Don’t say I’m just an accountant!

I’ll be honest, it really bugs me when I hear the phrase ‘just an accountant’ or ‘just a bookkeeper’, especially when I hear it being uttered by accountants and bookkeepers!

Next September, I’ll have been an accountant for 40 years and I can’t remember a more exciting time to be in the profession. Yes, like most people and most businesses right now we face some huge challenges but the direction of our role has never looked better.

I’ve said it many times before but accountants have the opportunity to change lives for the better by using their knowledge and expertise to help hard-pressed business owners run better businesses. A switched on, passionate, driven accountant can influence 10, 50, 100 plus client businesses. That’s many families, teams and customers better rewarded, less stressed and happier. In turn that’s 100, 500, 1,000 of their clients and customers benefitting. How cool is that!

For much of my 40 years the problem has been that it’s been a time-consuming process to generate the information to enable that expertise to be proactively and effectively used. Manual records, poorly maintained computerised records and unwieldy management information systems have made it an expensive and relatively slow process and so client budgets, interest and patience have run out before the good stuff could be delivered to the masses. 

Not surprisingly, accountancy was widely regarded as a reactive process. Even so, it’s the profession’s fault that we allowed the bean-counter image to propagate by too often staying within our pre-formed, pre-tagged boxes.

Today it is very different. Today we can work with real-time information. We can automate our analysis and reports. We can actually play our role in real time. The handcuffs are off…for those brave enough and committed enough to release the shackles.

I see accountants with amazing dreams these days:

• Accountants committed to helping macro businesses grow.
• Accountants committed to their communities. 
• Accountants committed to driving positive change in their SME client bases. 
• Accountants who emotionally invest in their clients’ visions.
• Accountants who openly show passion and love for their role.
• Accountants building teams driven by their values and goals.

So what’s this about being ‘just an accountant’? 

We all have a choice. Whether we are an owner, a director, a partner, a manager, a senior or a junior, we have a choice to be passionate and driven by our role or to live down to its traditional perspective.

Whether we are in a technical role, a support role or an administrator, we can show our ambition for doing something amazing for our clients and colleagues or we can just show up for work and do our 9-5. 

Nobody makes us choose the lower bar. We can blame management, colleagues, clients (and don’t get me wrong, there’s usually room for improvement there!) but we choose our own mood, our energy levels, where we set the bar.

I used to think it was okay to have some team members and colleagues with drive and purpose whilst others just came in and did their job, nothing wrong with that, I thought.

I’m of a different mindset today. For a driven, passionate firm, it needs to be a driven, passionate team. If you want a 9-5 existence then that’s absolutely fine, that will rightly suit many, but maybe a better matched office environment needs to be found.

Don’t think of yourself as ‘just an anything’. If you work in the accounting environment then you can be part of something amazing.

It’s all down to you.