we can’t keep going the way we’re going.
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the disruptors
with liz farr for 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间
donny shimamoto, cpa.citp, cgma, says that one of the covid pandemic’s benefits is accelerating technology adoption.
more: jennifer wilson: empower young workers to build the firm everyone loves | mike whitmire: re-think your hiring and training practices | hector garcia: success strategies of a quickbooks youtube superstar | blake oliver: why tax work yearns to be free| private equity explodes in u.k. | brannon poe: the status quo must go | accounting nerds, unlock your super powers | disruptor: jason statts shakes up the status quo | think small to think big with matt wilkinson | when financial statements go extinct with corey schmidt | can geraldine carter save accountants from themselves? | re-inventing accounting with tyler anderson
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with the ongoing talent crunch, technology is one of the ways firms can get the work done with fewer people, as firm owners seek to create a sustainable balance “because we can’t keep going the way that we’re going.”
pro members always get all the top takeaways, details on the guest, and the full transcript.
some of this technology has been around for a decade or more. still, until the pandemic forced most people into remote work, many firms weren’t using technology to its fullest potential. with the improvements today in the iterative learning of artificial intelligence, shimamoto says today, there “is not a reason why any firm should not be using these technologies.”
as technology automates more of the work done by entry-level staff, shimamoto says we will see a shift from the usual pyramid-shaped org chart to more of a diamond-shape with a “fat middle area that has people that are more experienced, who can spend more time on analysis and can spend more time actually understanding what’s going on, what’s happening in the business.”
however, creating that fat middle layer will require a shift in how we do our education.
shimamoto was involved in the aicpa’s cpa evolution initiative, which will bring more technology into the accounting curriculum. besides technology, accounting in the future will require more analysis, critical thinking, and pattern recognition combined with the ability to see the big picture.
another mindset that needs to shift is that everyone needs to keep moving upward. in shimamoto’s firm, he has “lifters” who excel at onboarding, and that becomes their permanent job. find places in your firm for people to excel and let them stay there and continue to do the work they love.
six more takeaways from donny shimamoto:
- let your people work according to the schedule that suits them. shimamoto’s team includes working mothers who work around their kids’ school and bedtime schedules, which means they do much of their work outside the usual 9-5 timeframe. we must rethink the concept of the right way to work or the right time.
- the older generation, with their years of experience, will be exiting the profession soon, but we don’t have a good way to replace that intellectual capital.
- instead of finding a tech solution or a process change that will work with what you have now, consider starting with a blank slate. how would you build something if you were starting your firm today?
- many firm leaders are reluctant to change because they are uncomfortable not having all the answers and not being “the one” anymore. the need to rely on younger staff to drive change can make them feel they are losing control. both of these mindsets need to change or younger team members will leave.
- the future of accounting won’t be one-dimensional accounting only, but our increasingly complex world will require embracing other disciplines. we need multidisciplinary approaches to the complex problems our clients are dealing with.
- risk advisory services are becoming urgently needed services. this includes monitoring privacy and ethical use of the data that is being constantly generated.
more about donny shimamoto
donny c. shimamoto, cpa.citp, cgma, is the founder and managing director of intraprisetechknowlogies llc, a specialized cpa firm dedicated to helping small businesses and middle market organizations leverage strategic technologies, proactively manage their business and technical risks, and enable balanced organizational growth and development. shimamoto also works as a trusted business advisor with larger organizations, facilitating organizational strategic planning and execution, it governance and planning, enterprise architecture, information architecture and assurance, business process improvement, and business intelligence initiatives.
?shimamoto was the first certified information technology professional (cpa.citp) in hawaii and is one of only four in the state. the citp credential is a specialty designation of the american institute of certified public accountants (aicpa) that identifies certified public accountants (cpas) with the unique ability to bridge between business and technology, meeting the strict requirements for a cpa license as well as additional training and experience in technology strategic planning, it architecture, business process enablement, system development and acquisition, it audit and control, and it governance. he can be reached at donny@intraprise.us.
transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)
liz farr 00:14
welcome to accounting disrupter conversations. my name is liz farr, 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间. and my guest today is dani shimamoto, managing director and founder of enterprise technologies and inspiration architect for the center for accounting, accounting transformation. how are you today, donnie? i am wonderful today. how are you doing? i’m doing very well, very well. oh, we’ve got a lot to get covered to cover. so let’s jump in.
