Insight
Insight's Special Features strive to provide thought leadership on topics of particular relevance to today's accounting and finance professionals. From audit quality and the CPA brand, to redefining the CPA's role and reinvigorating the CPA pipeline, these Special Features are an integral part of the Illinois CPA Society's commitment to "Enhancing the Value of the CPA Profession."

 

The Readiness Divide

 

The Readiness Divide: How Next-Gen Accounting Talent Measures Up

Responding to rising concerns about skills gaps, particularly among new hires, the Illinois CPA Society launched a research project in early 2025 to assess the readiness of today’s early-career accounting and finance professionals.

We deployed a survey covering 37 skills among six distinct categories—in addition to measuring perceptions around support for skills development, feedback, motivation to build new skills, and more related to workforce readiness—to measure how prepared early careerists felt in their first full-time roles and how prepared managers felt their early-career employees were.

Based on nearly 500 responses, the survey revealed notable disconnects between expectations and experiences and pinpointed where additional support and skill building is needed. The full findings are now shared in the 2025 Insight Special Feature, “The Readiness Divide: How Next-Gen Accounting Talent Measures Up.”

We hope these findings will spark action and inspire profession-wide conversations that shape new strategies, resources, and support systems that’ll help early-career accounting and finance professionals grow and thrive.

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Young Professionals Leadership Conference
Nov. 6, 2025 | 8:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. | CPE Credits: 3

Spend an energizing morning with your peers and gain practical strategies to communicate with confidence and unlock trust with your leadership. Think differently about how you show up at work and get the tools you need to stand out for the right reasons.

REGISTER

  
Re-Decoding the Decline

 

Re-Decoding the Decline: An Updated CPA Pipeline Report

In October 2023, the Illinois CPA Society, in partnership with the Center for Accounting Transformation, convened a coalition of 27 additional research partners—including the American Accounting Association, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Beta Alpha Psi, and 24 other state-based CPA membership associations—to collaboratively conduct a new national survey to gain fresh insight into the current drivers of accounting students and young professionals’ decisions to become CPAs or not.

Thanks to the widespread distribution efforts, 7,780 accounting students, graduates, and young professionals under the age of 35 who were pursuing or had pursued accounting degrees and careers—including CPAs and non-CPAs—completed the survey, including 3,287 full- or part-time students. In all, the survey responses compiled represent respondent perspectives from every state in the nation, along with the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and even abroad.

The resulting 2024 Insight Special Feature, “Re-Decoding the Decline: An Updated CPA Pipeline Report,” reveals respondents’ perceptions of CPAs and the CPA credential, along with the top challenges and deterrents driving their decisions to pursue the CPA credential or not. The findings provide invaluable insights the CPA profession and its stakeholders cannot ignore while trying to counter the persistent decline in the number of individuals pursuing the CPA credential.

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Righting Retention

 

Righting Retention

Why is retaining talent consistently ranked as one of the greatest management challenges impacting the accounting and finance profession? What really drives the profession's perpetually higher-than-average turnover rates? The 2023 Insight Special Feature, "Righting Retention," aims to answer those questions and more.

Amid a progressively weakening pipeline of new accounting talent, we believe retaining talent is destined to become a more pressing issue than ever before. Throughout summer 2023, we hosted multiple focus groups, conducted personal interviews, and surveyed both current and former Illinois CPA Society members to hear their unique perspectives on the profession’s long-term trouble with turnover.

In soliciting employer feedback, we revealed their views and actions when it comes to retaining accounting and finance talent. In seeking to understand employees’ motivations to voluntarily resign from their roles, we identified the major drivers behind their decisions, including six key factors.

Ultimately, “Righting Retention” uncovers several areas where action can be taken to help improve talent retention and foster discussions that could lead to positive change for the accounting and finance profession.
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A CPA Diversity Report

 

A CPA Diversity Report: Uncovering the Barriers to Success

Diversity. Equity. Inclusion. These three words—and the efforts required to realize them—have become increasingly important as demographic and social shifts transform our country. In turn, the actions organizations take across these fronts are coming under more scrutiny than ever before as employees, consumers, and investors increasingly aim to align their individual values with those of the organizations they choose to work for, do business with, and support. The accounting profession isn’t immune to these shifts, yet it has been—and continues to be—primarily a white man’s profession. Why?

Alumni of our annual Mary T. Washington Wylie Internship Preparation Program helped us uncover why some of these diverse young professionals voluntarily leave or consider leaving their employers and, in some cases, the accounting profession.

