Navigating Change in the CPA Industry
Research consistently shows that more than 70 percent of organizational change efforts fail to meet their stated goals. That number should get the attention of every tax firm owner who has told themselves that AI adoption, service line expansion, or staffing restructuring can wait until the timing feels right. The timing may never feel right, and waiting is itself a transformation strategy. It just happens to be a bad one.
The tax profession is navigating two converging pressures that will reshape small and mid-sized practices whether leadership engages with them or not. First, the pipeline of new professionals entering the field is shrinking. Accounting program enrollment has declined sharply over the past several years, and the CPA exam passage pipeline has not kept pace with retirements. Second, AI tools are moving from novelty to operational infrastructure faster than most firms have developed policies, training, or governance to support them. Together, these two forces mean that the traditional staffing and workflow model that most practices are built on is becoming structurally unsustainable.
What the research on organizational change reveals is that firm leaders and their teams are not starting from the same place emotionally or strategically when it comes to transformation. In one study of 6,000 professionals across a dozen countries, approximately 70 percent of executives reported feeling positive about an upcoming change, while only 45 percent of non-executive employees shared that sentiment. That gap is not a motivation problem. It is an information and participation problem. Leaders who assume that enthusiasm at the top will naturally flow downward are working against the evidence.
Julia Dhar, a managing director at Boston Consulting Group and coauthor of "How Change Really Works," describes this as a failure of take-up planning. The question is not simply whether the firm has a strategy for AI integration or a succession plan for workforce gaps. The question is whether the specific people in specific roles who need to do things differently have been given clear expectations, had barriers removed, and understand how the change connects to their own work and interests.
Dhar also describes what she calls false alignment, the condition where a leadership group sounds unified but cannot independently write down the same explanation of what is changing and how. Tax firm partners fall into this trap frequently. A partner meeting that ends with general agreement to "do more with AI" or "shift toward advisory" has not produced alignment. It has produced a comfortable ambiguity that dissolves the moment implementation requires someone to change something specific.
What a Change Plan for a Tax Practice Actually Includes
A workable change plan does not require a consulting engagement. It requires honest answers to a short set of questions, committed to in writing before implementation begins.
Start with role-level specificity. Identify which staff members are expected to do something differently, whether that is using an AI research tool, taking on client advisory conversations, or owning a workflow that previously required a senior reviewer. Vague firm-wide directives do not produce behavior change.
Next, identify the barriers. Is the obstacle skill, meaning people do not yet know how to use the tool or have the advisory conversation? Is it time, meaning current workload makes adoption impractical during busy season? Is it incentive, meaning the compensation or recognition structure does not reward the new behavior? Each barrier has a different solution.
Then establish a visible cadence. Momentum stalls when leadership moves on before the change has taken hold. Assign someone to track adoption, schedule brief check-ins, and celebrate early progress explicitly, even when the wins feel small.
Finally, ask the honest question Dhar poses to her clients: do we believe it is actually likely that these people will make this change given what we have put in place? If the answer is uncertain, the plan needs more work before rollout begins.
The firms that navigate the next decade well will not necessarily be the ones with the best technology or the largest budgets. They will be the ones whose owners understood that transformation is a behavioral problem as much as a strategic one, and who built change plans that accounted for the humans being asked to carry them out.
The transformation is already underway. The only real choice is whether to engage it intentionally.
Dr. Christine Gervais is a licensed CPA, using her skills to help businesses grow and achieve their fullest potential. Christine has a Master’s degree in accounting from Southern New Hampshire University in addition to holding her CPA license for over a decade. Notably, Christine is a nationally recognized speaker providing education to other CPAs on how to best serve clients as well as instruction on a wide variety of topics for business owners on how to maximize success. Christine prides herself on the value she can bring to clients with her extensive tax knowledge and provides strategic, forward-thinking financial strategies to help clients grow. When not behind her desk, you can find Christine spending quality time with her daughter and stepson or tending to the family’s excessively loved farm animals.
Subscribe to the TPN Newsletter!
Like what you're reading?
Subscribe to our FREE newsletter and we'll deliver content like this directly to your inbox.