The Accounting Podcast

Will AI really automate most accounting work by 2040? Blake and David unpack what they heard at AICPA Engage, from deterministic AI agents and rising accounting enrollment to private equity’s growing influence on firms. Plus, Blake shares an exclusive interview with FICPA CEO Shelly Weir on Florida’s fight to protect CPA licensure. Listen to understand where the profession is heading—and what accountants may need to do next.


Chapters
  • (00:00) - Cash Stolen In Bay Ridge
  • (00:27) - Podcast Welcome Back
  • (02:58) - Engage Conference Takeaways
  • (03:58) - Hidden Vibe Coding
  • (07:50) - Rise 2040 Automation Report
  • (10:47) - Human In The Lead Debate
  • (15:09) - Top Firm Concerns 2026
  • (18:29) - OpenAI Finance Team Lean
  • (21:52) - Enrollment Up And CPA Pathways
  • (25:19) - 7000 Cash Theft Revisited
  • (26:52) - KPMG Whistleblower Scandal
  • (28:33) - Crowe Gets 3B PE Deal
  • (30:07) - Red Lobster AI Conspiracy
  • (31:30) - PE Cross Selling Risks
  • (33:39) - CPA Trust Campaign Launch
  • (36:17) - Florida Licensure Threat
  • (37:14) - Why Shelly Stayed Quiet
  • (39:13) - What The Bill Proposed
  • (43:28) - Why Deregulation Happened
  • (45:46) - How FICPA Stopped It
  • (48:46) - Mobility And Modernization
  • (01:00:04) - CPE And Future Battles
  • (01:03:59) - Wrap Up And Next Steps
 

Show Notes
Man Accused of Stealing $7K from Accounting Firm in Brooklyn
https://pix11.com/news/local-news/brooklyn/man-accused-of-stealing-7k-from-accounting-firm-in-brooklyn-nypd/

AICPA and CIMA Launch Rise2040: Shaping the Future of Finance and Accounting
https://www.aicpa-cima.com/news/article/aicpa-and-cima-launch-rise2040-shaping-the-future-of-finance-and-accounting

The AICPA Asks: Are You Ready for Accounting in 2040?
https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/the-aicpa-asks-are-you-ready-for-accounting-in-2040

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar Offers a Look Inside the Company's Finance Function
https://www.cfo.com/news/openai-cfo-sarah-friar-offers-a-look-inside-the-companys-finance-function/822545/

Accounting Undergrad Enrollment Up 9%
https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/accounting-undergrad-enrollment-up-9

3 More States Pass CPA Pathways Legislation
https://www.cfodive.com/news/3-more-states-pass-cpa-pathways-bills-accounting/821649/

A Master's Degree Isn't the Job Guarantee It Used to Be
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-masters-degree-isnt-the-job-guarantee-it-used-to-be

KPMG Secretly and Repeatedly Accessed a Whistleblower's Computer, Then Shared the Files with Its CEO
https://thenextweb.com/news/kpmg-accessed-whistleblower-computer

Crowe Gets PE Investment from KKR
https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/crowe-gets-pe-investment-from-kkr

57% Say PE Threatens the CPA Brand. But They'll Take the Money.
https://cpatrendlines.com/2026/06/09/cpa-pe-deal-tracker-57-say-pe-threatens-the-cpa-brand-but-theyll-take-the-money/

Red Lobster's CEO Says He's Going to Transform the Chain into 'The Most AI-Forward Restaurant Company That Exists'
https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/red-lobsters-ceo-says-hes-153500558.html

Stephano Slack Scores PE Funding
https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/stephano-slack-scores-pe-funding

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Transcripts
The full transcript for this episode is available by clicking on the Transcript tab at the top of this page

Creators and Guests

Host
Blake Oliver
Founder and CEO of Earmark CPE
Host
David Leary
President and Founder, Sombrero Apps Company

What is The Accounting Podcast?

The Accounting Podcast (formerly the Cloud Accounting Podcast) is the world's #1 accounting, bookkeeping, and tax podcast! Join us weekly for a roundup of accounting news, analysis, and interviews. Plus, earn free NASBA-approved CPE credits for listening with the Earmark app. Learn more at https://earmarkcpe.com.

There may be errors in spelling, grammar, and accuracy in this machine-generated transcript.

David Leary: [00:00:04] Police in Brooklyn are looking for someone who walked into an accounting firm in Bay bridge and stole $7,000 of cash right off a 64 year old employee's desk. It happened on June 1st, around 2 p.m. at Eiders and Sons Accounting and Business Taxation on Bay Ridge Avenue. The suspect just walked in, grabbed the cash while the victim wasn't at his desk, and walked out. Coming to you weekly from the OnPay Recording Studio.

Blake Oliver: [00:00:35] Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Accounting Podcast, your weekly roundup of news in the profession. I'm Blake Oliver.

David Leary: [00:00:41] And I'm David Leary.

Blake Oliver: [00:00:42] And we are back from AICPA Engage in Las Vegas.

David Leary: [00:00:46] I didn't even comb my hair. I'm just, I just I was like, I'm going fuzzy face, fuzzy head today for the podcast.

Blake Oliver: [00:00:52] It's been a week. David. You have some takeaways from AICPA engage the AICPA also released a report around engage about how compliance is being automated. They're saying that by 2040 it's going to be almost completely automated. They've got a report about the impact of that, the future of the profession. We will talk about it. I also have an interview with Shelley Weir of the Florida Institute of CPAs about the threat to the CPA license that Florida has been fighting for the past two years. She has not given any media interviews in all that time. And we've got the first one that is coming in the second half of the program today. We've got that and more. David, first, let's thank our sponsors, our sponsors.

David Leary: [00:01:42] This week. We have digits on pay. Savant labs and our cost seg. Let's be honest, accounting software hasn't changed much in decades. The prices keep going up, but the software still expects you to do all the work. Digits. Digits is different. Digits is the world's first AI native general ledger, built with AI agents trained on your firm's standards across every client. In your book, they code transactions, prepare schedules, reconcile accounts, run quality checks, even chase clients for open items. So your team moves out of prep and into reviews advisory in the work that actually grows the firm. And because everything runs from one side, one platform, your ledger, reconciliation schedules, reporting, bill pay, client collaboration, there's no more stitching together six tools just to close one client's books. Firms on digits are reporting a 70% gain in workflow efficiency, shipping annual cleanups in days instead of weeks, and running smooth and running monthly bookkeeping in one three hour. Three. I'm going to start that sentence again and running monthly bookkeeping in 1 to 3 hours per client accounting software that actually works for your firm. To see why hundreds of firms are making the switch to digits at over The Accounting Podcast dot promo digits, that is accounting podcast dot promo forward slash DIGITS.

Blake Oliver: [00:02:59] All right, David, let's talk about engage and welcome to our live stream viewers. Great to have you with us on the YouTube and LinkedIn live streams. David, what's your takeaway from engage this year?

David Leary: [00:03:10] So it's big. And I think they merged everybody together right? There was like 5 or 6 separate conferences. And I get why they did it because they can see now they have the biggest conference, but it makes the conversations hard because you talk to somebody here, they're a tax person, an audit person. I'm in cast and all your conversations are just all over the board. But your thoughts. But I did get into three interesting conversations with three AI accounting founders. Uh, I just blanked on his name at digits. I just.

