Understanding our “Why”: Building potential for ourselves, clients, and communities

Nature is full of patterns―from mathematical patterns like symmetry, spirals, and fractals to repeating patterns like the seasons. Fall always has a way to remind me of the patterns as the leaves change colors, the morning air becomes crisp, and the days begin to shorten. It is life’s way of reminding me to stop, reflect, and slow down to enjoy the change of seasons and be grateful for those in our lives both personally and professionally.

With a little more time and space, I can connect more meaningfully with those around me. When I nurture these relationships, I feel more in tune with myself and more certain that, together, we can withstand the pressures of life when they ramp back up in the spring. Relationships are why I became a CPA in the first place. While we always aim for quality work products, we know that our role is bigger than our expertise and skills. We become advisors, confidants, friends, and mentors to our clients, our business partners, and our coworkers. We are uniquely positioned with intimate knowledge of our clients’ lives and businesses to help them achieve their goals through our shared humanity and capacity to connect.

This summer, my firm Aldrich CPAs + Advisors turned 50 years old. Clients, alumni, staff, and partners gathered to celebrate and share stories about the importance of relationships and making a positive impact on our people, clients, and communities. During our festivities, two thematic threads took form: we must see the potential in people and grow the next generation of CPAs. I could not help but be reminded of the OSCPA mission: Promote the CPA profession by acting in a representative capacity facilitating professional relationships, and furthering the knowledge, competence, performance, and standing of members. Said otherwise, our work as a Society is to build relationships, honoring and investing in the potential in each of us, and to educate and connect with each other.

I’m thrilled that Oregon passed Senate Bill 3, requiring financial literacy education for high school students. Our state not only recognizes the potential of the younger generation to participate earlier and more fully with financial life but will actively teach them to do so. This allows us the opportunity to become more active and involved in the education process as guest speakers in the classroom and to share our knowledge and the many career paths our profession holds. It also allows us to not only pass our wisdom to the next generation but attract students into studying accounting at the next level. Both could impact our pipeline issues.

Through relationships, OSCPA continues to act beyond the classroom. We recently worked with the Board of Accountancy (BOA) to pass the 120-hour rule to sit for the exam and are helping with the heavy lift of rules overhaul. The intent of the rules overhaul is to make it easier for members to practice. With these changes, we can more easily steward new professionals into the workforce, keeping their momentum from their studies sustained and helping to pivot them more quickly into creating their career paths.  Moving at this faster pace will not only help the pipeline, but also result in young professionals building relationships with clients sooner and using their unique backgrounds and personalities to innovate and share solutions.

Additional reflection on our relationships also brings me to the outreach OSCPA is doing with its members. We also held town halls with the BOA and made sure that we had membership representation at these meetings. It is vital that our voices continue to be heard so that we can advocate for each other. And we continue to build internal and external relationships with members, the IRS, the OR tax court, the DOR, the BOA, OAIA, and communicating with legislators and working with firm managing partners. In doing so, we hope to serve as the connecting thread to our community, to be the place people turn for connection and camaraderie. We also continue working to reconnect our member chapters across the state. During COVID, our members did not have a chance to connect face to face. It’s wonderful to see them connecting again with the Southern Oregon Chapter holding a social recently at DANCIN Vineyards in Medford, and the Emerald Empire Chapter primed to kick off their social in the next few weeks, as well as others across the state planning ways to connect.

This is our “Why.” In the framework of Simon Sinek, it is easy to identify our “what,” the debits and credits and accounting we all do. It is also easy to identify that our “how” is to prepare and file tax returns, conduct audits, close books, analyze financial information, etc. Most importantly, however, I am grateful to be part of an organization that focuses not solely on the “what” or “how” but on the “why.” We do our work because we deeply value people’s contributions to their community and know that when we use our humanity as a lens, all of us can show up as our best selves, do our best work, and thrive together. 

Read more about our OSCPA Board of Directors.