donny shimamoto 00:49
now accounting talent in the us has been pretty scarce for years in covid made it worse? what are some things that you’ve seen firms do that have been successful? well, this is i think this is, i’m gonna say one of the benefits of covid, or the pandemic in this sense, in that it’s helped to actually accelerate people’s adoption of technology. and that’s really, to me the best strategy, as you start to look at how do i, how do i do more with less people? the answer, which has been around for a long time has been automate. and counting as a whole, we’ve just our profession has been behind in a lot of ways in adopting some of the automations that are possible. and if you know, looking, again, at the pandemic, we see it where things like zoom meetings and other types of instant messaging, like those have been around forever, and what feels like forever bytes, you know, over at this point over 20 years for instant messaging, probably 1015 years, right. the first time skype came out with its video meetings, was pretty widely used. so the technologies have been there, they’re just not adopted. so to me, the first thing that firms should be looking at is really looking at can i automate what some of the things that we do? and then the second thing i would add to that is outsourcing. so i’ve been involved in helping with some research around tax automation, and bookkeeping automation, which we’ve, we’re going yet it’s okay, what are you doing? how, what technologies are using? how are you automating. but the second thing that came up in a lot of those was well, and then we outsource what we can’t automate. and currently, you know, going overseas, whether it’s to india and philippines are the two that we probably hear the most from. sometimes it’s a firm going and opening a remote office. other times, they’re working with one of the major outsourcing firms, and there’s a bunch of them that specialize just an accounting. so those two together are really what we’re seeing kind of combat this, this staffing scarcity.
liz farr 03:11
those are all really good points. and i do agree with you that automation needs to be a big part of it. and it’s kind of surprising how many firms out there still are using paper and manual entry. it’s really shocking. in my last stint in public accounting, in the text department, people had forgotten how to or didn’t know how to import trial balance information into the tech software. oh, and so they were keying everything in by hand. and i was just flabbergasted because i hadn’t done that for 10 years.
donny shimamoto 03:59
well, there was an article that recently came out to about the irs and how the irs is timekeeping. yeah, turns and and i thought, no, it is crazy.
liz farr 04:10
i mean, the technology’s been out there for 15 years at least to do that, and it gets better and better. so i don’t understand why the irs isn’t using something like that. it’s not that hard to do.
donny shimamoto 04:29
well, and i can understand for practitioners were when some of this first came out, which i think was like 10 years ago, maybe even 15 years ago. there were a lot of issues with it. and so you heard all these horror stories, but as you’ve said, these technique these technologies have accelerated, and they’re so much more effective. and part of the research i did you know, we found firms shared with me and they said, you know, the first year was a little painful because we had to train it to read things and do things correctly. but after that, it pretty much worked. and it was just more of an it became more of an iterative learning exercise. and so actually, this is where you start to hear machine learning or artificial intelligence coming into play, which is actually making it even more accurate going forward. so there really today is not a reason why any firms should not be using these technologies.
liz farr 05:27
oh, you’re absolutely right. now, along those lines, the business model for accounting firms really hadn’t changed much for a long time, and billing by the hour and these pyramidal org charts with few partners at the top and then a bunch of staff at the bottom, but we’re seeing that change, what are some of the changes that you’re seeing?