Blake Oliver: [00:03:41] Jeff.

David Leary: [00:03:42] Jeff. Jeff. Jeff. Digits. I talked to him kind of over a beer. I talked to Sasha, the founder of puzzle over a beer, and I also talked to agree. He is the founder of a new app that's coming up called flow glad and just, you know, beer conversations, which are the best kind right to have. And, you know, I've been on this kick about accountants. The good use of AI for accountants would be to code five code, something that does repeated perfect execution over and over and over again. You don't want an agent, you know, having variance, right? You want deterministic behaviors. Yes. And almost like you said, you want AI that will set up all the bank rules in QuickBooks or zero, right? That's right. So that way they execute the same every time. It's not wishy washy. Well, after talking to these three guys, the bell went off for me. What they're all kind of doing is they're doing, I'm going to use the word hidden vibe coding. So you, you're going to chat with these tools and what they're doing on the back end under the covers is basically building a code that's kind of custom to you and your workflows and your needs, even though you're not quote unquote vibe coding. That's I'm going to coin this term hidden vibe coding, essentially. And that's how they're doing deterministic stuff. So you are going to be vibe coding, but based on your questions and answers and saying that's wrong, fix this, go do this. And every time you do that, they're actually creating a custom vibe code just for you in a way.

Blake Oliver: [00:05:08] Yeah, it's, it's taking that natural language prompt and instead of just guessing the answer, it's building out an app in the moment and then running, but you never see.

David Leary: [00:05:17] It or touch it or know it even exists. But your vibe coding an app under the covers and don't even know it.

Blake Oliver: [00:05:22] And that's what basically cloud Cowork is doing behind the scenes. If you're using cloud Cowork. And the difference, I think, between the approach that these founders are taking and the accounting and finance areas, is that instead of building it over and over again every month, every time you say, you know, prompt cloud and it and it creates that, that little app, that code in the background and runs your numbers through there, they are saving that. They're figuring out how to like save that code so that it's the same every time. And that's the difference. That's how you take a probabilistic answer and make it deterministic.

David Leary: [00:06:01] Yeah. Instead of just having an agent go touch all these things and work on it, they eventually you're trusting that new line of where they're going to work on it the same way over and over again, which is really the biggest risk I have with the, with the AI stuff. It's like it does it this way today, this way tomorrow. But as that gets tighter and tighter, that's what's going to really help.

Blake Oliver: [00:06:20] I did a 7 a.m. session on Tuesday with Sasha Orloff from Puzzle Painful. We did a it was kind of like a podcast discussion, a little fireside chat, if you will, uh, at the conference while everyone had their breakfast. And that was one of my takeaways as well is that, that we've gotten to the point now where we are getting reliable, 100% deterministic outcomes from AI agents with this new way of, of, of using AI. And it's a hard adjustment for us because most accountants have been using these chat bots, which are more or less right, not always under percent, often like 50%, 60, 70, 80%, right. Which is not good enough for us. And suddenly, within months, in less than a year, we figured out how to get to more deterministic outputs. And this is a big change from what we are used to. And so when he surveyed the room, it was clear why, because almost everybody has used a chat bot type tool to do research. Chatgpt, blue Jay text, GPT, whatever. Very few have used something like Co-work cloud Co-work, which is a genetic or puzzle zone, you know, AI close feature or digits, right? Like these, these, these are so new that very few people have tried them. And that's why there's such a difference in how we're thinking about it. Because if you're on the cutting edge, you're seeing the potential and you're seeing what's possible. And something else that came out of the conference that's exciting is the AI CPA's new report rise 2040 Shaping the Future of Finance and Accounting. And this is a big report where they talk to thousands and thousands of accountants around the world and tried to predict or forecast where the profession is headed because of AI. And I think that in many ways they got it right. They are saying.

David Leary: [00:08:18] How did you figure that out? Because I saw the press release about this, and then I clicked through to look at the document, and it's like this weird half PDF magazine that flips pages left and right, but it also scrolls up and down, and I couldn't. It was, it was so distracting. I couldn't even pull out the messaging with, with what the reporting on. It's like just, just next time AICPA make a normal slide deck or make a PDF. Don't do this crazy presentation stuff. I couldn't figure it out. It's distracting.

Blake Oliver: [00:08:46] I have a hack for you, David, so I had it open in my in Chrome and I was like, is there a PDF version of this? So I just opened up Ask Gemini in the sidebar and I said, find me the PDF and it pointed me to the PDF. So you can get the PDF if you want to run that through Claude and then get a summary. You can do that. I didn't have to because Dan Hood of Accounting Today wrote a really great write up of it and highlighted the main themes. And the biggest takeaway is that AICPA is saying by 2040, routine compliance will be largely automated, and that is the bulk of the work that we do as a profession today, let's say 80%. So by 2040, automated and some people are even more aggressive. Alan Colton, I recently heard him in New York say that it's by 2030. So regardless of how aggressive you are, though, that is pretty soon, right? We're talking in 4 or 5 years at the earliest, maybe another decade at the latest. But that's happening. And so then the question is, what are we going to be doing instead? And Tom hood, who's the executive vice president of business engagement and growth at AICPA and Sema, said that accountants are no longer going to be doing most compliance directly. Instead, we'll oversee automated systems and apply judgment to the outputs, and we will take on four major future roles strategic guidance, AI oversight, data translation, and then Human Centered advisory, which is the relationship component, the talking to the clients type situation. And the differentiator in accounting is actually that we can become more human, not less. So not only are we going to need technical expertise to evaluate and put our stamp of approval on these automated systems, but we're going to have to improve when it comes to critical thinking and discernment, communication and judgment. We're going to have to somehow do this earlier in our careers.

David Leary: [00:10:46] I completely disagree. Like ultimately with that because I think the clients themselves, the customers of the firms would rather just chat it out with a bot. They don't want to talk to the human. It's just more efficient to just chat out in the box because you can do it any time of the night. In the middle of night, I wake up with a concern about my business in the middle night. I can chat it out with the chatbot.

Blake Oliver: [00:11:07] But here's the problem, David. If you don't have the knowledge about some base knowledge about what that AI is talking to you about, how do you know when it's right and when it's wrong? And that's what people are going to.

David Leary: [00:11:19] Pay a five year old. You do that, that game.

Blake Oliver: [00:11:21] Yeah. But if it's wrong and you are wrong as a result, the cost is going to be enormous because those errors compound. And I've got another story here. Maybe we can get to it about how like so many people are now using tax AI for tax advice and doing their taxes, that that tax preparers and tax professionals are finding these big errors. And it looks right. The analysis looks correct, but the AI is using, say, the wrong tax brackets or the wrong dates or.

David Leary: [00:11:47] It's very convincing and confident.

Blake Oliver: [00:11:49] Exactly. It's very confident, but not always right. So one of the strongest themes, and then I'll be done with this report. One of the strongest themes is that, uh, accountants have to be, have to remain the trusted human authority over increasingly autonomous systems. They've trademarked this phrase human in the lead, which to me is basically the same as like human in the.

David Leary: [00:12:10] Loop, the loop or management.

