Thank you for tuning in to the special edition Transforming Tales of Business Evolution Podcast, focused on firm governance. We hope you enjoy these special episodes that are designed to tie to and enrich our brand new PCPS governance toolkit.
Developed by the AICPA and CIMA, the PCPS team, along with Gary Thompson, founder and principal of Thompson Consulting, and Sarah Dobek, founder and president of Inovautus Consulting, the toolkit and these special podcast episodes focus on decision making and accountability within firms. Whether firms are experiencing changes due to internal growth, external market forces, or other key triggers, re-evaluating current governance structure can be a game-changer. Listen to all four episodes.
The episodes are hosted by Gary and Sarah, and they're joined by practitioners who have made these real-life changes in their firms, and areas including the benefits of using an operating model, ideas to consider related to partnership agreements, and introducing non-CPAs into leadership roles and setting them up for success. In the final episode, Gary and Sarah share with our PCPS team all about what they've learned to drive success in firms.
Listen and learn about how proper governance is not just something for big firms to think about. It involves behavioral changes that are applicable to even the smallest firms. We hope you enjoy. Hi, I'm Erin Hartman, senior manager of the Firm Services team here at the AICPA, and I'm joined by Sarah Johnson Dobek and Gary Thompson in our final episode of the Special Governance Four Part Series. If you haven't listened to the others, please check them out. We have an episode on operating models.
This talks to you about how you can make it easier in resetting or setting up governance structures within your firms. Partnership agreements and best practices around those, and also an episode on non-CPAs as firm leaders. Gary and Sarah are joined by various practitioners in these podcasts who share their stories on how these topics have reshaped their firms and set them up for the future.
Today, we're here to wrap it all up and talk about what does all this mean for me as a firm owner or as a leader in my firm, and what are key success factors. Sarah, Gary, thank you guys for being here.
Thanks, Erin. I'm excited to be here today.
Likewise, thank you, Erin. Sarah, it's always great to partner with you on this.
I have learned so much being on this journey with you guys as you've worked on these resources, and I know our audience has and will as well. Reflecting on what we've shared in previous episodes, what are the key mindset shifts you've seen in firms around governance?
One of the things that I'm noticing of firms of all sizes as we deliver this and we have these conversations is just the acceptance of non CPA leaders at the table, and it looks different depending on the size of firm. But I think over the last couple of years, I've really seen firms lean in to bringing a different way of thinking into these firms and really value it. It's encouraging to see that as long as I've been in the profession, and just watching CPA firms evolve.
I think it's such an important element for the conversation that we've been having on governance and transformation.
I think back to just five years ago when we were going through the COVID situation, which in April 2020, we were really feeling it right. I remember saying at the time, and Sarah and I actually talked about this that don't let a crisis go to waste. I think that post-COVID, looking at all the things that industry is facing from retirement of the boomers, private equity, disruption, etc., the uncertainty that exists has created a lot of urgency and looking at what supports the firm of the future.
For me and for us, is taking that uncertainty and turning it around and saying, can we use this as a reason to evaluate whether it's capital resources, etc. But in the context of what the three of us are talking about today, let's use it as a reason to evaluate what about our governance structure is or isn't working and we're really pleased to see that type of pivot going on. Maybe we didn't get here on our own. That's okay.
We're here at a time where a lot of reflection is going on about governance.
For sure. I just want to say, from working with you guys, going from thinking about frameworks, responsibilities, organizational accountability, I know it's all those things, but trying to think about how you really sum it up in my mind, from learning from you guys, it's about optimizing efficiencies, but it's also about having each leader at their highest value use and I think that's important. That sets you up for success within your firm.
You have the right people with the right responsibilities, and to your point, Sarah, about non CPA leaders, empowering them to be in that position. Those are great thoughts to reflect on. What's one misconception about governance that you think we've successfully challenged through this series?
For me, it's not just about large firms. It almost sounds too fancy at times for a lot of the firms that Sarah and I are privileged to work with. Great God who want us to talk about governance. We got this. No, we don't. Whether we're a small firm with a couple of us in the room, governance is a mindset.
It's a mindset to how we most effectively run, and I think these discussions, particularly those with the practitioners, have made us all aware that there's no firm excluded from the opportunity to evaluate governance and what benefits them long-term wise.
