Soft Skills and Accounting Adventures

With Greg Adams
On Episode 197 of The Unique CPA, Randy Crabtree welcomes Greg Adams, Senior VP and CFO at the American Management Association and author of the novel Green Shade$. Greg discusses his career journey, his passion for the profession which served as inspiration for his novel—which features an accountant protagonist—and his advocacy for improving the image and perception of accountants. He emphasizes the importance of soft skills in the accounting profession and offers insights on how to address the declining number of CPA exam takers by improving the image and appeal of accounting as a whole.
Today, our guest is Greg Adams. As a side note, I’m very excited about this discussion today, but Greg is a senior vice president and chief financial officer of the American Management Association. But the reason I’m excited about this discussion today—and more importantly—Greg is a huge advocate for the profession and recently released a book called Green Shade$: Accountants Aren’t Supposed to Die this Way. I have my copy of it. Greg, welcome to The Unique CPA.
Thanks, Randy. It’s great to be with you and I look forward to our discussion.
Yeah, I do too. I’ve actually been telling some people about the book and they’re like, “Oh, I got to get that.” And then I pull up the website and they said, “That sounds cool. I got to get that.” But all right, before we get into that, why don’t you give us a little background of who you are and what you’re doing, and then we’ll start discussing the profession and the book?
Yeah, sure. Yeah, I’m currently, as you said, I’m Chief Financial Officer of the American Management Association. It’s a not-for-profit educational institution, particularly soft skills, which many of those skills accountants may or may not lack, but definitely need. But prior to being CFO of the AMA, and I’ve been here a little over five years, I did the traditional accounting route. I spent 11 years at KPMG, I was an accounting major, a CPA, passed the CPA exam, and then after KPMG, I’ve been a CFO of three public companies and a private company. It’s been quite a journey. And now moving into a not-for-profit with a very good mission, an educational mission to actually try to change behavior and help individuals at work, and often the skills you learn are at home, in particular listening skills, which so many, many folks need to work on. But I only say that because I, even myself, I’m still taking courses. I took a critical thinking course a couple of weeks ago, and you know, one major skill is, yeah, listen before you react to something. So it’s been a fun journey as a CFO.
What got me to write this book is I’ve had all these, you know, almost 30 years plus of experience of Being a CFO and more importantly being the accountant, and I was getting frustrated to a degree, of someone would ask you what’s your you know, what do you do? They always ask that: What do you do? What do you do? I say, I’m an accountant. And I always found myself having to pause and use the “but.” But… I really do a lot of cool things. Like when I was at KPMG, I was three years in Australia. How many people get to work in Australia for three years?
Nice.
I saw so many different industries from, you know, Banking at Citibank, to PepsiCo, to a gold mine in the middle of the Bush. So, that really drove me to write this novel, Green Shade$, to have a protagonist, a hero, that’s an accountant. You know, that solves problems and saves the world. And so I tried to make the book also not only a fun, you know, crime thriller worldwide, which takes place in Australia and New York City and Barbados and India, but I also try to work in what’s going on in the accounting profession and what are some useful tools, and I put a lot of those, that information in the exhibits to the book.
Yeah, I did notice that the exhibits were there. I want to go back to one thing you said, because I find this interesting when people ask, what do you do? Because every time someone asks that, I’m like, “Uh, well, I’m an accountant. But…” And exactly what you just said, I’m an accountant, but I really just go out and talk. And so that still doesn’t, I have to have a mindset of what it is that I do, and without a but, I’m an accountant and I do really exciting things that are just so, you know, passionate about and it lights me up and that kind of stuff. That’s what I need to figure out how to say that.
Yeah, exactly. That’s what really drove me to write Green Shade$ and have an exciting journey that you can follow this Jack Reacher type character who’s in nice around the world as he figures out, you know, what had happened to is one of his closest friends who happened to show up dead on the northern beaches of Australia, and he had to figure out how the heck did that happen because he’s a good surfer and I don’t think he drowned. Something happened with that.
Yeah.
An adventure. You know, there’s so many directions you can go as an accountant, so many industries you can go to and we’re in a unique situation in that we usually have our fingers in everything, and we know what’s going around, particularly a CFO or a controller or even an accounting manager. You know what’s going on in your corporation, your company, all different departments. And that is one profession that is—probably one of the only professions that you have your hand in almost anything—and you can quickly go to different industries if you want to move jobs. Not pigeonholed necessarily.
Right. Let’s go a little deeper into the book without giving things away, just as a, I mean, you, I think you did a good job already, but is there any, because then I want to go into, we got an idea of how you wrote it, why you wrote it, but just the, give us the synopsis. And I assume you can do this because you talked about the book and you wrote the book without giving us any spoilers.