Blake Oliver: [00:12:12] Yeah, there's going to be a human in the loop. That's what we're going to get paid to be, is the human in the loop of the AI system. And I, uh, I'm optimistic actually about the future of the profession. And so are the accountants that were surveyed. 80% of respondents were described as somewhat or very optimistic about the profession's future. What's the number one blocker to all of this? The report is, is very, uh, self-aware. The number one barrier, the number one barrier to progress is ourselves. 93% of participants use that idea in some form. So we are resistant to change as a profession, but we are going to have to change a lot. This is a total flip of what we do now, where it's like 80% compliance, 20% advisory type of work. It's going to have to flip the other way around. So, I mean.

David Leary: [00:13:06] One of our developers, because we're going through a similar transition with our developers, right? And Intuit was just talking about this. I saw their, their CIO talk about how Intuit developers are doing 12 X their productivity because of using AI coding and AI tools. And one of our developers here at earmark made the comment, I don't know if he saw it somewhere else or if this is an original thought that everybody, all of the developers on our team are getting a silent promotion. You now are being promoted to be an engineering manager, and you're going to have five engineers, AI engineers working for you. And that's the way I think maybe in accounting to think about you now. Just got a promotion to a mid-level accounting manager, and you're just going to manage some AI employees. Everybody just got a silent promotion. So way to think about it.

Blake Oliver: [00:13:47] And that's what's happening with staff accountants. They're going to be instantly managing AI agents instead of doing the work themselves. All right. Let's thank our next sponsor, David. And then I'll let you pick the next story. Our next sponsor is on pay. Are you tired of payroll headaches getting in the way of the client experience you want to deliver? Manual workflows, creating bottlenecks, compliance, nightmares, and endless support calls that go nowhere. There's a better way for your team and your clients on pay. Is the payroll partner that accountants and bookkeepers actually love. Why? Because it's easy to use, packed with value, and backed by support that actually supports you. Their team gets rave reviews for being fast, expert, and actually reachable when you need them on pay handles the heavy lifting. You get a dedicated onboarding coordinator who sets up worker profiles and transfers year to date data from previous providers, all at no extra cost. They're seamless. Quickbooks and Xero integrations eliminate manual journal entries, and they support any type of business use serve farms, restaurants, nonprofits, you name it. Onp can handle unique requirements without adding complexity, and Onp keeps pricing simple to everything your clients expect, from multi-state filing to off cycle pay runs is included. No hidden fees and no surprises. To book a demo, head over to The Accounting Podcast dot ProAdvisor. That's The Accounting Podcast dot co forward slash OPAY.

David Leary: [00:15:10] So I have a AICPA also released a survey results for the. The concerns. The top concerns for 2026 from firms. I want to bring that up before we do that, just a small call out for our live audience viewers. When I was at AICPA multiple times people have asked me who is boring, accounting, boring accountant comes every single week to our live stream, brings us coffee emojis, and nobody in the industry knows who this mysterious person is. So boring. Accountant. One day if you're at a conference, you got to come up and let us know who you are or. I was also thinking we could make. Shirts. Are you boring, accountant? We'll put a little coffee emoji on shirts and. And start handing them out to people because it's a big mystery. But he's very popular. He's almost as popular as us. He's like.

Blake Oliver: [00:15:49] The Banksy. The. Yeah, yeah. They are the Banksy of accounting.

David Leary: [00:15:55] Exactly. All right. So let's jump into the other thing that AICPA released. So I had to do a screenshot from their town hall. That was the on the main stage keynote because the survey, I don't feel like it's released anywhere. I tried to hunt for it. I couldn't find it. So I'll bring up the slide deck here. So this is the, uh, the, the group, I don't even know what the acronym stands for, but it's the PC top issue survey. Okay. Basically they basically they're asking all the firms, different size firms and they group it by the size of the firm. What are your concerns in 2026? So I'll bring up this artwork here or image I stole from their, uh, YouTube video of their thing. So what's interesting I think is you really see the the shift between bigger firms have more resources versus smaller firms. So bigger firms are not concerned about keeping up with tax law changes, right. They. But smaller firms are. Maybe this is why like April Alliance, BDO Alliance, those make a lot of sense. You're getting the benefit of that big firm on these knowledge type things. Smaller firms are not really concerned with workflow, right. They're not concerned with technologies or retaining staff. But on all three of those big firms are really concerned about retaining staff, implementing technologies. Um, they can't seem to do all that very well. Uh, what's interesting, the other thing that's interesting is the midsize firms, you know, those firms that are from 11 to 100, they struggle to find staff.

Blake Oliver: [00:17:23] Oh yeah. I see that the most yeah. That's a big concern for them.

David Leary: [00:17:26] That's a big concern for them. Um and one thing that is another one that I think for a lot of people is if you look the smaller firms, the solo and then the 2 to 10. They don't have issues or worries about their staff being there, staff workload or capacity. But could. Incidentally, those same size firms also aren't concerned about adopting technology and integrating technologies. So but the big firms, they struggle with both of those. So I'm wondering if the smaller firms, because they're capable of adopting technology better, their workload on their staff is less.

Blake Oliver: [00:17:59] Mhm.

David Leary: [00:18:00] Or they they don't worry about workflow for their staff.

Blake Oliver: [00:18:04] Well, yeah. And it's easier when you're new when when you're a small firm, you're more agile. You can implement tools and you can get the productivity boost of all this new stuff.

David Leary: [00:18:14] And only the big firms are the 500 plus firms are worried about retaining staff. And I think it's because the bigger firms, these older legacy huge firms have a lot of people that are going to transition out soon. And that's why this is a big concern, retirement age, etc..

Blake Oliver: [00:18:30] So OpenAI's CFO, I did a webinar and talked about what their finance team looks like. This is a company that is doing tens of billions of dollars in revenue. And she said, This is Sarah Fryer, CFO of open AI, maker of ChatGPT. She says they have an AI native finance function, of course, because they're inside of OpenAI. And this is the number that stuck with me. Their finance organization is about 200 people. And she said that's really lean for a company of their scale over the human people.

David Leary: [00:19:12] Or is that.

Blake Oliver: [00:19:12] Yes, 200 human people.

David Leary: [00:19:14] Okay. Human people.

Blake Oliver: [00:19:15] So they have been over the next over two years, just moving from experimenting with their own product, ChatGPT and custom teas to applying AI across core finance processes. And I wanted to know, like, how lean is that really? Because then we can get an idea of the productivity bump from using AI as a leader, right? We assume that OpenAI's finance team is using AI as much as it possibly can. Uh, it would be hypocritical if they didn't. And so I asked, I did some research. I asked Gemini what would open AI look like if it was a traditional finance team and, and how many how many people would it have? And basically the answer is 500 to 1000 or more people. So that means that OpenAI is, you know, let's say roughly. And this fits with the productivity boost we've seen roughly, you know, could be like as anywhere from 3 or 4 times more productive to ten times more productive.

David Leary: [00:20:25] Do you still have that chat open?

Blake Oliver: [00:20:27] Yes.

David Leary: [00:20:28] That prompt, can you ask it what the equivalent to that same question you asked about open AI, but the equivalent for Zapier, because I said I attended a webinar with Zapier. It was their finance team. Yeah. They have seven people. And those seven people, they've built almost 200 agents doing all this work for the internal control internal accounting of Zapier. So I'm wondering, like, what would that normally be based on the size?

