Shaping the future of accounting: Meet Norm Rush

What inspired you to pursue a career in accounting education, and what do you enjoy most about teaching?
I have always been passionate about the accounting profession and being a champion of the value that it brings to the business world and the many stakeholders that a business may have. I became interested in a career in accounting in high school when I took an introductory course. That compelled me to study accounting in college. When I graduated with my BS degree in accounting, I decided to pursue a Masters in accounting. The summer before, I was fortunate to intern with KPMG, followed by full-time employment after graduation. For KPMG, I audited a variety of companies, large to small, and in many industries. This experience made me want to move into industry to experience developing and maintaining accounting policies, processes, systems, and internal controls myself.

During my corporate career, I had the opportunity to teach some college accounting courses, and I discovered that I thoroughly enjoyed it. It fulfilled my passion for accounting and my desire to share my knowledge. After a long corporate career, I had the opportunity to teach some accounting courses for OSU part-time and then full-time. It's been an excellent experience. What I enjoy most about teaching is sharing my accumulated knowledge with the next generation and knowing that I am doing valuable work in preparing our future business leaders and decision-makers.

How do you help prepare your students for careers in accounting, and what advice do you give them?
I try to stress many professional attributes to my students that will help them succeed in their careers:
a.    Critical thinking – This is important in many aspects of life, but especially as an accountant. We are often presented with problems of understanding and troubleshooting or improving complex transaction systems, or often have to analyze disparate information to determine what is relevant to a problem we are tasked with solving. Critical thinking is an essential skill in the accounting profession.  It enables us to utilize the principles learned in the academic setting and apply them to an infinite number of real-world possible problems we are faced with solving.
b.    Finance – I encourage my students to take finance courses in addition to their accounting courses. In my first corporate controller position for a publicly traded technology company, I quickly learned that, in addition to being responsible for accounting compliance and control, I had to also be able to prepare decision analysis calculations and be able to present my conclusions to upper management.
c.    Teamwork/collaboration – Collaborating with colleagues is perhaps more prevalent in today’s workplace than ever before. I often include group work assignments for students in my curriculum. Group collaboration can help students learn from each other and, in the professional world, can produce powerful synergistic solutions to areas such as problem-solving, process development, product design, etc.
d.    Writing & communication skills – When I took an assurance & attestation course as a college senior, the professor invited an audit partner from a large national firm to speak to the class. In discussing the realities and challenges of performing audits, that partner stressed that the most important thing he learned in college that he utilized every day in his job was effective written communication. At the time, I had no point of reference to understand what he meant, but his point stuck with me as I moved forward in my career. I quickly learned that he was correct. As I progressed professionally, more and more of my communication involved written communication. This took the form of email, letters to clients, letters to vendors or customers, responding to inquiries of tax authorities, drafting research papers to form company accounting policy, drafting memos to files, etc. Verbal communication became equally important as well. I had to be able to discuss or present complex accounting, tax, and financial topics with many different audiences. Because of this, I often assign research paper assignments to my students and strongly encourage them to participate in class discussions.

What trends or changes in the accounting profession are you most excited about, and how do you incorporate them into your coursework?
Business processes, policies, and technology are continually changing, at a continually faster rate. As CPAs, we have to keep pace with these changes to be effective advisors to our clients or company management. A couple of newer areas that interest me are the future possibilities of AI and the increasing prevalence of corporate sustainability initiatives. AI has brought along some new challenges for things like information integrity and verifiability, but it also brings the possibility of being a powerful tool to CPAs in helping them in areas such as process improvement, research, and document review. With corporate sustainability initiatives, both private and public companies are increasingly incorporating these into their corporate framework and corporate statements of purpose and providing annual reports – often with an assurance report provided by a CPA firm. Many companies are even taking the step to designate their business entity form as a social purpose corporation. I believe this is an emerging area that CPAs should understand and be prepared to advise their clients and their company management about. I incorporate both of these topic areas into discussions with my students.  

How can the professional accounting community better support faculty and students in building connections with the industry?
One of the most impactful things the professional accounting community can do to support students is to provide internships for students. Internships are an excellent experiential learning opportunity for students, providing them an opportunity to experience the real-world application of what they have learned in the classroom. For the firm or business, it can also be a great way to develop a future staff member. It’s a win/win.

Another way to support faculty and students is to be willing to be a guest speaker for a class session. As I mentioned above, the audit partner who was a guest speaker in one of my college accounting courses had a strong impact on me regarding the importance of communication skills in our profession.  

Are you or someone you work with interested in speaking to a classroom of aspiring CPAs? Contact OSCPA Membership Manager Kate Harrison at kharrison@orcpa.org