Yeah, I’ll give you a little bit of synopsis. So the protagonist, the Derek “Dex” McCord.
Ooh, cool name.
And Dex McCord, he’s at a Big Four, a big accounting firm. Can’t say Big Four, but I use a fictional name. Although I referenced the Big Four and other large accounting firms in the book. I’ll talk about the personalities of each firm. Dex McCord sends his close buddy—he used to live in Australia, Dex McCord—sends his buddy from Australia to India to do a simple audit of an SEC XBRL processing company that creates documents XBRL tags them, and if you don’t know about XBRL, the book will explain it, and a lot more about the exhibit, so don’t worry.
I was going to say, this isn’t simple to me, but I’m not an auditor.
So they’re barcoding financial statements in India. Tony comes back to Australia, and like I said, he’s all of a sudden he’s asked to do something that he’s found on the northern beaches of Australia, and the authorities conclude it’s a surfing accident. Dex McCord goes to Australia to the funeral, and he starts to uncover facts that, hey, this may not have been a surfing accident. And all of a sudden, he’s the one being hunted by the bad guys. The journey takes him back to New York City, he has to go down to Barbados to see what’s going on there, and it really, it covers so many different topics in the novel because at times I will go back and talk about how did Dex McCord become a good accountant? What skills did he have to learn? His mentor is in the book is a CFO of Edgar, an SCC document filing company, who kind of helps them and mentors them. And every accountant needs a good mentor. But, you know, the novel is, like I said, it’s a financial crime thriller. But it has all the, I got to put a warning in there, it has violence, has some sexual tension, what Dex might come across in this journey. But it’s just a fun, fun novel. But it also has things in there like, what’s the pay scale at large accounting firms? What are some of the key financial ratios when algorithm trades are made and, you know, nanosecond trades are made from SEC information? What happens if someone has some SEC information a little bit early?
Oh, look at you. Alright. So I know one of the, the, you know, you actually recently wrote a, an article for Accounting Today. And I think, actually I should have put the title here, but I think some, one of the themes of it or the theme of it was soft skills for accountants, right? Or am I confusing that?
I’ve written two articles recently for [CPA] Trendlines. One is the importance and the power of soft skills for accountants. And the other is how finance leaders use storytelling. In particular, storytelling here, in Green Shade$, is obviously the epitome and the big example of it. But, you know, first starting with storytelling, I use the term, actually it’s an AMA term, it’s a degree that we teach this, we need to learn how to “spar” with our audience. And as accountants, we’re constantly doing that. We don’t realize it, but we’re constantly doing that. SPAR stands for, there’s a situation that we identify, there’s an action that has to happen, there’s a result that we’re looking for. And by the way, oh, oh, I forgot the first.
There’s a P in there somewhere.
Situation problems. Problem! Action and result. And so storytelling, you need to sort of start with that and then build on it and how we solve those problems. And as accountants, we’re constantly asked to solve problems, we’re constantly asked to make our clients money or save them money or usually impact their lives quite often. So that’s a big part of it. So the soft skills, storytelling is this one aspect of it. We also need good communication skills, good critical thinking skills, business acumen 100%, and, you know, getting back to the original reason I wrote the book, accountants in general. You know, there’s a perception, there’s an image. Break through that image. And I think that image has hurt us in the profession with respect to the pipeline of the number of people taking the CPA exam. It’s a bad image. So that needs to change, and it needs to be, you know, disclosed to the world how cool it is to be accountants.
Like Dex!
Yes, exactly. Dex McCord is a cool accountant. There’s a lot of them. So we need to make accountants cool again. So maybe I should have a hat like that, right? A MACA hat.
Make accountants cool again. I think we’ve always been cool though. It’s just the perception that has not been there of the coolness. Maybe not. I’m very lucky. I get to hang out with a lot of cool accountants like you, writing mystery novels that are pretty cool. So the book though, with Dex, a lot of things that you’re highlighting with him is his soft skills, right? And how he’s using that to, you know, come up with these—and again, I haven’t read the book, but solve this mystery that he’s dealing with?
