Sharpen Your Critical Thinking to Boost Your Team’s Readiness

Jon Lokhorst, CPA, CSP, PCC Leadership Coach, Your Best Leadership LLC
Enhancing Your Ability to Lead

In the 2025 Insight Special Feature, “The Readiness Divide: How Next-Gen Accounting Talent Measures Up,” the Illinois CPA Society (ICPAS) identified significant talent readiness gaps across 37 crucial skills in six distinct categories relevant to the rapidly changing accounting profession. Overall, early-career workers rated themselves an average score of 7.39 on a 10-point scale, compared to their managers’ average rating of 4.95, with critical thinking, problem solving, and communication skills seeing the most significant gaps between the two groups.

How do we begin narrowing the gaps? I’ll suggest that managers and leaders practice better critical thinking themselves. And, in fact, making their processes visible can help their team follow it for themselves. After all, as ICPAS President and CEO Geoffrey Brown, CAE, declared, closing the gap is a shared responsibility.

Of course, while it’s easy to highlight the need for better critical thinking, the term can be fuzzy without further explanation. In my workshops on the topic, I like to share the following definition from experts Michael Scriven and Richard Paul from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga: “Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information … as a guide to belief and action.”

With that said, I’ve developed a six-element framework that can help make critical thinking more actionable. Tailored to the accounting profession, the following six elements can be applied to virtually any engagement, project, or decision. Think of these six elements as a habit stack that strengthens judgment and decision making under pressure.

1. Situational Awareness: Context and Relevance

The first step in developing your critical-thinking skills is to know the purpose behind your work. Who are your key stakeholders, and what do they care most about? How’s the information going to be used in decision making? A brief scan of internal factors and external environments can provide important context to these questions and help you separate relevant signals from noise, avoiding wasted effort.

For example, let’s say a routine close of an accounting period looks fine until you notice a seasonal change in revenues, threatening a key loan covenant. By performing a brief context scan, you can turn the issue into a problem-solving discussion to preserve working capital and lender relationships.

2. Intellectual Curiosity: Imaginative Questioning

Curiosity turns data and underlying activity into insight, so go beyond surface facts to test assumptions and alternatives. Challenge your assumptions by asking questions like “Why?,” “What if?,” and “What else?” Additionally, proactively seek disconfirming evidence to address potential gaps in perspectives, oversights in reasoning, or groupthink within the team.

Lastly, invite a designated team member to critically challenge your conclusion before moving forward with it. For example, before finalizing a position in a tax planning engagement that includes a highly complex transaction, document the authority and rationale behind your initial thoughts. Then, identify potential evidence you could actively seek that would overturn your position before reaching your conclusion.

3. Pattern Recognition: Matching and Trends

Another way to draw better conclusions is by comparing information to prior periods, budgets, industry norms, and other benchmarks. At the same time, you can’t accept those comparisons at face value without properly recognizing the underlying context for them (as described earlier). To do so, spot recurring trends, patterns, behaviors, and outcomes, while watching out for anomalies. Identify exceptions by anchoring on operating cycles and the few key drivers that move results.

For example, an organization may consider establishing a decision prompt related to when staff-related expenses exceed a percentage of revenue during a fiscal quarter. The decision prompt would signal the chief financial officer to review and assess whether the situation is a temporary spike or one that requires action.

4. Gap Analysis: Missing Elements and Root Causes

When reality diverges from expectations, pause to look beyond the numbers. Investigate what’s missing or misaligned, whether you started with faulty assumptions, experienced miscues in communication, or encountered breakdowns in systems and processes. Perform a root cause analysis by taking a deeper dive into variances in the relationships between planned activities and expected results. Remember, problems are often surface-level indicators of underlying behaviors that skew results.

For example, if a CPA firm client with multiple business interests often complains of cash flow shortfalls resulting in late vendor payments, a root cause analysis may reveal that the client frequently withdraws excess cash from profitable businesses to support their lifestyle and entities operating at a deficit.

5. Clear Communication: Meaning and Relevance

Great thinking falls flat if others can’t act on it. When communicating ideas and recommendations, provide an executive summary that starts with the bottom line, or the most crucial information needed for decision making. Tailor your approach in communicating the same message to diverse audiences with differing needs and expertise (i.e., the CEO, board, and operations managers).

For example, simplify complex terms and remove accounting and technical jargon and acronyms when communicating with nonfinancial people. Additionally, support your points with understandable stories and visuals.

6. Insights to Action: Turning Ideas Into Recommendations and Action Plans

The best critical thinking pays off when it moves from identifying issues and problems to generating tangible solutions. Build a habit of proactively making recommendations and prioritizing them by impact and feasibility. Make sure to assign ownership for implementation, monitoring results, and watching for potential midcourse corrections and adjustments.

For example, let’s say a client accounting services (CAS) team notices a jump in a client’s monthly office supplies expense from $1,000 to $5,000 for three consecutive months. After applying the first five elements of this six-part framework, the CAS team may uncover a weakness in the client’s purchasing process, prompting a corrective action plan to ensure the overspending doesn’t recur.

Additional Tips for Success

In addition to these six steps, I’d be remiss not to mention the influence artificial intelligence (AI) can have on your critical thinking. When used appropriately, AI can be a force multiplier for critical thinking. As my professional speaker colleague Ford Saeks suggests, “treat AI like an intern.” Meaning, as you use AI, make sure to provide context and constraints when using it for brainstorming, research, and drafting. Ask for sources, ensuring adherence to professional standards, current regulations, and organizational policies. Then, perform a critical review and translate outputs into your own words—just like you do when assigning a project to an intern.

Lastly, it’s important to remember that the responsibility of critical thinking falls on you. Don’t wait for someone else to develop you—develop yourself. Filter assignments through the six-part framework and seek feedback from experienced leaders and mentors. Over time, you’ll notice that your insights and recommendations gain more notice and credibility. And, by sharpening your critical-thinking skills, you’ll not only strengthen your capabilities but also help narrow the talent readiness gap within your team and organization.

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