Top 5 Skills of Accounting Professionals Today: #2

Number two is Adaptability! Another soft skill. As accountants, we tend to see the world as black and white. But that is not how the world of business works. If you are an auditor, you can maybe be a little more black and white, but even then, you have to maintain good relationships with your clients and understand what they are trying to accomplish.

Notice how I have not brought up technical accounting knowledge in my top 5. That’s because, with enough hard work and dedication, you can EASILY master technical accounting knowledge. Read some papers, and learn how to apply accounting guidance, you can do it. But it’s way harder to learn how to be adaptable and flexible in your life. That’s because while you are learning a new skill, you also have to unlearn some bad habits along the way.

Ok back to adaptability. As corporate accountants, we have to be able to balance the needs of the business while doing our jobs every single day. Sometimes those things are in direct opposition. Sometimes, one might be more important than the other. For example, we have to create an expense policy for our company. Depending on the company and its culture, we might want to be more or less stringent with the type of expenses we’re allowed to approve.

Here are some fun examples:

My CEO is 24 years old and lacks a strong financial understanding. He wants everyone to have fun and does not want us to enforce too many rules. So even though it goes against my role to protect the funds of the company, the CEO in this case will determine our expense policy.

The IRS says that we should have receipts for all expenses below $75 but my company is a series A company with 20 people. People often misplace their itemized receipts but are able to provide their credit card statements as proof of their transactions. Should I approve this reimbursement request? What if my company is a Series D company with 500 people? Or a public company? The answer is maybe, probably not, and no. Notice how the answer may vary based on the size of the company.

What if the culture at the company is really against following rules and processes and you might piss off a few execs by enforcing the receipt rules.
Would that change your answer? These are the things that I face on a daily basis. Sometimes, I have to stand my ground and be ready to fight the execs. Other times, I might decide that this is not a fight that I want to fight and I need to save my ammo and social capital for another time.

I’ve hired some previous employees who came directly from auditing at a Big 4. Adjustment to a new environment and dealing with culture shock are difficult for them. They have a really hard time navigating the ambiguity that comes with the job. I always remind them, that you are working for a company, and you need to balance the needs of the company and GAAP. If I try to follow GAAP to the letter of the law all the time, my company would probably go bankrupt because we wouldn’t be able to function. Would that be an outcome that you would want? This is why I like to always remind them of the cost benefit analysis. Most of the time, it’s easy to see, that GAAP really gets in the way of small business growth and what a company can do with 500 employees is very different than one with 50 employees.

As accountants, we need to make sure we’re also connecting with our internal business partners and not alienating them with our rules. I never want to be seen as red tape but rather, as a strategy partner to the business. I remind everyone that I always have the business’ interest at heart, and my job is to protect our cash from waste and ensure that we’re able to pass our annual audits. This is always a fine line and you need to be able to navigate it with grace.

There are days when I get really frustrated and I have to take a step back and look at all the facts. It’s easy to cling to our rules and guidance and want others to do things by the book, but at the end of the day, we need to do what’s right for the business. As a controller at a growing midsize firm that’s not public, a big part of my job is to help our auditors understand the balance as well.

So what have we learned? Technical skills might get you pretty far as an individual contributor at the lower levels, but it’s the soft skills and ability to be flexible and see the big picture that will elevate you to become a manager and above.