Exactly. So a lot of it is critical thinking skills and diving deeper into issues and circumstances, and what is happening and trends, and then learning about things like, you know, what is the Edgar System at the SEC and if the Edgar system is being played with, what can happen and SEC violates? And so Dex McCord has to constantly kind of build these skills and deep dive into how are, you know, financial traders, how is black box trading happening with financial data? You know, how are quant analytics going on to make investment decisions impacted by SEC filings, for example. He has to be able to explain this to his audience and, and in the novel, I need to explain it to my audience, a lot of the things by, by keeping it in a fun way, not necessarily technical way. And so it gets, again, it gets back to that storytelling. It gets back to everyday life that accountants have this storytelling, usually leveraging data. The data will show you the trends and, and now with artificial intelligence, that’s a whole other direction of how we start having the leverage and the trends that go with it.
Yep. And then, so with, you know, Dex and soft skills and general soft skills, or the accounting soft skills, I think I had read that this is something that you think that we need to concentrate on more in the education part of becoming an accountant, that this is something that’s ignored. We’re very good at teaching the technical on that, but the soft skills and I think I read somewhere was maybe in your article, where people are valuing the soft skills more than they are the technical skills. And so you think we’re falling short on that? And how do we handle this?
Yeah, exactly. I think we are falling short on that. Seems like most of the training accountants focus on and even most of their bosses or the HR departments is technical in nature. And we have the same issue here at AMA, where most of our audience is engineers, for example, and accountants. At AMA we have over 30 courses that you can get CPE credits for your CPA that are just soft skills. Soft skill credits. So, you know, one solution is to push away the technical skills—that’s kind of a given. And even now with Google searches, you can find the answer or other resources or auditors, that’s a given. But what CEOs and higher senior managers and the relationships you have at work, what matters most is your soft skills, is your presentation skills, is your communication skills. Like I said, your business acumen, your critical thinking. So I believe accountants need to focus on that, and Randy, also for your listeners—they can always reach out to me at AMA. I will take $500 off any of our courses for anyone that reaches out to me. And as a matter of fact, I’ll even go a step further and the first three people that contact me, I will give them a free course at AMA and you can get, you know, you get 24 CPEs if you need, and our retail value is $2,500. So it’s a good offer for us.
Well, I’m very lucky that this episode won’t be coming out for a while because I just signed up now, so I get 24 hours of, no, I’m kidding. I am not going to do that. I will not be one of the first three. I’ll wait for the episode to come out before we let anybody know about that. But we’ll put a link in the show notes, and I really appreciate that. But those soft skills, I agree completely. I don’t remember who told me this, but I don’t know if it was in a session somewhere, or I was just talking to somebody. But I think that’s how they put it. You know what? No matter what you do, you’re not going to be the greatest technical accountant in the world. Everybody has these skills. What’s going to differentiate you is these soft skills, these leadership skills, the communication skills, these relationship building skills, and that is what’s going to differentiate you in this profession, because that’s what really puts your personality out there, which is what attracts people to what you’re doing.
Absolutely. My whole career has been really kind of presented. Whether it’s to the staff, whether it’s to the board of directors, whether it’s to the community, I mean, all your stakeholders are looking at you sort of to be the leader in the room and communicate out what’s going on and what’s important, what’s not important. So the soft skills, we can’t emphasize enough. And sometimes I like calling them power skills. The power skills are so important to every accountant out there, and it’ll change perception because most of the time, internally at your company, you know, “Oh, I have to go talk to the internal accountant,” and it’s almost like a burden. Well, if you can approach them in a very friendly and exciting way and get them really behind you, what you’re trying to do on the situation, on the problem and create an action in the result, that will help you in your profession, I think, in the long run.
Yep. And so, let’s just talk, since you’re just talking about profession, let’s talk about the profession in general. Because we are, you know, I don’t know if we call it “crisis mode.” We are in a situation where we don’t have the people coming in that we used to. And we have probably more people leaving once they come in than they have in the past. And so, I guess first, there are other issues that you’re identifying, but not just issues then, how do we change this? Do you have the magic pill of how we end this perception? I know you already mentioned this part of it, but let’s talk about it. You know, what is going on that is causing this and then what can we do in your opinion?
So yeah, it is very alarming that basically since the turn of the century and kind of when they changed the 120-hour rule, it’s been roughly a 40 percent decline, over 40 percent of people taking the exam. That is really alarming. And I look at three major factors: First and probably foremost, and it’s improving a bit but not there yet, is work-life balance. Now, accountants don’t mind working hard. They’ll work hard, they have deadlines, they have to meet their deadlines, and most accountants usually will. But there does need to be a little bit better work-life balance, and I think, Randy, you might have even written about that recently, and done some studies about it.
The second in my mind is pay. And the pay scale, I think, needs to increase for accountants; it’s so, so important. I’m a little bit more draconian in thought of particularly auditing accounting firms, that there should be some kind of profit share and revenue share. You know, the private equity guys are coming into our profession for a reason. There’s a lot of profits there. So I think, potentially, be a little more creative in the pay scale for accountants.
