This document discusses the importance of staying up to date with trends and technology for career success in accounting. It identifies three key ways professionals can learn about changes: formal training, professional reading, and social interactions. Formal training through education is critical for building foundational knowledge, while continuous learning through reading and social media is important for keeping skills and knowledge relevant. The document encourages accounting professionals to make ongoing learning a priority through a combination of these methods.

1. Staying Up to Date with Trends and Technology
By Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA, K2 Enterprises
This month’s blog focus is career development, and I can think of no area where my experience has changed
more during my 25 years in the accounting profession than keeping up with the changes in technology. A
very wise CPA once told me that there were three major foci for a career path in accounting – accounting &
auditing (A&A – one discipline), taxation, and management accounting. This mentor said that, if you work
hard to keep up, you can be an expert in one area, conversant in a second topic, and a novice at the third. If
advising a new staff person today, I would add the fourth discipline, which is technology, and this area
features a broader base of knowledge as well as more rapid changes than the other three areas. Even if you
do not choose to practice directly related to technology, your career success will likely be influenced by how
well you keep up with changes in the profession and technology.
There is not a single way to learn what, you need to discover and implement the trends and technological
changes which will change the profession during your career. Just as armies often train to fight the last war
instead of the next one, colleges and universities at the undergraduate level generally only train users for skills
which are currently needed at the time the course takes place. Similarly, news articles and blogs may carry a
bias of the author or publisher and must be taken in context. That having been said, there are three
fundamental channels where professionals learn about changes in industry practices and pick up practical
technology tips on an ongoing basis – formal and informal training, professional reading, and social
interactions. Even though the way we receive and consume the information flowing through these channels
has changed from being based on paper to being based on digital screens over the last 25 years, at its core,

2. these three areas will continue to be important as you work to maintain the relevance of your skills to the
current market. I’ve published a listing of resources at the end of this blog post.
The first area, training, and education, is required of most accounting professionals before they join the
profession, and omitting this step will limit your career significantly. Although you can work at some tasks like
data entry before you learn about debits, credits, accruals, and deferrals, the number of people who have
succeeded in accounting without at least a high school or college course in bookkeeping or accounting is
very limited. Similarly, there are very few people who have the title of chief financial officer (CFO) of a
significant business without either a professional certification like a CPA or CGMA, graduate education like a
MAcc or an MBA, or both. Rigorous training and education is critical for anyone who aspires to be an
accounting professional.
Unfortunately, many common issues encountered in practice are too new or too arcane to be covered in CPE
sessions. Because of this, a regular program of professional reading is important for any professional. Your
reading program can be a structured program of business books like Ron Baker’s “Baker’s Dozen”, an
occasional unstructured scan of The Wall Street Journal and some newsletters, or whatever you determine.
The important thing is to make it a priority and get it done. Since I work primarily with accounting
technology, I read a lot of accounting and technology magazines, websites, and newsletters (a listing of some
of my favorite news sources is also listed as an appendix to this blog post). As the former technology editor
of a magazine, I’m also a big fan of gathering my own information when possible, and one of the best tools
I’ve ever encountered for that is Google Alerts (www.google.com/alerts).I’ve included a graphic which shows
some of the alerts I receive on a daily basis which summarize news stories and blog postings related to a
particular search term.
The final way to learn about a topic, social interactions, allows you to learn from others and share what you
know, which can help both you and the person you are speaking with consider items you may have
overlooked. Although this kind of learning has typically occurred in a meeting, over lunch, or at a social
occasion, many organizations are asking professionals to periodically write articles for a blog or share
interesting items on social media. This is an area which has helped me build my personal career and brand
while keeping up my professional reading. I typically spend at least 30-45 minutes a day doing social media
and reading stories, and I share most of the articles I find interesting as links on Twitter and Facebook.
Although this has caused some of my friends who are not interested in accounting technology to “unfollow”
me, I have found a nice niche audience, and now have over 5,000 followers on Twitter. I encourage you to
see what I do by visiting my Twitter page at http://www.twitter.com/bftcpa (and if you like what you read
there, please join my list of followers).

3. Figure 1: Google Alerts is a free service which combs the web for new content on a subject
Please don’t forget that your education is not just something which one does before beginning a career in
accounting – it must be an ongoing part of how you pursue your personal plans for self-improvement. If you
feel like you don’t know enough about a topic, you won’t learn anything until you spend time understanding,
repeating, and mastering the relevant skills. It is amazing to me how people who want to learn about tax law
changes or new financial reporting standards take a class while few professionals have ever taken an Excel
course which explains not only what the keystrokes are, but also explains situations in your professional work
where you might use that skill. You might also surprise yourself - sharing your knowledge of a topic with
others, whether on a one-on-one basis, or in a group setting is a personally rewarding experience – and
might help you get some of the affirmation which is not available in many workplaces. Sharing your
knowledge also clarifies what you know, and areas where you need more work.
Brian Tankersley (@BFTCPA, CPATechBlog.com) advises firms and companies on accounting technology issues. He
teaches courses in the US and Canada through K2 Enterprises, and has served as a guest speaker for professional
accounting organizations across the US and Canada. Tankersley is a Certified Public Accountant (Tennessee), a Certified
Information Technology Professional, and a Chartered Global Management Accountant. Brian makes his home in
Farragut, Tennessee.
If you’d like to learn more about K2 Enterprises , please visit our website at www.k2e.com, where you can see descriptions of courses
and conferences offered through state CPA societies, enroll in our webinars and video training, learn more about ACPEN sessions, or
get details of our courses and conferences co-sponsored with Western CPE.
Join the Accounting Professionals LinkedIn Group for USA or Canada.