And then other people are thinking, well, does this limit career options for staff? So What do you think, will the profession, do you think, be dominated by these big national and regional firms? Or do you think the smaller firms have an opportunity to niche and to continue to thrive in their own way?

They always will be.

I mean, you know, and maybe, you know, I think some of the consolidation, what I have seen, and I think it's only temporary for now, is kind of like hollowing out of the middle of the profession, right? So you have the bigger getting bigger and the smaller getting smaller.

And then in the middle, what's happening inside of those firms? There are less...

opportunities for generalists today.

We've said that time and again.

What we are are small firms.

yeah uh so just briefly on the talent shortage and i know the numbers seem to be going i've heard numbers are going up number of uh students you know studying accounting you know graduating with accounting degrees all that it's kind of taking a turn swing you know back up um so we've been talking about the talent shortage for a long time what are firms still getting wrong

Thanks,

Melanie.

And just hi, everybody.

Good to be back on a town hall.

We are joined today.

We'll have Mark Peterson join a little bit.

We also have Jan Lewis, our chair of the AICPA and the association joining us as well.

So, Mark, I'd like for you to share a couple of thoughts of what you've seen from

Thanks,

Melanie.

And just hi, everybody.

Good to be back on a town hall.

We are joined today.

We'll have Mark Peterson join a little bit.

We also have Jan Lewis, our chair of the AICPA and the association joining us as well.

So, Mark, I'd like for you to share a couple of thoughts of what you've seen from

How do you compare, you know, seeing what you see today here as CEO of the AICPA compared to like when you were interacting with obviously a much smaller group of firms, but what does all this mean to you and the direction you hope to take the AICPA with all these changes?

Well, you know, for us, it's, you know, helping lead our profession forward, right? And I said, you know, one of the big things, because everybody wants to talk about AI, this is the change, right? But it's that.

It's always been technology, right? So when I started, it was right in the early days of, I won't even say Excel, we were on Lotus 1, 2, 3, right? And Busy Cal, while I was in college.

I remember those days.

Right? And so, you know, and talking to others who were in practice 40, 45 years ago, When they would talk about the footing room, right? That, you know, the firms had footers.

They just sat there all day, everything.

Those were your new associates.

What are your thoughts

So why was it important to get that back?

I think there's a number of things.

I do think summarization and people having that hard copy in their hand to feel it and realize it.

I think, first and foremost, for a number of years now, we have over-emailed our members.

We've always tried to manage the number of emails.

And part of it is, it's been a slippery slope because we ask members what they're interested in.

And from their interest is what we try and email them with.

How are you settling in?

Right

... and bring that into the report, and then finalized the report, and it was pretty manual at the time.

And so you fast-forward 15 years, and in 2011, uh, realizing that the Vision Project and the Vision Report was expiring, it was time to look out another 15 years, and CPA Horizons 2025 was created.

And so 2025, again, does the same thing.

There were, rather than, you know, state by state by state, there were more regional meetings, and the web was brought in, the internet a little bit to do some surveying in a different way, but it was definitely a different time then than what it was in the late '90s.

And then fast-forward to 2025, you know, I was appointed, uh, CEO January of '25.

Paul Stollen, who was the 2011 chair of AICPA said, "Hey, by the way, CPA Horizons is expiring.

Right.

Uh, you know, what are the potential benefits of these vertically AI-enhanced platforms versus the frontier models? You know, the, you know, GenAI, I mean, ChatGPT, Claude b-being, uh, Gemini being the frontier models, and then countless examples here, um, of these AI-enhanced platforms that are using the models, uh, but they also are putting in place, um, the-

the-Controls, doing things about, you know, focusing on where the, where the, where the data goes, um, making sure it's at times stays, you know, not just at times, whenever it needs to, inside firm managed, uh, boundaries.

Um, understanding when you want to, you know, toggle AI capabilities on and off in an engagement.

There might be situations where you wanna use it.

There might be other situations where you want it to be more deterministic.

Um, how do-- When, when you look at these technologies, and this is what we've seen over the past decade, it's about the people, process, and technology.

So this change management is critical.

Yep.

Two, two big announcements this past week, though, one from the administration, one from Congress, uh, related to putting some guardrails in place or regulatory guardrails in place.

Yeah, you know, it's been-- We, we saw this in the sustainability ESG age, right? When that first started, it became the Wild West of standards.

There were all kinds of different standard setters around it, and this is more on the, you know, kind of the audit-related space of what we do and some of the assurance around that.

And I think, you know, right now, and I, I, I, I like the idea, the executive order was one thing about how they're gonna review the models, and they're gonna be engaged in that, and that's from a, a national security standpoint.

Again, Sue and I this morning were, and Eric was, and Lisa were there too.

The-- You know, listening to this, uh, head of security for MGM and the risks around AI that they're looking at every day and a- and what AI does from a security standpoint, there's a national security aspect to that too.

And so thinking about that with the executive or-order that came out, but then also this, this great American AI Act that, that was, uh, just dropped, and it's like three hundred pages, I think, and we've been through it and looking at what, what's in it.

Yep.