donny shimamoto 05:57
well, you’ve actually, you mentioned this concept of the pyramid with the few partners on the top and the, basically the broad base with all the staff. and not that we’ve seen this change happen a lot yet, but the change that’s coming, and it’s going to come really quickly as the reversal of that pyramid. because as we start to see the technology come in and automate and eliminate that key punch, and that the all of that more manual type of effort, she will need less staff to do the entry level or the lower level work. and i think it’s actually going to look good, maybe not a reverse of the pyramid, but more like a diamond, where we’ve got this kind of fat middle area that has people that are more experienced, can spend more time on analysis can spend more time actually understanding what’s going on what’s happening in the business. and really working with information that’s provided by that lower level. now, it doesn’t mean that that level goes away, because it is still kind of a diamond. so there’s people needed, because what they’re really doing is they’re watching to make sure that the machine is doing it correctly, or they’re dealing with the things that the machine can’t read. anything that was handled personally, or, you know, they’re validating, because that’s one of the other steps is like, take a look at the what was on paper and did the machine read it correctly. but that’s a lot takes a lot less time than having to key everything in yourself and get all those corrections. so i think we’re really going to see more of this diamond type of organization come in in with that, if people continue to adopt the automation, and will actually be staff as well. so i think a lot of people forget that. from a population standpoint, we’re past this crux of the baby. and so people were less children. and we’re seeing that now. so i kind of laugh when i hear people talk about well, there’s less accounting graduate lesson counting enrollments, less accounting grads. and i get that and i go, yeah, did you look at the population, we’re not a growing population anymore. so it only makes sense that these things start to start to skim down. but the works not getting any less. so we do leverage technology to be able to do more with less people.
liz farr 08:30
i agree. and i’ve heard other takes on this diamond shape or chart. so you’re not the only one. i think the aicpa has something about it, i saw something couple years ago. but the challenge will be i think, figuring out how to build up this fat middle layer. because we won’t have we won’t be hiring on the attrition model anymore, where you hire 10 people and you hope that three or four of them make it to manager level. how, how are we going to do that? do you have any ideas on that?
donny shimamoto 09:15
i think it’s really going to require a shift in the way that we do our education. you’re already seeing a change in the education. i was involved in cpa evolution. so where we were taking more of doing two things to me really one was moving the cpa license pre licensure model to allow people to focused on either tax information systems or finance. three wait, the three things i look at that as and you don’t have to know everything and all of the areas because the areas have become more volumous. so everyone has to complete the core which is three exams. can you prove one of these other quote elective areas where you’ve gone deeper. the other thing that we’ve accomplished through cpa evolution is to incorporate more technology throughout the entire curriculum. so the analytics being present in even the accounting, one, one or two level courses, so that people start to see, a technology is not a separate discipline, it’s part of our accounting and what we do. so, again, we can leverage the automations. we know, technology, once we’re in the race, what i predict we’re going to see which we which is not necessarily written into cpe, evolution is the move towards more based learning, being used a lot in the medical field, so that it’s more analytical, that there’s more critical thinking involved. we see it you see it also in law with the way where they ask the cases figure out, you know, what are the different ways arguing both sides of the case, for example, in law, those are things that we don’t see, i think, very often in accounting, but we’re going to have to see a lot more so that people are focused more on that, what you refer to as the manager level thinking, which is more of the broader picture. and what does this really mean, i’m not just doing detailed grunt work down at the bottom. so i have to see quite a bit of change in the way that our profession is addressing education, getting our stuff ready.
liz farr 11:36
yeah, it’s, it’s really gonna have to change. i think you’re right. now, what about growing firms? what are some good strategies that you’ve seen firms use for grilling?
donny shimamoto 11:51
that that, to me is somewhat of a loaded question. that, honestly, i don’t think any firms are having problems growing right now. or if you are having problems, you’re probably really doing something wrong. because the demand for accounting services is probably is greater to me from from everyone. but i don’t know anyone that’s not busy. and even doing i swear at least half if not more, the people i talk to are turning away clients. and so i don’t know that it’s growth from a buyer client standpoint. so as being able to your original question, have the staff to be able to work in the right way. so i’m going to come back to my original and just really automate, outsource, right figure out what’s actually happening. more often today, i find firms are coming to me to ask how can i get my pandemic really impacted? especially on the tax side, so many people that now it’s not just how do i grow? it’s how do i not? and not only for myself, but for my team, make what we do sustainable? because we can’t keep going the way that we’re going. we’re servicing people in the way that we’re servicing people. i’ll answer your your real question, though, by saying that, the other thing i think is really about specializing or identifying your niche that’s really to meet to differentiate yourself from the rest of the market, you really need to do that. this was one of the things to wear with my firm. so we were actually registered as a cpa firm. but we don’t do audit tax or bookkeeping. the only things that we do are innovation, management, and then risk manage. and originally, we were very focused on the technology aspects of that. so implementing these systems, cybersecurity, but all of the changes that have come around, we’ve had to expand our own view and our own approach to things so that it’s innovation, not just in technology, but in business practices, business models, in risks on the risk side now is about us doing enterprise risk management and not enterprise being an enterprise being a holistic, huge, holistic picture of an organization. for example, with this great resignation, it’s what’s the risk of employee turnover? how do we look at employee engagement? how do we actually deal with the whole company, not just the finances and not just the technology? so the other thing i would do there is to really encourage people look at the whole picture, and no, just focus on the on the dollars.