I would add that I completely agree that this impacts every firm, and there's not one way to do it. I think that because really clear through all of the practitioner interviews that we did is everybody is approaching it a little bit differently, and it's working for their firms. It's not like there's this one model that everybody has to apply, which I think is part of what Gary was talking about. We make it this big thing, and it's really not.
I also think that governance is a little bit scary, and I hope through our toolkit and our resources that we've made it a little less scary. That it's a little bit more practical than most firms realize, and that it's possible to accomplish that and take steps towards it.
I think you're right. I think it can come across as this, like, daunting, gigantic project that nobody really understands or has time to deal with. To keep on that train of thought, for firms that are just starting to think about this, what's the first step that they can take tomorrow to begin implementing governance change?
One of the things that Sarah and I talked a lot about through all these sessions and in the toolkit was just starting with some type of self-assessment. Using a simple framework to evaluate decisions, meetings, all the things that we're doing as a firm, understanding our vision for the firm, and to the extent that that self-assessment needs to involve others, absolutely. You use people to help us with that.
But this testing and as we said in a couple of our sessions with people, inflection points, time to admit a new partner, we have a goal to grow. We're going to add a new office. We're going to add new service lines, having ourselves aware that every time we get to an inflection point, that we're ready to test it. Sometimes those are planned inflection points. We will every so often, annually, every three years, whatever it is, test. That's a planned one.
But even at those unplanned ones, something new happens, the industries change, competitors change, new people in the firm, having a thought process is in how we operate, we're going to regularly assess and test where we are in our governance.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more with what Gary was talking about. He summed it up really nicely as far as where we start as a firm. It's a little bit simpler than sometimes I think we want to make it.
I'm glad you're talking about make it simpler because like we talked about it, if you think about it as a monumental hurdle or monumental overhaul, it's going to be difficult to do, and you're simply just not going to do it. How can firms avoid the common trap of over-engineering it or making it more complex than it needs to be?
One of the things that they can start with is just clarity and purpose. Part of what Gary was talking about, what decisions are we making? If we start with that and keeping proportionality in mind, I think we can avoid the over-engineering. Our ultimate goal is to enable decision making and accountability in a government model. We don't want to create a whole bunch of bureaucratic red tape around that. That's not the goal. The goal is, how do we do that?
If we keep that in mind, I think we start to be able to simplify it and not over-engineer it, but still accomplish what we're trying to accomplish, which is to be able to move faster. Speed matters today a great deal. Just staying focused on that purpose alone will help to really narrow it and make sure that we're putting in place the right things for your firm.
I really like Sarah's choice of words there particularly thinking about the idea of keeping it fit for purpose. It needs to match your firm's size, scope, strategy. Just don't copy other firms because it looks great. We do in our profession, learn well, and benchmark well. It's a great part of our profession, but in this area, we need to really test ourselves. Then for me, and this is a lesson learned, Erin. Really making sure that I prioritize clarity over complexity. We do in our profession.
We see this in goal setting and accountability, and I could go through the list. Value processes so much that we tend to overprocess. If we had to spend 10 hours on governance in a year, I'd spend one hour on the process and nine hours on the effectiveness. Just really valuing clarity over the nuance process elements of it all. By the way, I'm not anti-process. I am after all CPA, but the point is making sure that we put a proper balance in that.
The implementation of that is more important than making sure you have everything documented correctly, perhaps. You mentioned strategy, and our transforming your business model project leaned on five pillars of strategy, governance, service offerings, technology, and talent, and we would like to create a journey for our firms as far as where do I start in this transforming my firm journey? To me, it starts with strategy. The next step is governance.
Can you talk about that, how firms can better align governance with their strategic execution?
Absolutely. Can you give us an hour just on this topic here, Erin? I think Sarah and I would both like an hour. I'm going to use the word that you used. I think it's important that we build governance around execution. We tend to build governance around control. Now, what do I mean by that? We're concerned about who gets what vote, who does this, who does that. I get those, again, important elements.
As I make a little lightheartedness about it, I'm not negating the need to be able to say who does it what, who doesn't do what in those roles and responsibilities. But governance ought to be about our ability to execute and what are we executing on? We're executing on our strategy, and our strategy is foundationally built on our vision. If we have true alignment, this is my firm of 2031, five years from now, six years from now, whatever it is.
These are the strategies that support that vision accomplishment, then we ought to be able to say what governance structure enables us to execute on that.