And then the third gets back to that, the image and the branding. Dex McCord, an accountant that you want to friends with, because you know, the image, the perception of accountants needs to improve. It’s not, you know, you and I, we know we’ve been around. It’s really got to start at the high school and college levels. You’ve got to have programs. I don’t want to bam out the AICPA, but you know, they’re sitting on $120 million plus in cash if you look at the 990. And I think there needs to be a big campaign, a big branding, and imaging campaign at the high school level. You know, maybe it’s giving a novel out like Green Shade$ at the college level. I have had some professors that have bought it and reached out to me, and they’re working it into their curriculum as extra credit, if you read this book and answer a few questions, they’re going to give you extra credit. So they reached out to me. “Hey, what kind of questions should we ask our students?”
So image is so important. It starts really at a lower level and even throughout everyone’s work history. You’ll encounter people that say, you know, I should have been an accountant, because they’re kind of stuck in a dead-end job, whereas as accountants it’s like, you know, I really don’t like this industry, I’m gonna move over to the tech industry. I want to get into the tech industry, even though you might have been in the manufacturing industry as an accountant. So there’s a lot you can do. So we need to brand it and brand an image out, get those salaries up. And it’s good to see some firms are starting to put at least some 10 percent increases. I know some of the Big Four firms are starting to do that. And then lastly, again, that work-life balance needs to be there. We can’t constantly be in the office; we need to get out and go surfing, for example.
Yep, and I honestly think that’s a personality issue—yeah, I’ll say issue with us. It’s just the way we think of things and the way we want to help rather than, you know, look at, you know, how we help ourselves as well. In fact, today, I mean, obviously when this gets released, this will have run already, but it’d be on YouTube today, I’m recording a webinar with Hector Garcia, which is “Prioritizing mental health while preparing for tax season.” Because you and I are recording right now in November, you know, which I think that’s still staying evergreen, I can tell them when we’re recording, this’ll probably be released in January or February, but it’ll be in tax season. But yeah, you know, we want to get people ready. We’re in tax planning season. Let’s not only just tax plan for our clients, let’s tax plan mentally for ourselves for this next tax season so that we don’t come out April 16th, just completely exhausted and burned out, so what are the things we can do?
And I know there’s a lot of people doing positive things in that way, but that’s that image that we now have to show that, Hey, we are integrating technology to help us be more efficient. We are prioritizing work-life balance. We are finding ways to shut down at the end of the day, this kind of stuff. And so if we can show that that’s happening, I really am—bullish means positive, right? I am really bullish on this profession. Alright, there we go.
Exactly, and actually I think recent statistics are starting to show that the pipeline is starting to build, people are getting more excited. That’s a good thing. I think.
Yep. For sure. And I know that AICPA, the pipeline, the survey study that they did, Jennifer Wilson helped out with that, you know, had a lot of good data in there and actually it looks like we’re going to try to incorporate the data that you referenced that we did recently on satisfaction levels in the profession, in with that survey, and see if there’s any way we can collaborate on getting even stronger data out of there. So I see positive things happening, cool things happening like your book will be a lot of fun for the profession. And I’m looking forward to January when I have my downtime and I can spend it reading the book. I’m seeing so many good reviews online that I’m very excited to get this book. So before I ask a couple of last questions, anything you want to, uh, summarize on what we’ve discussed so far?
Yeah. Just the biggest takeaway, obviously—besides buying my book and giving it to your friends and family, particularly future accountants—the advice I have for most people, whether accountants or not, is when you’re at work, one, go into the office as much as you, can be present, let people see you. And two, when you’re in your office, don’t sit at your desk, get up, walk around, and talk to people. That’s how you’re going to find out how things are going on. And then you’d be able, from there, elevate your career, network properly with individuals, and networking, we haven’t talked about networking, but obviously, that’s a really important thing.
Even tonight, I’m going, still networking at my age, still going to the New York Society of CPAs is opening a new office. They’re having a reception tonight for their new office, and that’s exciting. But things like that, I’m sure I’m going to meet a handful of accountants just like me and have a great time and make new friends. So, get out there as much as you can.
Yep. For me, relationships are one of the most important things that we, I think, ignore too much because we just concentrate on work, work, work rather than relationships. But relationships are really the key to, you know, I think, mental and financial success. So, yeah, that’s important. Alright, two last questions. And the final one will be information on where they can get ahold of you, the book, and all that. But before that, I’m a big proponent of people who are more than their job title. And so, you know, you are CFO, you’re an author, but what are your outside-of-work passions? What do you do for fun when you’re not doing all of these work-related things?
