Having many years' experience working with accounting firms of all sizes, one characteristic that I often see in the accounting profession is the lack of creativity and individual thinking. I can understand why accountants aren't the most creative people in the world, because there really is no such thing as creative accounting. Often times when accountants tried to be creative, they got themselves into troubles with the SEC and the IRS for "fraudulent financial reporting" and "tax evasion". Many accountants who think accounting can be creative are delusional and they are the ones whom I don't want to hire to do my taxes or my accounting. It's because I don't need my accountants to be "creative" and dream up some accounting schemes that only work in their own mind. I only want my accountant to be resourceful, insightful, and highly competent in navigating the existing accounting standards and tax codes.
Because of the nature of the accounting profession, typical accountants tend to be bookish. They are often trained to follow the rules and the standards. Such kind of training also renders many accountants to be followers, instead of thought leaders. This is also the reason why financial crisis often happened way after the accountants issued clean audited financial statements, and will continue to happen in the future without much warning.
Being followers, many accountants naturally tend to lag behind in technology and often follow the herd in embracing the hype. The latest so-called technology hype that many accountants are embracing is "social media". They think it's high-tech and it's the magic that can grow their accounting firms and make their accounting firms better. I personally don't consider social media as high-tech. It's actually low-tech to me. It's based on the similar platforms that chat rooms, web journals, internet messaging were built on many many many years ago when I was a kid. I don't see anything disruptive in social media except that many people are now logging onto very simple and basic websites, sharing their every thought and everything moment. In my opinion, social media is more like a gigantic transparent fish bowl for identity thieves to fish information, it's useful to mass marketers and ID thieves but it's totally useless to me. May be it's because I was staying up too much as a kid in internet chat rooms chatting to strangers aimlessly, or may be it was because I had used the internet messaging, roommate, dating and friendship sites too much when I was in college before such sites changed their names to become MySpace and Facebook. It's just the same old sites with new logo to me. So I am not impressed with social media. I was done socializing on it years ago before I became a CPA. Social media reminds me of the the part of my life when I was immature, bored, and didn't mind to share my life with the world since I hadn't really much too share to begin with.
But now, as a business owner, I don't want my accountant to be social on social media. I don't want my accountant to communicate, interact or serve me through Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin because I don't think these are technologies that can serve my need for accounting and tax service. The last thing I want the world to know is who my accountant is, and who has his hands on my most private financial information. Therefore, if I am to choose a CPA among hundreds of thousands in America and God knows how many more are supplied to the USA from the 2nd and 3rd worlds, I will first eliminate those who embrace social media. It's because, I don't want to hire any CPA who is a gullible follower who can easily be herded into any fad.
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