liz farr 14:49
that’s that’s a really good point. and in the point about being making it sustainable, is really important. you know, what? what will firms do if the workload is so unsustainable? that all their talent and all the intellectual capital walks out the door? what will they do?
donny shimamoto 15:15
exactly. and when you mentioned earlier that that originally was part of the model, right, we hire and we hope people drop off as as they go upwards, or we encouraged them, and we coach them out, right? that was, let’s start coaching them out, because they’re not doing bad, but they’re not going to make it to the top. and that’s, i think, also another mindset that has to shift. in my firm, we talked about the concept of the lifetime senior, where it’s that person that is really strong in what they do, but not quite to the point where they can manage the engagement, or manage the client and do the business development. do i really want to throw them out? or do i want to have something, somebody that’s really solid at that point, that helps onboard everybody that’s coming in, get them up to speed faster. and we call them lifters. because we told them, you know, your job is to be here, and you’re helping to lift all of these new people coming in and help lift them up. and yes, they’re gonna surpass you in the hierarchy. but you’re happy doing what you do and what you love. and i had one of my staff say that she goes, she said, i love the client contact, i don’t ever want to not have to go to a client site. and so it was what we’re going to keep you in that then and you keep working with them. and she is the one. we’ve even had managers and directors come in, and she’s trained them because she’s like, this is what i do. this is how we run this type of engagement. and she’s actually showing them what has to happen. and she’s like, okay, and then you guys deal with the buildings, and the project management and all the other stuff that comes with comes with all those headaches.
liz farr 17:00
yeah, i think that there really is something to say, for letting somebody find their spot in an organization and letting them stay there. nurture them, allow them to grow and expand that position as they wish. but not everybody wants to be a partner. not everyone wants to do that some people are very happy, with a pretty steady nine to five kind of job, where they can get home at five reliably and see their kids. they’re pretty happy with that. they don’t really want the perpetual work schedule of the people up at the top, they really don’t want that.
donny shimamoto 17:54
well, i’m not sure that people at the top even want that anymore. everyone talks about the difference in the generations and what they want. and when i look at it, i’m like, i think all of us kind of want the same thing that family time that better quality of life. i think the younger generations are not are just not as willing to sacrifice that even if it’s in the short term to do that. and so we need to all embrace this remote work. in my firm actually has had our we hired our first remote worker 10 years ago. so we’ve been doing it for a long time already. when the pandemic came, we never, we didn’t change anything actually about what we do. because we already we’re operating pretty much as a fully virtual firm. what we saw a big learning that we had going through that course was to let people work the schedule, they want to work. and so we have a lot of working mothers and they would drop their kids off at school, they would work in between the kids coming home, they would stop again. and then until they got the kids to bed, and then they would work again. so i would see all these emails coming in at like 1010 1112 o’clock at night. and i used to tell them, like, hey, you really shouldn’t be working. you know, you’re supposed to be on this flex schedule, you’re supposed to be having more work life balance, i’m not expecting you to work. and i actually had several them push back and say, actually, this is when i’m most productive. and i plan my day to work during this time, because i don’t have the distractions. and after the second or third one told me that i went, oh, i need to stop telling them to not work because they were getting stressed that i was telling them to not work. so they were trying to not work but then they couldn’t get it done in the smaller window. and it just became kind of bad bad in a different way. right. so i think we just need to rethink this whole concept of the right way to work or the right time to work.
liz farr 19:54
oh, absolutely. and at the firm where i spent three 14 years, there was very limited flexibility that i had. and i really would have treasured that some kind of ability to work when it suited me best. but kudos to you for doing that and for recognizing that for a lot of working mothers, that is working parents in general, that is when they work best. now, it used to be that to be successful as an accountant, you had to keep the fasb regs in your head or the irs tax code in your head, you need to be really good with the 10 key. but technology has taken care of a lot of that. what skills do accountants need today to be successful? and in the future?