That's a fundamental. If we look at it and go, this is going to get in the way, as an example, if M&A is part of our strategy, and if we have so many complexities built into the evaluation of M&A targets, the execution of deals, who does what and who does this, then what you've essentially said is we really don't value M&A in our strategy because we've built too much complexity into what we say is an objective. Really making sure that our governance supports the execution of our strategy.
I love Gary's comment around execution, because we forget to also enable this into our day-to-day. That's ultimately where governance needs to come into. When we think about bringing clarity, when we think about enabling people to make decisions, when we think about how we are enabling ourselves to move faster, the other thing that we think about is, where do we pull this in?
Part of that strategic alignment is thinking about pulling it into those everyday cadences of what it is that we're doing. That's how we make it a little bit more realistic. Don't overcomplicate it and think about what the leaders that are going to be executing on this are facing. That's where you start to see some of that strategic alignment and not over-engineer it at the same time.
You guys talk about partners not wanting to lose control. How do you do that and also enable and encourage partner accountability?
I actually think we give them more control through the right governance structure. Maybe not the same control, but they still have decision-making authority. They still have the ability to move within whatever they're owning. I think control is less about needing to make all those decisions and more about feeling like you have input and influence into what it is that you're doing and you feel like you're contributing. That's ultimately what an owner is taking on when they're thinking that way.
I think when we have the right governance structures, we are still enabling that ownership, which automatically comes with accountability. Not always automatically oversight, but the concepts of those go hand in hand. I don't think we're taking away control I think we're actually enabling more ownership inside of our organizations.
Add on Sarah, I think there's many studies, Harvard recently published one that says, the best entrepreneurialism exists within the framework of a corporation where there's strong understanding of roles and responsibilities and strong accountability. Well, wait a minute. How can that work? Because we think of entrepreneurialism in the Jeff Bezo's Oprah Winfrey context. Maybe it's in the garage or whatever.
What they were articulating is that when we have clarity around our strategy, and we have partners in our case, partners who have a set of goals and action items that are clear, that are agreed to, then we're freeing them to act. Go do, you don't have to keep coming back to us for permission and things of that nature. What we owe them is better communications so that they continue to feel engaged so they know what's going on.
But to Sarah's point, I think we empower them more by having strong accountability and a strong governance that said, this is what you go do. There's a lot of confusion when we're not sure on who's calling the shots or I need to be in the room for all these meetings about what my highest and best use is in a given day in a strong governance structure. I have clarity around my highest and best use. We've agreed to those goals. Now I go do.
By the way, those that might be in leadership, have a few less things to worry about, as well. They can go run and do. It's a bit of a flywheel for not just our partners that you might call the day-to-day line partners, but even for our leaders.
You're talking about clarity, accountability, control, to some extent. Hey, keep using that word. But I think we all know what we mean by that. I think a similar topic that we need to talk about is transparency, and I know you guys talk about that within our governance toolkit a lot, and how can that be fostered?
I think that is important, largely because we are saying, you don't need to be involved in every single decision that this firm makes, but you need to feel good about it, know that it's being handled well.
I will repeat a little bit of what we said in one of our podcasts, Sarah. I can't recall which one, but Erin, when I work with firms that are going through a governance transition, what I say to them is, you cannot overcommunicate.
It's impossible. What we owe, particularly in transition to our partners is more distinctive, deeper communication so that what they've given up, the seat at the table, the instant knowledge, the hand raise of a vote, is substituted with better information as to what's going on. What you may need to do two years from now likely will look distinctively different than what it looks like now in transition. We gain the confidence of our partner group through communication.
Sarah's the communications guru on this. I'll just add before I hand it to the guru, that takes all forms and shapes. Some are readers, some are listeners, some are visual people. If we think that there's a single way of connecting with a diverse partner group, whether that be generationally different offices, then we're mistaken.
We've just got to double down on better communication and then recognize the lift now will likely be more than the lift a few years from now, but we're just going to get better at it as we go along.
I would add to what Gary is saying that frequency matters in communication. I work with a lot of leaders who are like, Well, we don't need to say that again. I told them six months ago what the date of this was going to be. They know, they're clear on it, and I'm like, well, I'm not sure they are clear on it. It's bubbled up to me. There's something we need to reinforce here. The other thing that I really focus on with firms is the tone of the communication matters.
