The Purpose of the CPA: David Bergman

For me, the original interest was that I knew I enjoyed math, it was a natural strength, but I was also very interested in the business side. The accounting profession was that natural intersection of math and business acumen, so that's what originally drew me to the major in college. Also, understanding the amount of opportunities that can come with an accounting degree, the building block side of it. My desire was always to understand how the nuts and bolts worked. I was a kid who grew up playing with Legos, wanting to take things apart and rebuild them. Understanding the business side, the debits and credits, how things translated and made their way through to the financial statements was always interesting to me. It was a combination of math and business acumen, and also knowing it was an industry in high demand, so there should be a good career path when I got out of school. I didn't have a lot financially to go back on from home, so I had to make sure I was going to do something that would carry me forward on my own without family support. It seemed like a really good profession from that perspective, with opportunities to advance your career. Alumni who came back to speak at James Madison when I was in my business fraternity were very driven and hardworking, and that was opening up opportunities for them. It felt like through hard work and dedication, you could make a good career path into a lot of different angles.

I think probably the first thing early on was realizing how quickly you learn so much. When you start out as a CPA at one of the big four public accounting firms, you're on a job run by a senior auditor who's two years out of college. You look at that person and think, how on earth do they know so much already? How do they know how to supervise me and teach me so many things when they've only been in their role for two years? But then you realize after your first year and into your second, you're ready to run a job, run an audit, have conversations with the controller and CFO, and work through business issues. It's amazing how many different touch points you have with different industries and roles early on, and how quickly you can become a very experienced and knowledgeable professional. Next thing you know, you're leading jobs. That was probably one of the most surprising things, how quickly you develop and progress in the industry.

As I worked further through my career as a CPA, one of the things that felt meaningful to me was that becoming a CPA or passing the CPA exam is no easy task, and it comes with a sense of accomplishment and pride. I also appreciated the ethics and integrity aspects of being a CPA. It fostered that extra level of accountability, which is important to me. At the end of the day, the CPA profession brings that extra clarity and integrity to the business world, which I think is really important and valuable. As I progressed out of public accounting into corporate accounting, internal audit, corporate controllership, financial planning and analysis, and ultimately into my role as Chief Financial Officer, understanding how the components work is really important. Understanding the debits and credits, the revenue implications, gross margin implications, SG&A implications, and how to drive working capital—all of those pieces. Having the accounting background and the CPA keeps you very grounded. As you go through financial, analytical, and business conversations, in the back of your mind you're always grounded in knowing how the numbers ended up where they are and what can influence them. It gives you that extra sense of control or grounding.

I would say it's always fairly challenging. You're always layering in new experiences and new learning. In the earlier years, you're touching on so many different industries, which is great. Then generally you start to become a bit more of a deepened expert in a certain industry and continue to layer on. But it's always challenging, always giving you an opportunity to take on something new and learn something different, whether it's a different client, a different industry, a different accounting principle, or a new standard coming out. There are always different angles to learn. I've been a CPA now almost 30 years, and I feel like I'm still learning something new every week or every month. That's pretty cool. I don't know that you can always say that in other professions.

I would say it's a great career path to step into the business world with a lot of options. Some folks who go heavy in college down the finance road find it's not very easy to switch back towards controllership or the CPA side; it just doesn't translate as easily. However, if you start down the accounting road, become a CPA, and ultimately want to move towards the finance or FP&A road, you have a lot of the essential building blocks to be able to do that fairly easily. It just takes a little bit of a different analytical mindset, which is not hard to develop, and many CPAs already have it. So it's a really versatile profession or career path to step into. I'm probably a good example of that. I spent 10 years in public accounting at Arthur Andersen and Ernst & Young doing audits, consulting, advisory work, etc. With that knowledge set and being a CPA, I was easily able to transition into the corporate environment, where I helped a large global company get ready to become a public company and go through their IPO by starting up an internal audit department and helping them get ready for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. After we went public, I transitioned into becoming the corporate controller for my company, again using what I learned as a CPA. Having those experiences and being able to leverage them, it's not difficult to transition into the finance or FP&A side. I was able to take on treasury, financial planning and analysis, and ultimately work my way into being Chief Financial Officer of a multi-billion dollar company. I don't know that I could have done that as easily and gone through those different experiences if I hadn't made the initial decision to be an accounting major and go for my CPA coming out of school.