Blake Oliver: [00:20:52] Uh, I'll ask that for you and I'll get back to you on that. But I want to highlight some stats that are, you know, kind of interesting in this regard that I, that I looked up. So, um, to figure this out, Gemini went and looked at, uh, cross industry financial data by benchmarking authorities like AP, QC and global and found that like in the median company, there's about 69, 67 finance staff per 1 billion in revenue. And so let's just call it 70, 70 finance staff per 1 billion in revenue. Open AI has like nine finance staff per billion in revenue, so five six times more productive, five six times fewer staff. I think if I'm doing the math right. So I'm asking Gemini that question for you, David. I'll get back to you when it chugs the numbers chugs through the numbers. Um, let's also talk about some good news in accounting. Accounting enrollment is up 9%. Did you see this one?

David Leary: [00:22:00] We were right. We were right. Blake got rid of 150 hour rule. And now word's out. And now accounting enrollment is up.

Blake Oliver: [00:22:07] Well, to be fair, though, we've been called out before by our our viewers saying that no, it's not the 150 hour rule or the CPA pathways legislation. It's, uh, it's salaries, salaries. But I think it could be both. Why not? Yes. Undergrad enrollment in four year accounting programs jumped 8.9% this spring. That's up to nearly 282,000 students. It's the third year in a row of growth. For comparison, enrollment across all majors only rose 1.3%. So we were at nine 8.9%. Everything else 1.3%, almost flat. So that's great momentum.

David Leary: [00:22:47] And what's more impressive about that number is what is the news been for the last 18 months. Accounting's going away because of AI accounting is going away like like it's been very you'd be you should in theory be scared based on the headlines to become an accountant as a career. So it's a very impressive number that that even hits that considering all the market forces that are against that number.

Blake Oliver: [00:23:10] Since we're speaking about the alternative pathways, uh, and, and, and accounting enrollment, let's highlight three more states that have created an alternative pathway. A 120 hour, four year degree option to become a CPA. We have now got Vermont, Missouri and Louisiana on board. So instead of an extra 30 credit hours, you get a bachelor's degree or 120 credits, two years of work experience, and you pass the CPA exam. With these states added, that means that about 43 states have now passed CPA pathway laws or changed their certification rules. And, you know, it's good timing because I saw another story that suggests that a master's degree isn't as valuable as it used to be. This was in the Wall Street Journal. The article headline is a master's degree isn't the job guarantee. It used to be. And it argues that a master's degree is no longer a reliable career accelerator that it was often seen as for younger professionals, according to new labor market data. Workers under 35 with master's degrees are facing unusually high unemployment compared to historical norms, even as employment among. Similarly young workers with PhDs. Law degrees and medical degrees remains unusually low. Unemployment for master's degree holders under 35 has been near its highest levels over the past two decades. Usually this group is at the burning glass says the group is currently at the 77th percentile of unemployment, with the 50th percentile representing normal conditions. It's been only as bad as this for about one quarter of the time over the last 20 plus years, so it seems like the accounting profession got ahead of this.

David Leary: [00:25:07] Yeah, because this is not just a trend for the extra. Education is not just a trend for accountants are going away. We're going to see this across all professions possibly.

Blake Oliver: [00:25:17] Mhm.

Blake Oliver: [00:25:19] David you got a funny story. I just we have to get to it. Okay. And we need to get to it now because we got this interview with Shelley. We're to play this. You, you, you told me before we started recording that you have a story about a man who has been accused of stealing $7,000 in cash from an accounting firm.

David Leary: [00:25:35] Yes. So here's the story, okay. Police in Brooklyn are looking for someone who walked into an accounting firm in Bay bridge and stole $7,000 of cash right off a 64 year old employee's desk. It happened on June 1st, around 2 p.m. at Eiders and Sons Accounting and Business Taxation on Bay Ridge Avenue. The suspect just walked in, grabbed the cash while the victim wasn't at his desk and walked out. This is my mind blown. Like, first off, what accounting firm has $7,000 just sitting on a desk? Maybe I could possibly think of a scenario. It's April 17th and you do a lot of $99 10,000 seconds, and you just pop them out and people pay you cash. I could see maybe then, but this is June 1st. Like, what is this accounting firm do that they have this cash laying around. Something doesn't add up. And then on top of that, how did this person know just to walk into some random accounting firm and the cash would just be sitting there. Like there's something we don't have the full story here of what happened. It's very sketchy.

Blake Oliver: [00:26:35] Well, it's an indication of how, you know the profession. Much of the profession is still operating 20 years in the past, right?

David Leary: [00:26:44] Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:26:45] Taking cash.

David Leary: [00:26:46] That's the key to the story. The 64 year old employee's desk. Is that the the key to the story here?

Blake Oliver: [00:26:52] Hey, I've got some follow up, David. And this is about KPMG. Remember we talked about how the CEO of KPMG in Australia had to resign, along with another senior executive, over this scandal that they were using, uh, audit information obtained in an audit of one client to win business against competitors for other clients. Well, it gets worse. So, uh, there was a whistleblower who blew the whistle on all of this, exposed all of this. T and W is reporting that KPMG secretly and repeatedly accessed that whistleblowers work computer over roughly two years, extracted files related to the employee's allegations, and shared that material with senior partners and former KPMG Australia CEO Andrew Yates. Now, KPMG had the legal right to search the employee's work laptop, but the search was done covertly while the whistleblower was in a dispute with the firm over legal protections. And at the same time, KPMG was saying that they didn't have information about the allegations. Right. And and was trying to cover up the whistleblowers allegations. So it just keeps getting worse. And we talked about in previous episodes about how now governments across Australia are reviewing the contracts that KPMG Australia has with them. It's it's more than 650 AUD in contracts.

David Leary: [00:28:19] 250. Okay.

Blake Oliver: [00:28:20] 650 million.

Blake Oliver: [00:28:21] Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:28:23] So there's a parliamentary inquiry that is set to question a dozen current and former partners on June 19th. It sounds like we're going to hear more and more about this.

David Leary: [00:28:36] Crow is going to has a P investment of $3 billion happening. So and this is probably what top £0.05 investment over the last ten years, right? $3 billion is a serious amount of investment. Um, now what's interesting about this, and this goes back to my theory with Red lobster, right? Red lobster, the P company's own shrimp boats. And they made Red lobster by all the do all you can eat shrimp and it bankrupted them. Uh, there's another story. We'll talk more about Red lobster as well to kind of prove my point on this. So KKR has investments in an ERP system, software, IT automation, mainframes, uh, cybersecurity company, uh, they have an investment in accounting systems for hedge funds and asset managers and institutional investors. They also now crow. One of crow's strongest verticals is health care. How convenient. Kkr has investments in WebMD, which is a healthcare payments analytics play. They also have a healthcare staffing company. Envision healthcare. So like, it's pretty clear, like what happened with Red lobster in this. You must buy our shrimp from our shrimp boats because we have shrimp and we need to make money. This is why they're going to buy accounting firms. They have all these other investments. They're not buying accounting firms in the. And I honestly believe the proof is what you covered last week or the week before. The stock market's not buying CBI's because accounting firms are profitable. P is buying accounting firms to sell all the crap from their other investments. And and there's another example of this in the latest for Red lobster. So Red lobster, I don't know if you saw this week announced the Red lobster CEO said he's going to transform the chain into the most AR forward restaurant the company that exist. Now let's rewind.

