CPA.com launches initiative to prepare accountants for the future

CPA.com, the tech arm of the American Institute of CPAs, has launched an initiative to help accountants identify and prepare for changes to the profession. The initiative, dubbed Navigating the Future, will include collaboration with innovation expert Pascal Finette and his consulting firm, Radical.

Navigating the Future is designed to help accountants identify changes coming down the pipeline to the profession, and also to create new business models and adapt and capitalize on new opportunities. Specifically, CPA.com plans to offer sessions and exercises around the following:

• Create business models for future success;
• Positively embrace disruption;
• Prepare the profession for exponential change;
• Shift their mindset to a more empowered digital focus; and
• Engage in strategy-building sessions to design digital organizations.

“At CPA.com, we’ve said for some time that the hardest part of dealing with disruptive change isn’t the technology piece, it’s change management,” said Erik Asgeirsson, president and CEO of CPA.com, in a statement. “This program is designed to help firms take a longer, more insightful view on how to drive change.”

The program will kick off with a July 25 webcast, “Thrive in Exponential Times,” featuring Asgeirsson and Finette. Participants can download materials after the webcast that will allow them to conduct their own planning exercises such as disruption maps, in which firms can plan out the implications of change on specific business models and identify opportunities and challenges from those shifts.

Finette will participate in several AICPA events this year, including CPA.com’s Digital CPA conference, which will be held Dec. 9-11 in Seattle. Some of the findings of these explorations will be presented at the conference.

The Navigating the Future program will also include several in-depth thought leadership articles on technology and change management topics. The first will be available this summer.

For more information, visit cpa.com/research-innovation.