CPA Draft Day

Last night, the National Football League held its annual draft. You know the glacial process where each team “on the clock” gets 10 minutes to make a selection from the best of the best among collegiate pigskin prospects.

Years ago, when the event was held at one of the major hotels in New York, I had the fortune of knowing the head banquet manager at the venue who quickly ushered my wife and I into a pair of front row seats. We arrived safely ahead of all the “draftniks” who, incredibly waited outside all night for the opportunity to urge on their teams  (scream at the top of their lungs actually) to draft that skull-crushing linebacker, the Heisman Trophy quarterback who can uncork a perfect 70-yard spiral, or an offensive tackle was roughly the size of a brontosaurus.

After one hour my spouse and I agreed that it was one of the dullest and most drawn-out affairs we’d ever attended and promptly left before the second of 30-plus rounds began. As we were leaving, one wag asked us why we were going as the New York Jets hadn’t made their selection yet.

For the record their No. 1 pick that year was Blair Thomas, a heralded running back out of Penn State who may have set Big Apple football records for underachievement and bounced around for six years and four teams before exiting stage right to get on with his life’s work.

But it got me to thinking. What if the nation’s accounting firms could hold a draft and select the best and brightest from the top accounting schools? They surely would not need a scouting combine where prospects are timed in the 40-yard dash and do multiple repetitions on the bench press with 225 lbs. Not that anyone would want to see accounting graduates attempt those feats.

But what would firms look for? Traditionally, new and promising hires would cut their teeth in either tax or audit and hopefully get on a partner track. Or, they had the option going with a smaller practice or hanging out their own shingle. A good friend of my eldest daughter will, in October, begin her career in accounting with Big Four firm KPMG. She revealed to me that they liked her attitude and work ethic (of course in addition to her stellar academics). My guess is she’ll get her experience there and in a few years move on.

But like sure-fire football draft picks that bust like a water balloon near a blowtorch, there are intangibles for success in any sport or profession that no coach or personnel department can easily recognize. Sometimes the best high-potentials (those seniors that have been with a CPA firm for 10-plus years) were not out of the box superstars, but instead middle or late bloomers. One managing partner of a well-respected Top 100 firm revealed that he was almost thrown out of college on two occasions as his GPA was equivalent to the annual rainfall amounts in the Gobi Desert.

Sure grades are important and can be a telling indices, but with the profession changing more rapidly over the past few years than in the past half-century, so are the traditional parameters in evaluation of talent. Perhaps in lieu of audit or tax, newcomers might be a better fit in burgeoning areas such as marketing and business development. More than one wildly successful firm owner and consultant admitted to having been an underperforming CPA in terms of traditional practice ability and several were actually terminated. But all later found very profitable niches in related areas.

Maybe one day, the profession will look and evaluate talent differently than it does now. But in the event they stage a collegiate draft, I wouldn’t bet that ESPN would rush to televise it.