Blake Oliver: [00:30:19] Wait. What? Forward.

David Leary: [00:30:21] The CEO of Red lobster said they're going to be the most AI forward restaurant that exists. So? So let's say, okay, that's fine, but let's step back. So you think Red lobster would have learned this lesson already? They went bankrupt because PE forced them to buy all the shrimp. So let's work backwards. So Red lobster is owned by RL Investor Holdings LLC. They own Red lobster. Rl Investor Holdings includes the Fortress Investment Group, TCW and Blue Torch. Capital fortress was owned by SoftBank, which we know has insane exposure to AI. But then they sold Fortress to Mood Mubadala Investment Company, which is the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund. Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Fund might be the most exposed capital pool to AI in the world. So follow this. Right. Your money's.

Blake Oliver: [00:31:14] I'm trying.

Blake Oliver: [00:31:15] To connect. I'm connecting the strings on the board with the tin foil hat.

David Leary: [00:31:19] If you are highly invested in AI, you want to get you need your investment. You need to force companies to buy AI stuff. So buy Red lobster and force them to implement AI. That's what's happening. Again, Red lobster is like, they're suckers to this. It's happening. But I do think this is a risk to accounting firms. Accounting firms are going to be asked to rule things out. And another Stefanos Slack also got PE funding. And they um again the P company has a bunch of tech investments and overlaps on that. And specifically, um, you know, Slack is big in construction real estate and the company that invested in them. Uh, it's a Madison Dearborn partners. They're big in construction and real estate stuff. And so you could easily see you're maybe doing a cast engagement or outsourced CFO services for a company. Oh, but you also have these other problems where it's a manufacturer, right? Manufacturing. Oh, you have problems with your compliance and VoIP and workflows and they're gonna be able to sell them other stuff. Now, is it proof there's going to be some agreement that that's what they're going to do, but it's probably going to happen naturally under the table. Like, oh, we just happen to also have a company that does this for you as a service. And that's how these companies are going to make their money. They're not making money because they think the accounting firms are going to make them money. They're making money because the accounting firms are going to move their other product offerings.

Blake Oliver: [00:32:41] And that is a threat.

Blake Oliver: [00:32:43] To the independence and objectivity of CPAs. And a recent CPA Trendlines survey shows that the profession is deeply uneasy about private equity. Over half of the respondents, 57%, said private equity threatens the CPA brand. Only 10% said that P e would have little or no impact, and a 50% described themselves as firmly opposed to p e investment, but they are willing to take the money.

David Leary: [00:33:20] Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:33:22] Right. If the money comes along, they'll take it. Um, so yeah, I wonder if we'll continue to see this or not. I mean, I guess this is just the future. Is this just the future of the profession? Is this where we're headed? I'd be curious to know what our livestream viewers think.

David Leary: [00:33:39] So I have a quick story about something else that the AICPA rolled out at engage that I think will set the table with, with your interview with Shelley.

Blake Oliver: [00:33:47] Okay.

David Leary: [00:33:48] So the AICPA launched its CPA trust campaign. So you just talked about trust in CPAs a little while ago, right? And basically, they're going to they have a whole website set up, trusted cpa.org. They're going to run a national commercial on television about trusting CPAs. And they're going to encourage people to use hashtags like hashtag trusted CPA, hashtag proud CPA, and do this whole thing around trusting CPUs. Now I'm thinking about how silly this is. Like, at the same time, we live in a world where we're telling people not to put CPE on their email signature or LinkedIn page. That's why I wonder, is this like a legal loophole? Like you can't put CPA in your thing or on your LinkedIn page, but you could use this hashtag trust CPAs, right? Proud CPA. You can do hashtag proud CPA and that maybe, maybe it's a legal hack. The AICPA created to avoid these issues with making people remove the CPA from their email signatures. So there's a commercial, there's a video. I don't think we have to play it on the show, but if you just go to trusted cpa.org, you can watch the video and see the initiative here that they launched.

Blake Oliver: [00:34:54] Let's go ahead and thank our next sponsor. And then after that, we're going to hear from Shelly Weir of the Florida Institute of CPAs. Our next sponsor is rhe cost seg. If you have real estate clients you already know, cost segregation can save them serious money, but actually delivering studies in house is a headache you don't need. And sending clients to an outside firm means losing control of the relationship. That's where our cost seg comes in. They're the partner CPAs trust to deliver engineer backed cost segregation studies. Start to finish. You keep the client relationship. They bring the engineers and the deliverables. Your client saves 6 to 7 figures. You're the hero. They've completed over 15,000 studies, and the pricing is actually reasonable. We're talking $1,000 for rapid reports and 3000 for fully engineered studies. That's way below the typical five K minimums you'll see elsewhere. And they never compete with your firm with the one big beautiful bill act reinstating permanent 100% bonus depreciation cost. Seg studies are more valuable than they've ever been. To schedule a strategy call with the cost SEG team and get a special bonus perk, mention the Accounting podcast. Head over to The Accounting Podcast dot promo slash r e cost seg. That's accounting podcast dot promo forward slash RECOSTSEG. And now let's hear from Shelly Weir of the Florida Institute of CPAs. I spoke to her about the threat to the CPA license and specifically the Board of Accountancy in Florida. There has been an effort over the last two years in Florida to eliminate the Board of Accountancy, all CPE for CPAs and even the education requirement entirely. So here is Shelly Weir. For the past two years, f I CPA has been fighting legislation that would have eliminated Florida's Board of Accountancy, wiped out CPE requirements and paved the way to dismantle CPA licensure entirely. And they beat it twice. And in all that time, Shelly hasn't given a single live interview about it until now. This is an exclusive. Shelley, welcome to the show.

Shelly Weir FICPA Clip: [00:37:10] Thank you so much, Blake. I appreciate you for having me. I'm excited to chat.

Blake Oliver: [00:37:14] Shelley, when I heard about this, what was going on in Florida, I was really surprised because it hasn't made it out into the the national press. It's been very quiet. But this is a big deal. This legislation that you've been dealing with in Florida and over these past months, you haven't given any interviews. You've turned down reporters. And I'm curious why. It's an honor to have you here on the show. I'm just curious why you have stayed quiet about this for so long, and why is now the right time to talk about it?

Shelly Weir FICPA Clip: [00:37:53] No, thanks for asking that question. It's certainly not because we didn't want to talk about it. Right. But I think the answer to that question is twofold. First and foremost, we were head down working as hard as we could to make sure that we protected the profession. I mean, months and weeks of no sleep, time away from family, the whole thing. And so at the end of the day, as you know, Blake, there's so many, so many hours in the day, you got to be able to prioritize time. We were working with the political trade press media, especially those that were based in Tallahassee, where legislators were the audience. So a lot of the trade press journals for legislative purposes, we were we were heavily involved in making sure we got our message out there. But to your point, to the general public, we were very careful because we didn't want to create a panic, um, amongst the profession. And we certainly didn't want to present in any capacity anything that would not be fully unified messaging to be able to effectively defeat the proposal that had been laid on the table in Florida. So I've been eager to chat about it. I get the question all the time, why? What's going on, all those things? So I'm looking forward to today.