As leaders who are often practitioners and land in their leadership roles, sometimes by happenstance, sometimes by choice, that tone really matters. Being thoughtful and intentional with the word choice that we're using, really goes a long way to the impact that you have and how that message is received. The advice that I would share with them is take the time to do it correctly, pull in the people inside your firm that are really good communicators.
Sometimes it's living in human resources, sometimes it's living in marketing and leverage them to help draft really important internal communications. I cannot go understated. Gary, I think you lived in this world for a really long time and had people internally helping you translate these messages.
Yeah, Sarah knows this because I was privileged many months ago to work for Sarah on communication. You think you've nailed it. Then you realize that someone with such a different perspective and a mindset and knowledge. Like, how could you have just interpreted what I said that way? While we can't avoid those things, I do find that look, let's acknowledge that we tend to communicate best in our style.
When you have this awareness that says, Erin and Sarah are going to receive this message in different ways, how do I work on that? Let's just quickly acknowledge that you will spend your entire communication life frustrated by what people did or didn't get from what you said. That's part of life. That's humans.
That's not just CPAs. But I do think our people in our profession, I should say, recognize the genuine effort toward transparency and regular communication, and they'll reward that even if they didn't get everything they wanted to get.
I think it's interesting what you talked about just people interpreting things differently. I think when you think about non CPAs and leadership positions, that can sometimes be the case because I think it's real easy to feel like everybody feels the way I do. They're going to take this the way I do. I don't know if it's as I further my career or just get older. You realize you're not that person. You don't know what experiences they've had, how they internalize something.
I do think in all these areas, in running a business and the governance of it is truly understanding how other people feel and allowing them to feel that way and taking their thoughts into consideration and remembering that we don't all think and translate things the same way is important. I can see that being huge in communications, especially with this, just how people take things are not necessarily the way you expect them to.
We all have cognitive bias, Erin. As humans, we can't get past that, and sometimes that's hard as leaders that we remember, we get frustrated. When we have to repeat ourselves or we don't understand why they're not getting it. I think just keeping that in mind that this is part of the process. It's change management. That's what we're talking about at the end of the day. Change management is not fast. It's frustrating. It's not a straight line.
We want it to be a straight line, and it looks a lot messier than that. But at the end goal, the reward out of that is getting our firms where we need them to be. How long that takes. Sometimes we just don't know and we've got to be patient with that process.
In talking about changes and getting our firms where they need to be, there are a lot of transitions in the life of a firm. On that you might think it's going to be just like this, and a year later, it's totally different. There are a lot of unknowns, as with everything in the future. As your firm grows, where you shift in your ownership models, you have new partners, you have M&A activity, private equity investment, perhaps, just changes in the market that affect you externally.
How should governance evolve? What I really mean about that is, how do I set up my governance now so that if we do need to shift and change and be flexible, that my people are okay with that as well.
Very carefully. Two thoughts come to mind on that one, Erin. I think it's important that we have a broad set of governance principles. Principles are different than rules. Rules are defining that structure and everything. But if we have a broad set of principles around how we think and respond to governance, then it no longer is surprising to our people that we might be revisiting, revising governance.
These broad based principles from fairness to efficiency, transparency, we get through a list of things. If they exist, then that says to our leaders, expect this on a regular basis. The second thing in taking the list that you articulated just a second ago, maybe if we park private equity over to the side. If we just think about a firm in a normal non PE context, I think it is possible to build scalability into our governance. It says, here's what we'll look like now.
But as these dimensions change, be expecting this difference in scale to one of the areas that Sarah will be speaking at a conference in the near term, the area of a practice group leader, industry, service line niche. They may not be embedded in a smaller firms governance structure.
But there's this principle that says, as we scale and add people or get better at niches or get better at specialization, anticipate that the next level of governance is we will introduce these people not only to drive success and revenue growth, but to be an important part of our governance team. Broad based principles that make it not surprising when we have to make governance changes. Then, secondly, to the extent that we can anticipate allow for sustainability in what we do.
Yeah, I would add into what Gary's touching on, and he said before in some previous conversations that we've had is we've got to build some flexibility. The governance, whatever it is that we're creating, however we're defining and giving that clarity, we can't be so rigid that it can't move with us. I think managing and setting that expectation internally that, this isn't a one and done.