donny shimamoto 20:57
i think i highlighted it earlier, it’s really more of that analysis, more of that critical thinking and that ability to look at the broader picture. so i give myself as an example to where, like, i don’t have the tax code or the fasb. i mean, my background actually is audit. so i did both financial and it audit in the past. so i have some of those, what do they call them, i don’t even remember what they call them anymore. some of those things in my head around, whatever the standard is, and they changed the name of them now, too. so i was reading some things. and i’m like, man, i don’t recognize these references. but you know, that, to me is all kind of that foundational, and the thing i always tell people is, or the clients even that i work with is, i may not know the code section, but i know when there’s a potential issue, whether it’s financial reporting, or tax, and i can say, hey, pause, or make sure you go and consult with your otter and consult with your tax advisor, because there’s a potential issue here. so we may need to figure that out. and sometimes i’m also the one that may sit there and talk with the auditor or talk with a tax person to be like, well, explain to me what this thing means and or how we need to document it so that it’s treated the way that it’s supposed to be treated and not misconstrued as something. so i think i think we do still need to know generally, what is there so that it triggers what we need to do. but then it’s also about having the right resources. and this is another one being in technology. people always say, well, how do you keep up with everything? and i say, i don’t keep up with everything. i kind of have a pulse of what’s happening. and i know where to look if i need to find an answer. or i know who to go to, if i think i need an answer. and that’s the key to what i do, which is very broad and technology and looking at all different types of technologies and all different types of vendors and systems is knowing the right questions to ask and then knowing where to find the answers.
liz farr 23:12
i think you have a good point there. it’s not so much you need to be the one with the answer. but you need to know how to find the answer. and that can be really hard for accountants because we’ve been raised to be the ones with the answer. so it’s very challenging for some of us to go into this new world where we don’t necessarily know the answers.
donny shimamoto 23:45
well, and i’ll also, you know, the we talk about the generations, one of the things that i worry about is that we see a lot of the younger generation, i mean, i’m a gen x, i’m at the tail end of gen x. so i’ve been in practice for over 20 years now. i see a lot of this younger generation coming out and they think they have all the answers and they think they know all the things. and it’s even me 20 years in practice, still have those that are older than me that i’m going to where i’m like, what would you do in this situation or help me understand the nuances of this. and that’s what’s going to exit our profession very soon, because we’ve seen this with the pandemic where a lot of people are deciding, i’m just gonna retire rather than deal with everything that’s coming up. and as technological change continues to advance, i’m hearing that again, as i’m talking to firms about you know, changing the adopting their technology and i hear someone go, maybe it’s time for me to just retire rather than have to deal with this. that’s a lot of intellectual capital and variance that’s going to exit the profession that we don’t have. we face that and i think the younger generations, they’re like, oh, we can just figure it out. and again, even myself 20 years in practice, i’m still going to some of these old these people. hey, helped me understand this or helped me. how have you seen this addressed in the past?
liz farr 25:15
right? yeah, there really is something to say four years of experience. and having seen patterns over and over. you know, even if you’re just rushing through tax returns, you can’t help but see the same kinds of things over and over. like, hey, you know, i’ve never seen a day trader make money. hmm. they come in with these brokerage statements that are like that thick. and at the end of the day, they made $200.
donny shimamoto 25:59
yeah, it’s.
liz farr 26:02
yeah, it’s just, it’s just crazy.
donny shimamoto 26:05
well, you just hit on something, though, when you asked me what are some of the skills that accountants need in the future? and i actually think it’s the ability to see pattern. because when you said that, that’s a lot of what i do. i’m looking for patterns in the way something works, i’m looking for patterns in the way that you are doing things for what’s the exception to the pattern? is that a good exception? or is it a bad x? or is it a bad exception? because if it’s a good exception, i want to amplify that if it’s a bad exception, i want to make sure it doesn’t happen again. and we could apply this thing to data and audit data. i’m probably pretty sure the same thing with excellent as well. right? so this ability to see the patterns and the nuances of the patterns, and how do i take these different patterns and apply them to different clients, adjusting for the clients call the clients business strategy, the clients, whatever their goals? are? that’s probably the biggest skill that we have as accountants.