Blake Oliver: [00:39:09] And I am happy to have you on to talk about this. This bill would have had devastating consequences for the CPA for the accounting profession. Can you walk me through what the bill actually proposed and like, what would have happened if it had passed?

Shelly Weir FICPA Clip: [00:39:28] Yeah, absolutely. So in Florida specifically, this really started to pick up momentum several years ago. Um, anytime you have a piece of legislation that is this significant, there are normally signals that it's coming. There's chess pieces that get put onto the chess board. And so it's our job as lobbyists to both see the field clearly, but also start working with legislators to prepare accordingly. So we had known, and I had been talking to my own society board about this, as well as the national entities for a couple of years before the bill actually was filed. Um, it did look a little bit different than what we initially thought it might look like, but the spirit and the core function of what they were trying to do was filed. So if we flash forward to early April of 2025, the bill was filed. So Blake, just very quick civics lesson in Florida. We have legislative session every year for 60 days. So for 60 days, it's fast and furious. That's when you get bills passed or you don't. And then the following year, rinse and repeat. So this was the 2025 legislative session the first week of April. About halfway through those 60 days, the bill dropped and it was a behemoth 550 page bill.

Shelly Weir FICPA Clip: [00:40:52] We were not the only profession in the bill. It was ourselves, the architects, the engineers, the veterinarians, the realtors, the harbor pilots, which are really important in Florida and a host of other professions, all with the same goal of eliminating their regulatory board, including our board, the Board of accountancy, eliminating all continuing education requirements, and setting a path for a next step. That would be the complete elimination of the education requirements for licensure altogether. So everything we've spent the last few years talking about relative to 120 and 150 would have gone away. It would have just been license being awarded based on either work experience only or passing an exam. And again, that was an across the board approach. I'll shorten, um, the 2025 story and we can get into that in a little bit in terms of how we were able to save the board, but we only had a couple of months to get ready for the 2026 legislative session. It came very, very fast. And we knew we'd be seeing the bill again. And we did, and it came back again. And so that's why when you say we've defeated it twice, um, we had to face it down twice over the past two sessions back to back.

Shelly Weir FICPA Clip: [00:42:13] So what would have happened if this bill passed? That's the other question that we get a lot. There certainly is. Blake a little bit unknown, right. We've never had this happen in the profession before, and I think a lot of our peers that were in this bill, the engineers, the architects, etc., were in the same boat. The bottom line for us is that we were never able to get the right kind of assurance or guarantee that the next step after this wasn't going to be the complete elimination of the license altogether. Um, whether or not that was the intent, fine. Um, but whether the license would be eliminated or it would be so degraded that it carried very little value. Either one of those things is a massive concern. That would have been more of the the long term. In the short term, there was massive risk to it breaking our mobility infrastructure and our system of commerce, which I know you and I will probably chat through as we go through today. So you're talking about an immediate impact on day one of that happening. But the longer term concerns were certainly high on our radar through all of this.

Blake Oliver: [00:43:28] What was the motivation for this bill like, who was behind it? Why? Why do this?

Shelly Weir FICPA Clip: [00:43:35] So I want to say this at the onset, this is very much a bipartisan issue. Deregulation broadly is bipartisan. Obviously, in Florida, we are very red leaning right now, but we are seeing this in blue leaning states as well. For the Republicans, specifically on the red side of the aisle, they're looking for something Blake Called Free Market Enterprise. It is this ideology that licensure creates too many barriers to entry. Too much red tape. There's too much government in your back pocket. Um, and they want the consumers to have more freedom, more freedom of choice. And ultimately what they want is more people to move to Florida, make it easier for people to get to work in Florida. And of course, more businesses to move to Florida. Now, if we were living in a blue leaning state or maybe a purple state like yours, um, the common thread between both parties is workforce. The Democrats are looking at this more from an access and equity perspective. If there are too many barriers in place, that creates a limitation there. But the common thread is workforce. Both parties want to ultimately bolster the workforce. So if you can take your CPA hat off for a moment, which I know is hard to do. You can understand where they were coming from on this. Obviously we have concerns about the particular application, but not all. Deregulation is bad and scary and ugly. There's a lot of deregulation proposals that frankly are profession and our license would be highly supportive of. We don't want to be a barrier to entry. Right. We're the champions of efficiency. Cpas are paid a lot of money to help make businesses more efficient and more profitable. So there's a lot of common ground that can be found with this. This particular proposal was the most extreme version that the profession had seen.

Blake Oliver: [00:45:38] It passed the house very quickly. It sounds like the battle was then in the Senate. Yes. So, yes. Walk me through how you lobbied in this bill or against this bill. How did how did you, uh, how did you stop it?

Shelly Weir FICPA Clip: [00:45:58] Okay. So, um, every state's a little bit different in how you can introduce a piece of legislation and get it passed. But in Florida specifically, in order to pass a bill, you have to have it passed both the House and the Senate chambers. You have to have a bill in both of those chambers to to get it passed. So we knew early on that our fight and to save the board was was going to be on the Senate side. It moved extremely fast through the House. Blake, in 2025. I'm going from memory here, but I'm 99% sure that I have this correct. But from the time that the bill was introduced until it passed, the House floor was 18 days. So 18 days it flew through three different committees, went to the House floor for a vote, and then got sent over to the Senate. That is how fast and furious this went. And it was very, very similar in 2026. So how were we successful in saving the board? I will try to summarize two years of work in a short answer, but, uh, I'll first just touch on the resources that it took to be successful. So we had nine lobbyists registered to the FICP account. We have nine lobbyists on our account every year. This is not new. We have four in-house lobbyists that are on staff at Ficpa, myself included. And we have an external lobbying firm that we've worked with for 25 years.

Shelly Weir FICPA Clip: [00:47:22] That's amazing. So among those lobbyists, you have years and years and years of established rapport and relationships with legislators that come in handy in these times. We also had two different public affairs firms helping us craft the right story in the political trade journals to make sure that we were getting our messaging out in the media. We had voter polling projects trying to study how voters felt about these issues and being able to leverage that from a lobbying perspective. Obviously, we did a ton of member activation for Ficpa members. We had our members writing letters, making phone calls, coming to Tallahassee. Um, my favorite part of that whole process was we went out and we found, um, CPAs in our membership and across the state that had personal relationships with most of the members of the Florida House and the Florida Senate. And we leveraged those relationships to be able to make our points, because hearing from a lobbyist is very different than hearing from, say, your own CPA on this issue. So when I tell you, we found college roommates, sisters, people that went to church together, anything you can imagine. We had a CPA locked and loaded to work with us, with each key member of the Florida House and Senate. So that's kind of a resource perspective from an approach. We really took two paths that worked together.