I think in the past, a lot of firms set their governance or accidentally set their governance because they didn't really think about it and define it and then didn't touch it until the wheel was broken, until it was really, really painful. They realized something needed to change or we had COVID and the market changed for us. Just understanding and managing that expectation with our leadership group that this is a framework. It's not a one and done.
It's not like we're not going to touch this for 20 years. We're going to evolve it as it needs to evolve, and we're going to build some flexibility into our model. We don't know. Maybe this is going to be right for us for three years, and we're going to double tie, and we're going to need to revisit it, or maybe it's going to be right for the next 10 years. I don't know. I'm not sure anybody can really predict that in this stage of the game right now.
You're talking about, once you've got it in place, you're not going to touch it. You don't make any changes. I think firms also here on the side of until we have it absolutely perfect, we're not going to implement it. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that because you're talking about rules and structures and process, but also flexibility. I feel like from really all the practitioners we've talked to lately, like, just start.
Whatever you're talking about, governance, some new service offering that you want to offer, you've just got to start at someplace. I love your thoughts on that as well.
Anybody that's spent any time around me knows my catchphrase, progress, not perfection. I probably say it 50 times a day. Part of starting is picking something and starting the conversation. I think we have to be bold as leaders and raise it. This is a scary topic to sometimes raise within our partner groups. But beginning there and starting with some of that clarity and roles and responsibility is an easy place to begin.
We've got some toolkits and resources that we've built out for some of those things. But keeping that in mind is a really important element to beginning the journey.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. The idea of waiting for perfection doesn't exist. There never will be a time where it's perfect. Our profession, like many other professions are just operating with such speed that we back to this idea of principles based and the ability to be flexible at the end of the day is what drives us. Now, at the same time, I see a lot of firms who put off difficult governance decisions, and we can't do that.
Waiting for perfection doesn't mean, oh, let's do all the easy fixes and save the hard ones for later. But there's a terrific bounce to getting clarity, having an understanding, then waiting for perfection. Here's what Sarah and I will promise you. The day you finish with your governance document, the next day, we can already begin to think about something we will change.
It's really important Erin to your point that we encourage people to use the tool kits the AICPA has provided to make assessments, to look at their partnership agreements, back to the one conversation we had specific to our partnership agreements. To say, we're going to push ourselves to get most of this right. Then to the extent there things that we need to deal with later, great. But let's get these things done and done now for this reason. Let's not wait on it for sure.
Getting back to the toolkit, like I said, we have introduced the PCPS governance toolkit that the two of you worked on with us. What are some ways that firms can use these resources and the tools that are within it?
My mind immediately goes to the templates that have been developed and kudos to the AICPA for providing those resources. Sarah and I love to talk with firms and help them think through it. We're consultants. That's what we do. At the same time, many will just benefit from pulling those templates up, thinking and looking and talking at the leadership team about them. Some really smart, talented professionals in our business, regardless of firm size, you can access those templates.
Know where to start from charters to scorecards to roll definitions. You can go through the list of all things that are there. Allow that to generate more ideas, more questions, and more curiosity about information, but I think those templates are ready to go.
The other thing that I would say is listen to the podcasts that we've put together and the other interviews that the AICPA has done and that have included in here. Mindset shift matters when we're talking about governance, and a leader can be way out ahead, but we've got to have the whole leadership team tracking with us about changes. Part of mindset shift means hearing from other practitioners as to how they approached it, what they're thinking, what their journey was and all of that.
As a leadership team, I would encourage you to sit down and listen to those and continue that conversation about the templates, the resources, and what's happening at our firm. Why should we be having this conversation? What does that mean for us? But start the conversation. Be bold enough to speak up and start that conversation.
I know we've talked about this in some of the other podcasts, but one of my favorite tools in the toolkit is the key triggers for rethinking your governance. Can you guys talk about that? Maybe what are the warning signs that a firm's governance does need to change and how to think about them proactively?
I think if I'm a leader of a firm and I'm losing my hair, my hair is gray, that might be a sign, but we'll leave that one to the side for later. Two things that I think about. First of all, if we see partner frustration, let's just say partner shareholder principles, all the names that firms use leader frustration, even disengagement. That's a warning sign.
It's got to be a warning sign, and occasionally, it's a personality thing, and we accept that, but some type of change, noticeable change, people are just frustrated. Sarah and I have both been in rings with firms where the knives are out for whatever reason. That's a pretty good trigger that something's not working well in governance because after all, it's about leadership and leaderships in better than that.