liz farr 27:14
ya know, i’ve talked to some firms who specialize in particular industries to the point where they develop their own kpis that they can share with other clients. and they can say, hey, do you want to know how you’re doing compared to your peers? well, yeah, that’s something really valuable to know. and so i think that you can really only do that if you specialize, you notice the patterns, and you make a concerted effort to look for them. now, we’ve talked about some of the things that accountants need to do. but what do you think accountants should stop doing immediately?
donny shimamoto 28:03
that’s a tougher one. i’m actually gonna say, stop actually stop trying to have all the answers right now. and that can play itself out in multiple ways. so one of courses to answer the questions, of course, you need to be able to answer some of the questions. and that’s where, like, with a client, i’ll say, well, i think this is the answer. i’m pretty sure this is the answer your research to validate it, or here are the reasons why i can’t give you an right now. and it’s usually the nuances of the situation to show that i’m understanding the complexities. so that would be one, you know, one way, but if we extend that farther, also, stop letting the moon stop you from doing something. and, of course, come back into the technology, i don’t understand technology. so i don’t want to start. and it’s, you need to start. that’s why the trials on all the technologies going on trial, play with it, see if it works, figure it out. i mean, that’s the huge benefit. and you don’t have to have all the answers for work, housing, incorporate until everything else with our firm, you can figure that out as you started with it. and really start to look at how can this help us or can it not? or why we think the challenges are three. because if you go through one platform and you find well, it didn’t do this, this and this. well, now you have three more when you look at the next platform, does it do these things? let me start with air, and you can really start to work through the technology and make some decisions more quickly.
liz farr 29:52
you said a word in there that i don’t think too many accountants consider part of their work which is play, to play with the technology, you know, where we’re not used to playing, we’re used to having these processes and how you do things and how it works. and well, it might be kind of a frankenstein process, because that’s how we managed to work around the things that don’t work too well. but that’s still the way that we do it. and in the idea of playing with something, oh, that’s that’s kind of heresy, danny?
donny shimamoto 30:38
well, you know, you, you raise another really good point of when you’re looking at changes, that a lot of our accounting processes are being can stein or i call them on the ball, because it started with this, and you put things on here, here, and here and here. and now it’s this big, we’ve got the band aid ball that we’re working with, and we’re trying to find something to replace. the point is, is when you look at the new solutions, they don’t work that way, because you really bandaid or you frankenstein this thing together and put all these weird pieces together. so when people are looking at not just technology change, even process change. i always say start with a blank slate. if you were starting the firm today, or if you were going to build this process today, how would you build it that and go and look for is the solution that you want?
liz farr 31:36
that’s a really good point. really good point. and now, what do you think, keeps people from changing, you know, they know that they need to adopt technology, they know that they need to change to a more flexible work schedule, they know all these things that they need to do to move into the future, what keeps them from doing those things.
donny shimamoto 32:02
i’ll give some credit to the fact that change itself is difficult. but as humans, we all don’t want to change even i have to force myself to change certain habits. but i think there’s an additional layer on that, especially at the leadership level of the firm, where you feel like you need to have all the answers. and that you should be the one that is able to say, hey, this is what happens, or this is what has to happen, or this is the direction. and with technology change, i think it becomes even more intimidating because with the boomers or older in the lead there. they don’t it’s a loss of control, it’s i’m really going to have to rely upon the younger staff to drive what’s happening, and i won’t be able to do what i used to do. so there’s that big loss of control. on the other hand, if they leave, you also don’t have control of them, and what you’re doing just mountains, right. so i think part of it is this feeling of loss of control. and this this, like i don’t have all the answers, and so you not like the one anymore. and that’s something that really has to change. the other side of that even in larger firms where there’s more people, what a this, what’s happening to me is more is becoming more and more complex. so you look at someone like myself, i have the accounting and information systems, dual bachelor’s. and then i realized though even with that, that that wasn’t quite enough. so i actually went back and did graduate work in organizational development, which is really around hr, and it’s around psychology, and its behavior and change management. so i needed this kind of triple discipline to really look at things from a holistic standpoint, to really drive not just change, but transformation as we talk about it. and so with this with this more complex work environment as a whole. as accountants, we need to embrace the other disciplines, we need to embrace it. we need to embrace hr, we need to all work together to really drive for that better solution, whether it’s for the firm itself, or whether it’s for our clients. so you know that that was the other one i kept. i keep hearing this like well, firms are hiring less accountants, i say good because we need multidisciplinary approaches to more complex problems and our clients are dealing with more complex problems. if they had a simple tax return, they could go do turbotax or h&r block or right one of these kind of off the corner type of shops. they’re coming to us as a cpa because if they do have more complexity, they do want to work with someone that they can trust, it’s going to help guide them towards that future. and, again, with the evolution, it’s not just the accountant anymore, it’s us working with these other professions.
