VisiCalc and the Ghosts of CPAs Past

I often wonder what some of the legendary accounting educators and practitioners of yesteryear would think if they visited an industry trade show in 2012. Would, for example, Emanuel Saxe or Sam Leidesdorf be comfortable or even malleable to the heavy technology-centric focus of the profession where audits can  now be performed on a 9-inch tablet in lieu of a large room full of strewn workpapers?

What about the evolution of career management, where the tracks to partnership don’t require 2,800 hours a year in order to be considered for an ownership stake? Or the meteoric rise of social media, where roughly 70 percent of CPA firms in the U.S. have a presence on Facebook?

If the above-mentioned was unthinkable a half-century ago, it wasn’t even in the embryonic stage in the early 1980s when CPAs on the cutting edge of technology, were using programs like VisiCalc (for those of you born after that, you probably needn’t worry about antiquated spread sheet programs) on IBM 5120s or Commodore SX-64s.

Nostalgia notwithstanding, those days are over. Today, they are worthy of an eBay listing and little else. Trade shows and conferences — save for mandated sessions on tax, audit, and financial reporting updates — have morphed into a how-to blueprint for the 21^st century CPA.

This did not happen overnight; the change has been gradual, but unmistakable. Many of the accounting confabs are billed as a “business and technology exposition” or some combination thereof. Ever see a billboard ad for one of the Big Four firms? Take a closer look and see if the word “accounting” is mentioned even once.

Perhaps emblematic of this evolution was the recent Innovation 2012 event hosted by the Maryland Society of CPAs. The one-day gathering featured a number of  exhibitors — more than half of which were “cloud-based” — as well as CPE sessions on social media, the “Future-Ready Firm,” and a standing room only presentation on “The Digital CPA.”

For the past several years, I’ve done a number of presentations on where and what I see for the firms of the future. So when someone asks me about the 21^st century practice, my advice to them is to attend one the larger trade shows and take a look around at both the program and the vendor booths. That should pretty much answer any follow-up questions.

Now that I think about it, there may still be a Radio Shack TRS-80 somewhere in my house. It’s definitely past time to clean out the closet.