Then the second thing is just really challenging ourselves around delayed decision making, if it's taking forever to make decisions. We can't do that in 2025 and beyond. Just looking at both of those and being really fair and saying, are there things that have been on our to do list for an incomprehensible amount of time, and we just can't move them? Sarah and I will leave a lot of strategic planning meetings and come back the next year or six months later.
What's happening? Nothing. There's a warning sign there about governance. There obviously could be other elements of that, not to isolate just the governance, but those two things come to mind, Erin as potential triggers or we need to re-evaluate, why aren't we able to execute on these things? Or why are people frustrated?
Yeah. That execution piece is so important. We can't afford to not move year to year. We can't get into a situation in this market and be competitive and not just survive but thrive as a firm if we aren't moving fast enough on some of those things. That doesn't mean being impulsive. We still want to be intentional, but it can't take us three years to make a change on something. I think the other thing that I would add to that is really has the firm grown or changed.
Whether that's mindset shift, whether that is how we go to market, has our market changed. The market that we serve and what's happening. So much of what I think we're talking about today is triggered by events outside of our control that just spiraled this momentum of transformation in this profession, and so part of the response right now is out of that, not necessarily always something that's changed in firms, but we have to change to meet what's going on in the world around us.
For sure. I think you're touching on something that's really important right now and why governance seems so important at this moment. The pandemic clearly accelerated a lot of things that I know Gary you were talking about, taking advantage of the positives that can come out of that. But all of these things may have happened, but it clearly accelerated. The demographics of the workforce, technology, changes and advancements and also just mind shift changes.
I do think this is a really great time to look at this. Again, I'll talk about the tool that you guys are talking about, the warning signs, the triggers that you need to maybe change something. Have I grown in people? Have I changed my service offerings, my more advisory than I used to be. For example, do my people not understand what their roles are or what they don't seem accountable?
All of these things in this tool, you can rate yourself, and then you get results like I love the results that you guys put together with that because it's not just yeah, you need to change your governance. It talks to you about like, okay, well, maybe this is wrong, but you don't need an entire overhaul, or you do, or I think things are going well.
It's a nice check to see how you're doing and think about these other areas of governance and whether or not there are things that you need to consider. We really appreciate you putting that together. If you can give firms one challenge or next step coming out of this series, what would it be?
Pick one thing to start with. That's always my advice. Momentum is built off of action. Pick something to start on, whether it's have that conversation in your partner group meeting, whether it's listen to the podcast and encourage your partners to do the same thing, start somewhere. We don't have to bite off the whole thing, but pick an area to focus on.
Erin I think most practitioners are competitive people. They want to do well. They want to be the best at what they do, client service, taking care of their people. My point is, use that competitive edge in the governance area. Make governance an asset for your firm, an edge for your firm. Your future clients will see that, see the way you operate, your future talent will see that, your future owners will see it. Rather than being something we just take care of it, make it a priority.
Make it something that we say will form an edge for our firm going forward.
I love that. Thank you, guys. I do think, to your point, too, Sarah, about starting somewhere, and like I said before, in this whole transforming your business model series, everyone I've talked to about different changes they've made within their business model, they need to start someplace, and they're glad they started. Nobody regrets making decisions for the future. I haven't heard one firm talk about, I wish I hadn't relooked at my governance. I wish I hadn't right sized my client base.
I wish I hadn't changed my billing practices. These are all good decisions that need to be made. What they all have in common is they say they wish they had started sooner. Never a better time. This has been great working with both of you on this project. I've learned so much. I know our listeners will. I know you guys will be back with us for our webcast series in June.
We have a whole webcast series on this business model project, and you guys will be back with us to talk more about governance. I hope you will join us again on other related topics as we continue to develop this transforming your business model project. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Erin.
Thank you, Erin and Sarah.
This content is designed to provide illustrative information with respect to the subject matter covered and does not represent an official opinion or position of the AICPA, the Association, or CIMA. It is provided with the understanding that they are not engaged in offering legal, accounting or other professional services. If such advice or expert assistance is required, the services of a competent, professional person should be sought.
The AICPA, the Association, and CIMA make no representations, warranties, or guarantees as to and assume no responsibility for the content or application of the material contained herein and especially disclaim all liability for any damages arising out of the use of, reference to, or reliance on such material.