#DCPA25 keynote: Growth by design - Erik Asgeirsson and Mark Koziel

Yeah, a little busy. As our former chair Tim Christian always likes to say, it's a great day to be a CPA. The opportunities abound. When you talk about the implementation of the tax bill, tariffs, all these are ways for us to interact with our clients and have good business conversations. Much like PPP, when I left the AICPA in 2020 and we started the town halls, think about how important and trusted we were to our clients then. Same thing now with this tax legislation and tariffs — all kinds of business opportunities.

Absolutely. When you look back where we were in 2012, I had a couple of folks that have been around this conference for a while and they congratulated me for taking over as CEO, saying, 'We have one of us, because you were on the CAS advisory group when we started it back in 2012.' I was honored. Being able to move that — looking at cloud computing back then, people thought we were crazy. 'Cloud's not going to be the advent, no one's going to get rid of their servers in their broom closet.' Here we are, it's a foregone conclusion. AI will get to that point, but we're in the very early stages. I can't wait till 10 years from now to talk about how we've transformed from the AI space as well.

It absolutely is. Taking it from just the technology piece, when I think about it especially with AI today, a lot of companies I've talked to around the world are discussing how they need to upskill their talent into a different way of doing things. The days of using experiential learning as the way to grow and progress are gone. The question is how do we give them that knowledge faster? From a new associate to manager is a five-to-seven year venture. How do I get there in five to seven months? Because we need these folks doing things differently. It changes the way we practice, our business model, how we hire and move forward. All of those pieces — staying on top of it as a community sitting in this room — that is where we're going to drive change going forward.

For sure. I see it not just in the firm community but also in business and industry. When I was out talking — we now have Engage UK, Engage Asia, Engage Africa. I was in the UK speaking, talked about the CFO, the CGMA, and why CGMA coming together with CPA was so important — going from the scorekeeper to strategic advisor. They use 'strategic advisor' rather than 'trusted advisor,' but it's all the same realm. Different ways of doing things. I think back to when I was in practice in Buffalo, we had IT consulting that resold boxes of GL packages. 'Buy our box because our box is better than theirs.' That was the way we did it. Now watching firms — larger firms bringing CAS, VAR, and CFO advisory all under one umbrella because that's the right strategic solution. I can't go in and just try to sell something to a client. I need to listen and do solution selling based on where they're going to be.

Absolutely. I have even talked to the person that was running our department way back when. He had to move from that box into providing some semblance of solutioning for the client, then going out and picking the right piece. It's almost like being a financial adviser but for the tech space. Then figuring out evaluating inside the client if they even have the capability to run it, and if they don't, move them into a CAS engagement.

Yeah, we're in an incredible place right now. I got a little over-excited at the SEC conference today as I said that we've already launched the SEC module for DAS. I'm a week off — it actually launches on the 17th. Pay attention to your email inbox if you care. People were generally interested. Overall, this initiative is not an AICPA-built product or a CPA.com-built product. It is a by-the-profession, for-the-profession product. A number of firms have been involved. The first question back in 2018 was, 'If we were to build an audit practice today based on all the technologies out there, how should we build it?' That was an important concept — rather than taking an old three-ring binder and trying to put it into the cloud, it's about doing it differently. That great growth and support by the firms continues to excite us. It has helped the category in general. We'd love for you to buy the DAS product, but no matter what you use, it's about moving the category. Audit is the one thing we as CPAs are licensed to do no matter what state we go in. That creates trust in the marketplace. Audit equals trust. Trust and audit gives us permission to do all the other things. It's a huge part of the ecosystem and one we really needed to lean into in 2018.

It's not. No. As we think about the things we need to focus on in audit transformation, it is not just about how we're doing the audit but a lot of the processes. If we put AI into the system now based on how we calculate value — which by the way is not how clients calculate it, it's how we do it internally of rate times hours — it'll be a race to the bottom. We need to figure out different ways of managing our practice to retain the value we deserve inside the audit practice. There are a lot of auditors here at Digital CPA. We'll have a big team at the booth. I want to give a shout out to my partner in this initiative, Sue Coffee, and the CPA.com team. Get a copy of that report. Let's move into an area that is just on fire. I don't know how to say 'sea change' — I like talking about the sea. What's going on in tax is quite incredible. This area has tremendous investment. Gen AI is perfectly suited for tax research and tax prep automation. It's dramatic. Over the next two years, how firms do their tax service and what companies support it will change dramatically. We leaned in this year and identified tax research as a perfect area to bring a new solution to market: Blue J. It's gone from a few hundred firms to close to 4,000 firms over the last 18 months. They're going to have 4 million tax questions answered by the end of the year. Here in 2026, we're going to do another benchmarking report related to tax services. I know the AICPA has been focused on moving into tax advisory and tax planning for a long time. I said this time and again back when I was here last time — if I ever got fired, I'd start my own CAS practice and tax practice, but tax would be more about wealth management. We started wealth management at my firm, and it was a huge uplift to own the total client relationship. Great opportunity for the profession.