liz farr 35:16
yeah, i’m hearing a lot from a lot of different areas in accounting, the need for interdisciplinary work, the need to break down the silos, and to really reach out across the whole organization, not just the clients organizations, but you know, even accountants in industry are needing to go out and understand the different parts of the companies that they work in. so it really is breaking down the silos.
donny shimamoto 35:58
and if you think about it, since you mentioned industry, the accountant is really one of the few that’s actually seeing the entire company end to end. and so we are very well primed to look at the holistic view of the company, what is happening from the very start, you know, gathering materials or supplies or whatever it is to the point where we’ve delivered something to our clients and our customers. and even beyond that, because we see every part of that chain, whether it’s because there’s an accounting transaction triggered, or there’s some type of money exchanged, or there’s some type of data, right? and data dao is this whole buzz around what we need to do more decisions that are driven based upon data and data analytics. and if you’re working off of bad data, you’re going to make bad decisions. and so the accountant actually needs to be involved in ensuring that organizations have high quality data. so both i think, from a viewpoint as well as from the need for our skills, we need to be involved throughout the organization, or throughout our clients if we’re doing my client accounting services.
liz farr 37:10
yeah, no, i think that accounting, is on the brink of a change from just focusing on the debits and credits to being a more central part of the success of any organization. and it will be up to firm leaders, it will be up to our education, it will be up to our clients, and it’ll be up to advisors like you to make that change. yeah. now, here in the us client accounting services is really big client accounting, client advisory services, whatever you want to call it. what do you think will be the next big thing? or will there even be a next big thing?
donny shimamoto 38:04
oh, definitely. that one, to me is an easy one risk advisory services is the next big thing. it we’re already starting to see that come up. again, the pandemic highlighted a lot of risk management, right? it was in this case, it was safety and health that was coming through. and if if you look at what we do as accountants, it’s especially within the audit side, it’s really risk management professionals. how do i design? how do i understand and assess risk? whether it’s financial risk, operational risk, compliance risks, health risks, right? this is all the pieces there? and then what controls do i put into place to help mitigate those risks to an acceptable level, not minimize them, but mitigate them to an acceptable level that also allows the organization to achieve its goals? what are the innovations and changes that the organization has planned for the future? what risks come with that? so as we look at digital transformation? how can we actually start to ensure the success of these transformations, these digital products, these digital services that are coming up? that’s all risk assessment. and then of course, again, controls? so like you said, going beyond just the finance realm to look at the bigger picture that i think is a really big one that’s coming up. how do we help organizations manage risks to be successful?
liz farr 39:31
and that’s a really very different perspective on the role of accounting than it has been traditionally where it was all about debits and credits and getting it materially right. and now it’s what how can we ensure that this organization remains a viable going concern? how what and the things that we need to do to make this a sustainable business.