Shelly Weir FICPA Clip: [00:48:54] Blake. So the first one was really leaning on the commerce argument. If you think about what I just said in terms of what the legislators are seeking here, less red tape, less bureaucracy. They certainly don't want more red tape and more bureaucracy. Right? They want people to be able to work freely across state lines and for businesses to flourish. Who doesn't want that? And so we started talking to them about our system of mobility and practice privileges because it is highly unique. We have what just about every other profession wants to have in that system of open border, cross state commerce. And that puts the power in the hands of the consumer to be able to choose what CPA they want to work with, regardless of where they live and work. Now, all that being said, I know that our mobility system is not perfect, Blake. That no system is no profession is, but what we have is far superior. And so when we started talking to the legislators about if you do this, you're now going to actually create more red tape for us, more walls. Florida's going to be at a disadvantage. That's not what you want. That argument landed really, really well, and it was brought up a lot in committee hearings when the legislators were talking about the pros and cons of whether or not to keep the CPAs in this bill or pass the bill at all.

Shelly Weir FICPA Clip: [00:50:23] The other thing that we did, which I would encourage every state society, every state board to think about doing, is there's a lot of common ground that can be found in the deregulation conversation with legislators that are seeking to deregulate. Not all deregulation is bad. I mean, Blake Pathways is a form of deregulation. We as a profession. Worked together to add an additional pathway to licensure that emphasized work experience to offer students choices. And we all rallied around that to support it. So we really asked ourselves before the bill even dropped, where can we and how can we as a license, be more efficient while still upholding the integrity of our license and obviously protecting the public? And so we did a lot of targeted modernization. We looked at all of our rules, all of our processes, from how someone gets a reciprocal license to how mobility works to all of these things. And we put together a piece of legislation that significantly streamlined our licensure processes, again, while upholding the integrity and protecting the public. And that was extremely well received because we were the only profession in this particular bill that had taken a moment to self reflect and take in a moment to modernize and try to see where we could find common ground that gave, frankly, both sides a win. And that was really our approach.

Blake Oliver: [00:51:59] We are in a unique spot as accountants, as CPAs, in that we are champions of business, and business tends to benefit from deregulation in general. I think we can agree on that. But we are also champions of regulation in the sense that our license is regulated and that exists to protect the public. So it's a it's kind of threading a needle there, isn't it, in terms of how you respond to this kind of threat?

Shelly Weir FICPA Clip: [00:52:29] That is the actual definition of what we did. Blake, have you ever seen Top Gun Maverick with Tom cruise, the latest Top Gun?

Blake Oliver: [00:52:36] Is that the latest one I have not. No.

Shelly Weir FICPA Clip: [00:52:38] Oh my gosh. Okay, well, you have to go watch it. Go watch it this weekend. But there's a scene in Top Gun Maverick. And now every time you watch that movie, you'll think of me. But they have the equivalent of what was the volleyball scene in the original movie? They're playing football in the new version, and they're playing something called dogfight football, so they're playing offense and defense at the same time. So they're throwing the football, trying to score a touchdown at the same time that they're trying to like, block and defend these giant linebackers, if you will, from coming after them and scoring. And that is the definition of what we've been doing over the past 12 months, is you have to thread the needle so carefully that you don't want to be seen as the agent of no, I don't ever want a legislator to have us walk into the door and have them be like, oh my God, here come the CPAs again. They're going to complain about X, Y, and Z, or they're not going to want us to do this. They're not going to try to work with us. And that is not the approach. But again, I go back to as a license, as a profession, we are the efficiency experts. And so if you can take a moment and just go, okay. What is it that they're trying to do? Granted, I don't agree with this particular application, but there's a lot that we can agree on here. And if both sides can come to a place where it's great for us, it's great for them, that's a win for for everyone. But it's a tough needle to thread.

Blake Oliver: [00:54:00] So let's talk about that. The areas where we can meet in the middle and compromise with deregulation efforts. What what do you see going forward in Florida and perhaps in other states where there's this type of conflict going on or this type of debate going on? What do you see CPAs being able to offer or change from the way we're doing things now?

Shelly Weir FICPA Clip: [00:54:26] Now? Great question. So I think at the granular level, we have to look at our model rules, our model statute, how all of those have been applied in each state. So I'm going to give you an example late. Um, one of the things that we did is we don't have reciprocity here. We call it licensure by endorsement. But for purposes of conversation, it's reciprocity. And when you look at Florida statute right now, there's like nine different steps and nine different things that someone like yourself, if you wanted to take your Arizona license and get licensed in Florida, would need to look at in order to get a reciprocal licensure. Now, obviously, the the longer that you've been licensed and working without having any dings on your record, the easier it is. But why do we need nine steps? Why can't we just say, okay, if they have a license in good standing from a board of accountancy that has a regulatory board, do we need to look under the hood and go through all of these different steps? For example, do we need to look at this person's college transcript to see that they've taken this particular course, um, that we have deemed necessary That only helps people get to work easier and faster and lowers barriers. But if we do it in the right way, and if we do it collectively together so that we know we're upholding the integrity of the license, we can find things like that all day long that'll make us better. Um, CPE is another one, and I'm sure you and I will talk about that soon, but there's lots of opportunities and we absolutely should leverage what we just did as a profession with pathways to our advantage, because I don't know of very many professions that took a look in the mirror and went, it's time for us to modernize and have all of these state societies work together collectively to advance it as fast as we have.

Blake Oliver: [00:56:26] That's a really good point. I mean, we have, as a profession, already been making moves on a national scale with all these different states working together to streamline the education requirement. And so was describing that. Was telling that story helpful to you in in your discussions with senators?

Shelly Weir FICPA Clip: [00:56:45] Very much so. Because think about it again, one of the components of the bill was, hey, do we really need to have education requirements for licensure or can we prioritize work experience and passing the exam? Their argument was that students learn more on the job than they do in the classroom. Now, I'm not here to make that argument. That was their argument. And again, when you've got 25 different licenses involved in the same bill, not all things are created equal. But respectfully, when you're in the same bill with like the hairdressers and trust me, I love my colorist that covers my grays every so often, but not the same thing, right? As a CPA or as an engineer. So when you can go to them and say, hey, we agree with you, we agree that we should give more choices, there should be freedom of choice. We can offer a pathway that prioritizes work experience. And it's not an or, it's an and let's work together. That landed very, very well again, because it meets what they're trying to do while upholding our system of commerce and the integrity of our license.

Blake Oliver: [00:57:53] Is there any particular moment from the past few years that sticks with you in this fight?

Shelly Weir FICPA Clip: [00:57:59] Um, not for probably not for a good reason, but probably the single toughest day of my career was the last day of legislative session last year in 2025. So, um, in Florida, what happens, Blake, is because we have a 60 day session, any bills that are not passed by midnight on that 60th day automatically die. You have to reintroduce them if you want to pass them in a future session. The only exception is if the presiding officer is both the Senate President and the speaker of the House agree that, hey, we need to extend legislative session for any number of reasons or call a special session. These particular bills will still be under consideration. So in last year's session. Again, moving very, very fast in those final weeks of session. Um the the bill had already passed the House. We were hanging on for dear life to prevent it from passing in the Senate. And so I was standing in what's called our rotunda in the Florida Capitol. And the House floor was on this side of me, and the Senate floor was on this side of me.

