Maryland Accountants Spending Less Time on Accounting

Fifty-six percent of Maryland CFOs, controllers and management accountants said they spend less than 50 percent of their time on traditional accounting and financial reporting functions, according to a recent poll by the Maryland Association of CPAs.

MACPA surveyed a group of more than 100 industry accountants last week at its annual Professional Issues Update Town Hall in Towson, Md., asking them about the top five issues facing Maryland CFOs, controllers and management accountants, along with their outlook on their businesses, Maryland’s economy, the U.S. economy, and how “future ready” they are.

The top five issues they identified are information overload, doing more with less, being reactive vs. proactive, managing change, and managing technology.

Fifty-four percent said they are very optimistic or somewhat optimistic about their business’s economic outlook, while 45 percent are optimistic about the Maryland economic outlook.

However, only 35 percent of the survey respondents said they were optimistic about the U.S. economy, but cited health care, government debt and the uncertain regulatory climate as major issues.

Only 6 percent of them identified themselves as “future ready,” defined by MACPA as the capacity to be aware, predictive, and adaptive towards emerging challenges, tech innovations and trends and changes in business, population and social environment. Another 48 percent said they are “getting stuck in the day to day,” while 46 percent said they are spending more time on future and strategic work.

To see the rest of the survey results and other highlights of the Town Hall, click here.

MACPA and its Business Learning Institute will be hosting technology futurist Daniel Burrus on May 4 to talk about how CPAs, CFOs, controllers and management accountants can be more future ready by learning the competency of “anticipation.” For more information, visit http://www.blionline.org/burrus.

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