Yeah, probably the biggest thing is softball. I played baseball in college. I’m in my young sixties now and I’m still playing softball and you know, it’s. Nothing I say more about the game and who wins or loses. It’s about the camaraderie.
Oh, yeah, I agree completely, yep.
Yeah, having a beer with the guys afterward. So that’s one thing I still do, besides reading, I like reading historical fiction and I also like fishing. I’m a good surfer. I’m a good body surfer but I’m not a good surfer. I tried that when I was living in Australia. I tried surfing. It was a disaster. They had to come rescue me half the time.
Plus, there’s all those sharks there.
And in the book, Dex McCord, he will encounter some sharks.
Nice. Alright. Well, those sound like awesome hobbies. Then lastly, if people want to, you know, get the book, reach out to you, find out more about what you’re doing, where are places they can look?
Yeah, take a look. The first one, obviously, is, yeah, Amazon. The book’s on there. Green Shade$ with an S. A lot of people forget the S.
It’s a dollar sign.
But it’s now available on Amazon, but also go to my website, which is CPA-Author.com, and you’ll be able to see videos, there’ll be some examples of the exhibits, like salaries of Big Four accountants. And on there you’ll see an email, GAdams@CPA-Author.com, or you can always reach out to me at the AMA at GAdams@AMANet.org. You know, I would love your feedback, but like I said, so far, the reviews have been great. The book also, one surprise has been a lot of companies have bought it in bulk to give for prospecting. Some small accounting firms have sent it to their customers and prospects. Insurance companies, accounting software companies, so. It’s getting out there, and I think the reader will enjoy the journey of Dex McCord and realize that accountants are cool.
Nice. I agree, accountants are cool. Well, I’m excited, like I said, to read it. I’m also excited, you’re motivating me—I’ve been working on the book for two plus years now. But it’s going to be released in 2025. So now I have to do it because I said it on here. It will be released, but it’s nothing like your story. It’s more about firm culture and the importance of it and putting people first.
Alright, well, Greg, thank you so much for being here today. I’m glad we were able to do this. And again, I’m looking forward to seeing the impact that your book’s going to be making on this profession.
Thank you, Randy. I really appreciate it. And hopefully, after the book, you’ll see us on Netflix and there’ll be an accounting hero instead of a cop or a doctor and that stuff.
Nice. I want a cameo appearance on that show.
Alright!
Well, thanks everybody for listening today.
Thank you.
About the Guest
Greg Adams is an author, CFO, COO and Director/Audit Committee Chair of public, private or private equity portfolio companies and nonprofit organizations at AMA. His new novel, Green Shade$: Accountants Aren’t Supposed To Die This Way, was released in the second quarter of 2024.
Greg describes himself and his role at AMA as strong on eComm, software as a service (SAAS), data solutions, technology services, education and consumer products experience with operational orientation driving performance throughout the organization. He provides consultation, reporting and alternatives to the CEO, Stakeholders and Board regarding various aspects of company operations including acquisitions, recapitalization, new products/line extensions and special projects. He has experience in installing web-based finance systems, transforming finance teams, US and International Tax Compliance and business models. Successfully completed numerous Initial Public Offerings, Private Placements and Debt financings.
Meet the Host
Randy Crabtree, co-founder and partner of Tri-Merit Specialty Tax Professionals, is a widely followed author, lecturer and podcast host for the accounting profession.
Since 2019, he has hosted the “The Unique CPA,” podcast, which ranks among the world’s 5% most popular programs (Source: Listen Score). You can find articles from Randy in Accounting Today’s Voices column, the AICPA Tax Adviser (Tax-saving opportunities for the housing and construction industries) and he is a regular presenter at conferences and virtual training events hosted by CPAmerica, Prime Global, Leading Edge Alliance (LEA), Allinial Global and several state CPA societies. Crabtree also provides continuing professional education to top 100 CPA firms across the country.
Schaumburg, Illinois-based Tri-Merit is a niche professional services firm that specializes in helping CPAs and their clients benefit from R&D tax credits, cost segregation, the energy efficient commercial buildings deduction (179D), the energy efficient home credit (45L) and the employee retention credit (ERC).
Prior to joining Tri-Merit, Crabtree was managing partner of a CPA firm in the greater Chicago area. He has more than 30 years of public accounting and tax consulting experience in a wide variety of industries, and has worked closely with top executives to help them optimize their tax planning strategies.