As we believe what they’re encountering may be happening to many minorities throughout the profession, our 2022 Insight Special Feature shares new research findings and some of the unique, eye-opening—and sometimes troubling—stories from these individuals to shed light on what could be contributing to the persistent disparity in minority representation and advancement in the accounting profession.

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Decoding the Decline

 

A CPA Pipeline Report: Decoding the Decline

“A stagnating CPA pipeline is a threat. It’s an issue that will only get worse and grow more troubling without action.” We delivered that warning in our 2016 Insight Special Feature, “Pipeline Disruption: The Search for Solutions to the Weakening Supply of CPAs.” Five years later the issue has, in fact, grown worse and more troubling.

Earning the CPA credential has historically been one of the most notable ways to establish a professional identity and exhibit a high level of competence in the accounting profession, yet we are witnessing a nationwide decline in not just new CPAs but also accounting program enrollments. With input from various regional and national stakeholders, we developed a survey targeted toward accounting students, graduates, and professionals under the age of 35—including CPAs and non-CPAs—with the aim of gaining insight into what is truly driving the decline in individuals pursuing the CPA credential and understanding why so many accounting students and young professionals either do not finish the CPA exam or never take it at all.

In this eye-opening 2021 Insight Special Feature, the Illinois CPA Society shares its survey findings, decoding the decline of new CPAs by revealing the real reasons accounting students, graduates, and young professionals are not pursuing the CPA credential like they used to.

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CPA Profession 2027

 

CPA Profession 2027: Racing for Relevance

The CPA profession is facing a pace and type of change unlike any it has experienced—the rules of the race are literally being rewritten by technology. Artificial intelligence and robotic process automation will forever change accounting, audit, finance, tax, and more. The ways services are provided to companies and clients, and the ways companies and firms are staffed, are set to shift dramatically in the years ahead. Add in rapidly changing company and client expectations, and now—more than ever—CPAs need to be looking at the turns ahead and positioning themselves to race toward relevance.

In this powerful 2020 Insight Special Feature, the Illinois CPA Society introduces you to what’s driving many of these trends and unveils its seven key predictions for what the future of the CPA profession may look like in 2027.

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Trust Is Not Enough

 

Trust Is Not Enough: Recharting the CPA's Path Forward

To ensure the relevance of CPAs and the CPA profession, it is time to look beyond the traditional tax, accounting, and audit services—what we refer to as compliance services—that CPAs have built their reputations on.

For years, being experts in these areas has treated CPAs amazingly well, but we cannot overlook that companies and clients today are demanding so much more from their business advisors—think deeper strategic insights, data analysis, and predictive analytics, just to name a few. Now, more than ever, CPAs must redefine who and what they are to their clients and companies or risk their relevance in a tech-heavy business world.

In this 2019 Insight Special Feature, the Illinois CPA Society challenges that it's time for CPAs to rechart their path forward as not only the most trusted business advisors but as the most valued and strategic business advisors.

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2018 INSIGHT Special Feature - Culture Conflicts

 

The Culture Conflicts: Are Long-Standing Business Practices Damaging the Accounting and Finance Profession?

“Finding and retaining talent” continues to be one of the biggest challenges we hear from accounting firms. The CPA profession struggles with retaining young professionals, advancing women into leadership positions, and building succession plans for firms.

Why haven’t we solved these problems, even though we’ve talked about them for years? Do we really understand what’s behind these issues? What if they’re actually driven by our workplace cultures?

In its 2018 INSIGHT Special Feature, the Illinois CPA Society asks the question: "Are long-standing business practices damaging the accounting and finance profession?"

We welcome your thoughts and insights on these very important issues impacting our profession.

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2016 INSIGHT Special Feature - CPA Pipeline

 

PIPELINE DISRUPTION: The Search for Solutions to the Weakening Supply of CPAs

“Why aren’t record numbers of accounting students and young professionals sitting for the CPA exam? Why does pipeline continually come up as one of the top issues facing the profession? We have to ask ourselves what can — or should — we do about it? Or, maybe more importantly, what happens if we do nothing at all?"

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2015 INSIGHT Special Feature - Audit Quality

 

Audit Quality & the CPA Brand: The Search for a Solution

Ongoing audit quality issues impact both you and the CPA profession. So what are we going to do about it? In our debut 2015 Insight Special Feature, we explore the issue of audit quality, its potential impact on the CPA brand, its challenges from the auditor and reviewer standpoint, and where the search for a solution may lead us.

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