Shelly Weir FICPA Clip: [00:59:04] And when I tell you, Blake, we were literally physically pulling senators off the floor and just doing everything we could. I had every single CPE A that personally knew one of the senior members of the Senate calling and texting and just physically pulling them aside and going, don't do this. And standing in the hallway, we have, um, an amazing CPA senator. His name is Senator Joe Gruder, a senior member of our Senate hearings, chair of the RNC. I'm sure many people know, Joe, just the staunchest advocate for the profession. And just quite literally, while the realtors are all lined up over here and the engineers are over here, I'm like, if there's one lifeboat, I'm getting on it. Good luck to you people. I could just do what I can so that one will always stay in my mind. And it was a long day. They went all the way to midnight. Blake. All the way to midnight that day. So we did not know for sure if we were safe until very late in the evening.

Blake Oliver: [01:00:04] So you mentioned reciprocity as one area where Florida can can modernize. Are there any other areas of licensure where you think we can modernize and streamline, either in Florida or just more broadly on a national basis?

Shelly Weir FICPA Clip: [01:00:24] Yeah, I mean, listen, I think regardless of all this legislative stuff that has happened, we need to lead by example as a profession, right? And we have to recognize, as we did with pathways, the changing marketplace around us. And there's a lot of amazing and really smart people working in this profession. So if you take the CPE issue as an example, our chief concern was that they went all the way to an elimination. They weren't talking about modernization. How can we work together? It's just we want to get rid of it altogether. There's no point in it. Um, and when you add that with now you're starting to talk about risks to commerce. If you look at what happened with pathways, it was important that all of the states, or at least the majority of the states work together towards a common goal. Both the societies and the state boards as the regulators towards this common goal, so that we didn't disrupt our system of commerce because again, that that creates headache and red tape and barriers for everyone. So, you know, I would say I know this is a topic that you're super passionate about. I think there's a lot with CPE that we can think about. I think there's a lot that we can do to modernize it, to make sure that the purpose of it is to make a more competent CPE A. Right. But if we do that, and I'm excited to do it, I'm, I'm, I'm all in. We got to do it together so that we don't disrupt commerce. And that was always my issue with the CPE portion of the bill this year is, is just, hey, you got to give me an opportunity to do what's best for our Lazanis and what's best based on the marketplace, and not just throw this missile at me and say, to hell with your commerce. Right. So if we can do that and we can kind of do a call to action together, I think that's a great way that we can think about another level of deregulation, but on our terms.

Blake Oliver: [01:02:20] So you face this bill now for two years. Do you expect it to come back or have you put it to rest?

Shelly Weir FICPA Clip: [01:02:29] Yes. Um I don't think we put it to rest. This is an election year in Florida, so we will get a new governor in November. Um, we will also have a new speaker of the House and a new Senate president. So we get an all new deck of cards to play with. Blake. Um, if I had a crystal ball as we sit on what's today June 4th. And I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow. Okay. So if someone's listening to this in a few months, I want that noted for the record. But if I had a crystal ball today, I do not think the issue of deregulation is going away. Absolutely not. I think we'll probably see, you know, like a licensing reform task force or some type of reduction requirement and rules and, and regulations. Um, we'll probably see the CPE issue resurface here and in other states. Um, but I do think that when you have a new deck of cards and you've got new folks coming into office, it presents an amazing opportunity again for us to see where we can find common ground. And if we can do that before they drop a bill, we can be far more successful. So I'm not sure as we sit today that we will see the board elimination proposal next year, but I would never count it all the way out because that that idea has been planted. And it's it's landed. And there's a lot of people that have been here, regardless of the election the last couple of years, that are still interested in that. So we'll see. But I promise I'll keep everybody posted.

Blake Oliver: [01:03:59] I've been speaking with Shelley Weir, president and CEO of the Florida Institute of CPAs. Thank you, Shelley, for talking to me today about this. Really appreciate having you on the program.

Shelly Weir FICPA Clip: [01:04:11] No. My pleasure. And just thank you, Blake, for all that you do. And, uh, listen, state societies are on the front lines of this. It's been, um, as I said, pressure is a privilege. It's been my privilege to be the general, if you will, of this particular fight, but it's not over. And let's all just work together to to find common ground and work together to advance the profession. That's the most important thing, right?

Blake Oliver: [01:04:36] And if you're listening and you want to follow Philippe's advocacy work, you can head over to FIC dot ORG. Thanks for listening. See you around here next time.

David Leary: [01:04:48] It's a good interview.

Blake Oliver: [01:04:49] Thank you, thank you. I'm glad. It was great. I love the transparency and the insight or the the inside. Look at what goes on.

David Leary: [01:04:57] I think if I step back like what's going on this week with this interview you did, and then I look at the AI CPAs trusted cpa.org that they rolled out. Like, it feels like we were in a period of like all the states in the AICPA were locking horns for almost three years. And now it feels like maybe they're marching in an aligned point of view. Elevate the CPA brand, don't let it get deregulated by states. Et cetera. Et cetera. Like the because even the the trusted cpa.org brand links people out to every state society to go find a CPA. It's it just feels like that conflict that we had for three years. Maybe it's gone.

Blake Oliver: [01:05:36] Thanks everyone who joined us live. Follow the accounting podcast on YouTube. Subscribe. Hit that notification bell icon and you will get notified when we are streaming. You can chat with us. Let us know what you think. Thanks everyone who joined us live today. Alhaarth. Nathaniel. Tino. Boring. Accountant. Dre. Uh, who else here? Um, more too many comments. Tate. Great to see you as well. Awesome. Courtney. Doug. And don't forget, you can earn free continuing professional education for this episode and our whole back catalog of episodes on the accounting podcast, which is now up to 492 as we record this. Get the free earmark app, go to earmark.app in your web browser, or download the free app from the App Store. Create your account for free. Earn one free CPE for per week and support our work by subscribing for unlimited CPE and no ads. And if you have a firm with lots of CPAs who have a CPE requirement, or maybe you've got some enrolled agents as well, we can offer unlimited continuing professional education credits to your team for a very low price. Get at least 20% off. Sign up for earmark for teams. Contact us at sales at earmark. Cpe.com. At sales at earmark. Cpe.com. We'd love to get you set up with that.

Speaker 3: [01:07:10] And just a.

David Leary: [01:07:11] Reminder, you're down to 14, 15, 16, 17 more days. You can purchase earmark for $169 a year.

Blake Oliver: [01:07:17] $160.99.

David Leary: [01:07:19] $0.99. Prices are going up to $199.99 on July 1st. So if you've been thinking about buying earmark, get it done now because it's going to be more expensive starting July 1st.

Blake Oliver: [01:07:31] If you'll be at scaling new heights and you're watching this live, come say hi. I'll be at the relay booth on Tuesday morning. Let's see, what time exactly will that be? It's going to be, let's see. 10:40 a.m. to 11:20 a.m. at the Scaling New Heights conference at the relay booth. So come meet me. I'll have copies of my book to give away to the first 25. Who, uh, who show up and look forward to seeing you all there.

David Leary: [01:08:03] You're going to be signing the books.

Blake Oliver: [01:08:04] They will be signed.

David Leary: [01:08:06] I would like to get mine signed one of these days here.

Blake Oliver: [01:08:10] Maybe one, one, one time someday. All right, everyone, thanks a lot. See you around here in another week. Bye.