loeb, principal of Optimal Performance Seekers and acting CEO of SECURE, who is simply one of the deepest thinkers about what it means to be digital in an increasingly digital world. Quite frankly, too many peo...
Aug 26, 2019•38 min•Ep. 66
To know where you’re going, you have to have an understanding of – and an appreciation for – where you’ve been. Publisher and activist Marcus Garvey said, “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” And Michael Crichton, the bestselling author of Jurassic Park and Westworld, said, “If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.” Why are our two favorite quotes about histo...
Aug 19, 2019•54 min•Ep. 65
We spend a lot of time on this show talking about future trends and technologies — things like artificial intelligence, blockchain, and automation – and, more importantly, what those things mean for the future of our profession. But there are many other hard trends — a.k.a. future facts, a.k.a. things that we know are going to happen – that will have a huge impact on what we do. The topics aren’t always as sexy, sure, but they’re equally impactful, and if we want to get serious about becoming fu...
Aug 12, 2019•25 min•Ep. 64
Our guest today is Neil Irwin, who is the senior economic correspondent at the New York Times and the best-selling author of The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire, about the global financial crisis and its aftermath. And Irwin recently wrote a new book titled How to Win in a Winner-Take-All World: The Definitive Guide to Adapting and Succeeding in High-Performance Careers . It’s a fascinating and important book, given the changing and complex world we live in. To learn more, ...
Aug 05, 2019•27 min•Ep. 63
Today, we’re talking about the elephant in the room, or what Tom Hood would call the dead moose in the room. That thing that’s stinking up the joint but that nobody wants to do anything about – or, more to the point, nobody knows what to do about it. That dead moose is talent. How do you find it? How do you keep it? How do you set your organization apart from all the others out there so people want to work for you? It’s a HUGE problem, and here’s why in three short words: One point five. That’s ...
Jul 29, 2019•39 min•Ep. 62
Today’s show is all about innovation – which, let’s face it, it’s not something the accounting and finance profession is known for. We’re all about accounting for what has happened, and history tells us that what will happen is not our problem. Except, here’s the thing: We’re living in a world where we’ll be flattened by what’s in front of us if we don’t take the time to look for it, if we don’t take the time to turn around and look for what futurist Andrew Zolli would call those “weak signals o...
Jul 22, 2019•30 min•Ep. 61
We’re going to talk about your career path today. If you’re new to the profession, and even if you’re not, we’re not going to lie to you – things are going to get weird. It’s just the nature of work today. Things are changing at an exponential pace these days and that means your career is also going to change exponentially – so you have to be ready with new skills, a flexible career path, and the ability to shift on a dime when the time comes. More than ever, we all have to be more nimble, more ...
Jul 01, 2019•59 min•Ep. 60
The accounting and finance profession as we know it seems to be under assault. New technologies, staggering legislation and regulations, demographic shifts that are reshaping the face of workforces — we’re experiencing change and complexity on a level we’ve never seen before. Or is that really true? In a way, when you think about it, none of what we’re experiencing right now is new. All of the thought leaders out there are calling this “the Fourth Industrial Revolution.” Know what that means? Th...
Jun 24, 2019•38 min•Ep. 59
Our guests this week have a challenge for all accounting and finance professionals: start thinking in terms of moonshots. Now, you might be asking yourself, what in the world is a moonshot? It’s a huge, seemingly insurmountable quest that is ultimately inspirational and game-changing in nature. It’s something that , when achieved, changes the boundary between possible and impossible – just like the USA’s attempt to land Apollo 11 on the moon almost exactly 50 years ago. Sherif Hallaba and Travis...
Jun 17, 2019•43 min•Ep. 58
Our guest this week is Brian Solis, who you’re probably already familiar with if you’re conference nerds like us. He describes himself as a digital analyst, an anthropologist, and a futurist; he has studied the effects of emerging technology on business, marketing, and culture; and he’s written best-selling books like Engage , The End of Business as Usual , and What’s the Future of Business? His latest book is called LifeScale – and it could really be a gamechanger for the accounting and finance...