We've been promoting this for over 20 years. In tax, mining the 1040 for gold — we have all this information in front of us. We have that data. Now how do we talk to our client about it differently to get them thinking about themselves and their business differently?

Yeah. A couple of our friends that joined us last night with Mike were encouraged by what they had heard based on some of the IRS changes happening now. They're thinking of this public-private partnership where we could rebuild and modernize the IRS differently. The SEC conference this morning: Chairman Atkins spoke right after I did. Chief accountant Kurt Hall spoke after the chairman. Kurt and I spent some time after. We're getting Kurt Moore involved to meet up with some additional firms. I've gotten feedback from firm CEOs who have been invited to the SEC because they want their perspective. I think we're at a really good time to open the capital market and provide opportunities, but we have to hold on to quality and make sure we stay the trusted profession.

A number of them have attended your tech roundtable every year — one of my favorite meetings. Just to listen — because AI is out there doesn't mean each of you have to figure out how to build AI and integrate it. A lot of these companies are figuring that out, so it will be part of your tech stack and analysis process. Since 2012, having this community and access to technology companies is fantastic. This year it's 40 exhibitors; next year we'll take it to 60. Give us input on who else you want. We're very open. They are partners. Mark, we have a couple final slides. This slide has a lot of boxes. It highlights billions — over $25 billion and growing every day — being invested in the firms, billions being invested by technology solutions to transform the practice of finance and accounting. I talked to some PE firms. Their thesis related to the firms is basically the thesis of Digital CPA: advancing people, process, technology, and looking to add value. With that said, Mark, there are questions about how we manage this and what safeguards are in place.

Yeah. We continue to look at that. You see the bottom right talking about independence, conflict of interest. The Professional Ethics Executive Committee is looking at this. I think within a week, an exposure draft final on feedback of some questions they had out there by the end of the year with a short window for response to keep it moving. Changes in independence — it's not just about APS or private equity. Everybody wants to automatically make it private equity. I always say I have no opinion on private equity. There's a lot of capital that entered the market — ESOP, wealth management firms, family office, companies buying into firms. Over 20 years we've had public companies — we had a couple, now down to one. The alternative practice structure has been around, but with private equity and wealth management firms, it changes the game a little bit. We have to stay on top of it.

First and foremost, tax — we kind of talked about it. The administration is working on implementation, losing 40 days along the way. The shutdown didn't help, but they were still working on implementation — dribbles and drabs. Now they'll kick it up. The fortunate thing is we have a shorter window than for TCJA back in '17, but there shouldn't be as much uplift because a lot of them were extenders from where we were before. That's the current state of the administration. I talked about the IRS, about the SEC. The SEC wants to open the capital markets. They want support from audit firms to drive the capital market process. We are active in that. Finally, profession reform — mobility and deregulation are big ticket items. As I came in — it was last year, this was the first stage I was on as new CEO starting January 1st. By then, Ohio had already passed or was about to pass adding the bachelor's plus two into the ecosystem for CPA exam eligibility. Now we're at 25 states. I start in January, it gets signed on January 9th in Ohio. Bunch of states were already ready to introduce. The train had left the station. Our biggest challenge right now is mobility because mobility was broken the second that happened in Ohio. It causes a lot of challenges, and firms are starting to find out the hard way. We're working with some tech companies looking at different options. At the same time, Florida last January introduced proposed legislation to deregulate us and other professions — architects, engineers. Mark Peterson from our DC team said, 'In Florida they're going to deregulate architects and engineers, and they have condos falling into the ocean, so maybe not a good time for that.' With accounting, we were able to help defeat that getting passed. But the House Speaker, who had it on his agenda for a two-year term, is still the House Speaker and has already introduced for the January session legislation to deregulate and eliminate the state board of accountancy, keeping CPE. The Florida Institute of CPAs — this is why you continue to pay state society dues — they went in and within 18 hours had 150 CPAs in Florida up on the hill talking about why it's a bad bill. They were so timely that half the legislators didn't even know it had dropped. Our team in DC is working hand-in-hand with Florida, but Florida has to lead the way. Those are the big ticket items. And Mark, one thing that is clearly changing every day is the talent situation based on the ongoing evolution of AI. Jen Liry tomorrow will talk about the MIT study. Changes in talent for all sectors, professional services included. That's another element to consider when looking at your people strategy for 2026 and beyond.

Yeah. There's so much complexity. Clients want someone else to run the machines, take all these capabilities, and help drive their small or mid-size businesses forward.

Yeah. Eric, thank you and the team for putting this together. I remember the early days in 2012 in a ballroom a fraction of this size. The interest has grown, and we are thriving and driving. CPA.com has done a lot to help.