donny shimamoto 40:07
what i think it’s the discipline itself, though, if you think about it is it’s not new, its present in audit, its present very much an internal audit. it’s just that it’s never been kind of cool or sexy in that sense, right. and so it’s always been kind of shoved on the side, the endpoint of the audit has always been thought of as the financial statements. and this is where i’m in some of these discussion groups with a lot of tax preparers and bookkeepers. and they’re like, why do we even bother with an audit, blah, blah, blah, and i’m like, you guys don’t even understand the amount of work that we do under risking controls, which helps ensure all of this data is correct, and that it’s presented fairly. and also that we can look towards more towards the future and feel like, okay, something’s bad. you know, i know, we’re not testing to the future. but by testing the current state of internal controls, the current design of the controls, were assuming those operate effectively going forward, it should help us catch fraud, or prevent fraud, and catch fraud. if it does happen, or, you know, preventing some other major thing from occurring. there’s actually been the statements for that statements, principles and criteria for attestation, around enterprise risk management, from the 90s. so it’s, this is not a new thing. you’ve just never seen this quite adopted. but again, i’m going to thank the pandemic, because with the pandemic, the focus on environment was already there. now we’re looking at social social impact, which includes safety. so ii s, and then governance, how organizations are making decisions, are they aligned to purpose, you know, this esg concept is this next reporting piece that’s coming into play. and a lot of that is not just about the data and making sure that transactions recorded correctly, it’s looking at the risks and controls that the organization is putting into place.
liz farr 42:07
yeah, and that, that i think, is going to be challenging because those esg risks tend to be more qualitative. and it’s not something that you can quantify as easily as saying, yes, the net income was $2,300,000. within the limits of materiality, that’s going to be a big challenge.
donny shimamoto 42:41
no, one will be like you said, the big thing on this is going to be it’s not about quantifying necessarily the risk itself, but sometimes quantifying or identifying what are the risk indicators that are going to tell us that something is going to happen, or something’s going on material lives? that really is the art of really looking at the whole picture of something. like, i’m poor, i like doing this. it’s tied by technology is the risk of there being an accident, like a corporate vehicle, think about like fedex or ups that’s delivering all this stuff, right? what’s how do we quantify the risk that something’s going to happen with the driver? well, partly if that is the driver following the rules? are they speeding? are they doing something right? before we would have said, well, we just got to drivers clean, clean driving, where are they good? well now put a monitor on this order and know how fast they’re going. we know we can look at braking patterns. all of these sensors that are in the trucks now can actually give us a lot of information that we can monitor electronically and know whether or not they’re actually rules and doing what they’re supposed to be doing. which then may tell us whether or not there’s a risk of them getting a ticket or getting into an accident. and that requires thinking, i hate to say it because it’s so trite outside of the box, thinking beyond just the finances and looking at well, how how do i know a risk is going to materialize? or one of those indicators, and that’s more of that critical thinking and finding the patterns and things and what the patterns are, what can go wrong? and how do i identify those?
liz farr 44:30
yeah, well, you’re talking a lot about data flows here. and that i think, as we evolve into the internet of things, where everything has sensors and everything is talking to everything else. that is going to be a really interesting part of our future as accountants, how will we monitor that and what kinds of feedback will we’d be giving to our clients about that.
donny shimamoto 45:04
well, and let’s flip the i’m so glad you brought that up, because let’s flip that as well to the risk and control side. and let’s talk about privac. who is going to be the one that’s going to look at the ethical use of all this data that people have about us, and whether or not is properly protected. and whether it’s being ethically used, like that came up a lot over the last two years, i’ve got to tell you, it’s not the it people that are going to do that you listen to all of these texts, because they’re all pro like, we’re gonna do what we want to do with the data. so i actually think it’s up to us our profession as accountants to come back and look at this and go, are the right privacy controls in place? are we playing with all the regs and but not just complying with the regs and complying with the spirit of privacy? and the assertions that we’re making to customers and business partners about what we’re doing with their data? and then are we properly securing that which comes back to like a cybersecurity audit or a sock audit that’s looking at the controls over the protection of that data? that’s all risky and controls. and again, that’s that’s why when you ask me like what’s the future risk advisory says to me is the next big thing.
liz farr 46:23
why, i think donny, that’s a perfect note to end our conversation on. thank you so much for being my guest here. now, if people want to reach out to you, where’s the best place to find you?
donny shimamoto 46:39
people can i would actually say linkedin is the best one and it’s donnie with a y and shimamoto. just start typing it in. i’m the only one that you’re going to find. but on any of the social medias if they’re on there. my handle is donnie, itk, uny, itk, and you’ll find
liz farr 46:59
thank you so much, donny, and you have a great day.
donny shimamoto 47:03
thanks, you too.