Jun 10, 2019•43 min•Ep. 57
This week we’re talking about the role of the CFO – a role that is changing, and pretty radically. Thanks to advances in technology and other disruptions, organizations are expecting their CFOs to play an increasingly strategic role; to actually help drive strategy in the organization, rather than just leading their department and crunching numbers. It’s a fairly recent phenomenon, but it’s happening quite quickly, and getting up to speed on that is just the latest challenge that finance chiefs ...
Jun 03, 2019•27 min•Ep. 56
Today’s topic is A.I. Artificial intelligence. You might have heard about it? It’s that thing everyone’s been talking about for the last five years or so. Yeah, the hype is out of this world. But here’s the thing, and there’s really no getting around it: this isn’t something entirely new or groundbreaking. The technology itself is new, but we’ve been through this before. Excel was supposed to kill our profession, remember? Then came the Internet, and Turbotax, and the cloud. And you know what? W...
May 27, 2019•29 min•Ep. 55
A lot of folks talk about this notion of becoming future-ready as if it’s some sort of magic trick. They paint a picture of a future where we need to learn all kinds of new stuff — new skills, new technologies, new strategies, and new business models — in order to out-maneuver the machines and remain relevant. And to some extent, that’s true. We’ve got some serious work to do from here on in. But on the other hand, there is a school of thought — a pretty well-supported and powerful school of tho...
May 20, 2019•49 min•Ep. 54
Over the past year, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about how the accounting and finance profession is changing – but we haven’t spent nearly as much time talking about how those who regulate our profession are changing. So, on today’s episode, we sit down with Terri Polley, (outgoing) president and CEO of the Financial Accounting Foundation. The FAF is an independent, not-for-profit, private-sector organization that is responsible for the oversight of the Financial Accounting Standards Board,...
May 13, 2019•37 min•Ep. 53
We’re headed back to Annapolis for this week’s episode, where Maryland’s General Assembly recently put a bow on its 2019 legislative session. It was another busy one, including some CPA-related legislation that will impact accounting and finance professionals, not just here in Maryland but throughout the country. Legislative advocacy, according to our members, is the most important thing that the MACPA does for them, and our president and CEO Tom Hood takes that role very seriously. So, today, w...
May 06, 2019•20 min•Ep. 52
Where are we going to find tomorrow’s leaders? We’ve been doing these podcasts for almost a year now, and as much talking as we’ve done about the future, the missing ingredient in all of those conversations has been leadership. We just haven’t spent much time talking about future leadership, and with 10,000 baby boomers retiring every day, that’s a critical part of becoming future-ready. So this week, we are talking to Emmanuel Gobillot and Katherine Harris, co-authors of Unleash Your Leader: Ho...
Apr 15, 2019•37 min•Ep. 51
If you ask most people — not all, but MOST people — outside of the profession what an accountant does, they’ll probably say “taxes,” or “auditing,” or some variation on the tasks of people who work in public accounting. But they’re missing about half of the profession, of course. You’ve got educators, you’ve got accountants who work for nonprofits and governments, and you have those who work in business and industry, which is arguably the largest segment of the profession – and that’s why, today...
Apr 08, 2019•30 min•Ep. 50
We’ve talked quite a bit in past shows about this notion of “anticipation,” and we’ve talked about this concept as if it’s a skill or competency that you can learn – and it is, but we haven’t spent a lot of time talking about how how you do that. So, how can you become more anticipatory? How can you train yourself to look for future trends and spot the opportunities those trends provide, and then take advantage of those opportunities before your competition does? Joining the show again to help u...
Apr 01, 2019•32 min•Ep. 49
Today we’re discussing why accounting and finance professionals have a lot to gain from adopting an entrepreneurial mindset. Entrepreneurship isn’t something that many accounting and finance pros have a lot of experience with, but we’re in an era when at least thinking like an entrepreneur can go a long way toward becoming more future-ready. Entrepreneurs just look at the world differently, and adapting an entrepreneur’s mindset might help us evolve a little faster and become just a little more ...
Mar 25, 2019•40 min•Ep. 48
We hope you have your thinking caps on, because today we’re going to be talking about education in this episode – and this is probably the right thing to be talking about for the accounting and finance profession! We talk about skills quite frequently on this show – the skills we’re going to need to remain relevant in a changing and complex world – so it seems appropriate that we spend some time talking about where we’re going to be getting these skills, and who’s gonna be teaching them to us. S...
Mar 18, 2019•37 min•Ep. 47
