I just finished reading the recent report titled CPA Horizons 2025 which was put forth by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants to describe both the current state as well as the future of the CPA profession.

Please allow me a couple of minutes to stretch my 6’2” frame, because to be able to read this report, I had to cram myself into a very small box.

The CPA Horizons 2025 report concluded that “the services that CPAs provide have become so varied and diverse that the concept of core services is no longer representative of the profession.” This conclusion was reached based on interviews with approximately 5,600 CPAs.

To test the veracity of this conclusion, I emailed 17 customers, and asked them: “Excluding me, since I am special (well, at least according to my mother…), what services to you think of when you think about what CPAs do?” I received 14 responses.

13 customers said, in effect, that CPAs prepare income tax returns and financial statements. One customer said CPAs help their business customers to sleep better at night. I like this last answer, but this particular customer never follows instructions, so I will disregard it in context of my specific question. I am glad, however, that this customer sleeps better since we started working together.

So the next question: if the AICPA-interviewed CPAs say that core services (preparing tax returns and financial statements) is no longer representative of the profession, then why do customers of CPAs not seem to know that? Let’s look for answers by reviewing the conclusions in CPA Horizons 2025.

The First Conclusion

The world is now driven by technology, and CPAs need to change how they do business to accommodate this fact.

Really, the AICPA needed to interview 5,600 CPAs to conclude that?

The Second Conclusion

The CPA profession must find solutions to offer investors and stakeholders up-to-date, real-time financial information, because of how fast the business world now moves due to technology.

Okay, I’ll give the AICPA credit for pointing out that having financial statements that are current as of yesterday is an improvement over having financial statements that are only current as of last month of last quarter. However, in both cases, both of these results are the recitation of history. Whether you are looking at last month’s bank reconciliation or yesterday’s bank reconciliation, in both cases you are looking at the past.

How about CPAs helping their business customers to predict how much cash the business will have in the bank at the end of next week, next month, or at September 30, 2012?

All of the technology in the world does not matter if CPAs cannot start to help their customers by looking through the front windshield of their car while they are driving, as opposed to trying to drive the car by looking through the rear-view mirror. Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear: could that object be the irrelevance of the CPA profession in the economy of the future? If CPAs cannot help customers to peer intelligently into the future, then irrelevance of the CPA profession will certainly be the result. An additional benefit should result, that is to say, fewer accidents will happen. And for those of you who have forgotten Enron and Qwest, I offer you the recent explosion called MF Global.

The Third Conclusion

CPAs must embrace mobile technologies and social media to modernize and enhance interaction and collaboration with clients (AICPA’s word, not mine) and colleagues.

I flat out disagree, because my customers want consistent and repetitive face-to-face interaction, which includes ideas for value creation. The technology is merely how we transmit certain information.

I will in fact argue that the most valuable resource a CPA can create is a vast and talented and multi-disciplinary network of complementary professional (and other) services providers, that can assist customers with virtually any need that the customer may have, CPA service-centric or not. This is not accomplished through spending one’s days typing emails and playing with the latest and greatest technology, it is accomplished through constant contact and face-to-face interaction.

I will further assert that tremendous improvement in technology has caused “reverse delegation” in the CPA industry, that is to say, multitudes of CPAs are now performing data-input based tasks because of the ease of use of technology, and given how much compliance work exists in the profession, many CPAs I know are so “busy” (man I hate that word…) that they have no time or energy to actually think about the future, whether their own future or their customers’ futures.

The thought occurs at this point whether perhaps the AICPA should have interviewed 5,600 customers (or in the AICPA’s words clients) of CPA firms instead, because it doesn’t sound like very many of the 5,600 CPAs who were interviewed asked their customers what they want (not “need”) from the CPA profession. But perhaps that would have been difficult, I suspect some of the answers may have been hard to listen to, let alone to meaningfully respond to.

All of these conclusions beg the same question for any individual CPA: what business am I really in? If for example 90% of your revenue comes from preparing income tax returns and financial statements, then you are not a CPA, you are a historian. The larger question becomes: how do I differentiate myself from my CPA competition? What is exactly at stake if I am unable to differentiate? The fact is, most CPAs could not even sell cheeseburgers to the Donner party. I looked at 8 CPA firm brochures (yes on paper, not on the computer) and they all basically say the same thing: “we provide full-service income tax and financial statement preparation services that are of very high quality.” They also all have a lot of pictures of men 55 and older wearing dark suits. No differentiation there.

How can consumers of CPA services know what CPAs are actually capable of when most CPAs cannot differentiate among themselves or away from traditional services? You are what you do (not say) every day, and consumers respond accordingly.

Next time, may I suggest to the AICPA that you interview 5,600 customers of CPAs? I’ll bet your conclusions would be different. As to the relevancy of my profession in the economy of the future, if this report is the best that the AICPA can do, then I think I will call my stockbroker to buy short against my profession’s stock.