What makes a good accountant? A lot of people think it must be math. The best accountants probably are good at math, but so are a lot of other people.
Curiosity
One of the things that makes a great accountant is curiosity.
What makes an accountant great is not that she can do tricky things with numbers, but that she is relentlessly, almost pathologically curious about the world around her. An accountant that isn’t curious about the world will never notice that something smells funny in the financials of the company he works for; he’ll be too busy working on something else to notice. And an accountant who isn’t curious about what other accountants are doing will make the same mistakes over and over again.
A good accountant is more than just someone who can use Excel or other accounting software. There are two key qualities that define a good accountant.
Trustworthiness and Professionalism
You want an accountant you can trust to do the right thing even when it would be easier not to; you want to be sure that they will act in your best interest. Good accounting is not about getting you the biggest tax refund possible; it’s about making sure your financial affairs are organized so that you can make decisions that are good for you. And, of course, it is also about giving you accurate information with which to make those decisions.
I’m not saying that accountants who put their clients’ interests first are better accountants than those who don’t. I’m saying that there are two different types of accounting firm, and this type of firm is better than the other type. You want an accountant who will act in your interest at all times, not one who will act in their interest at all times.
Reliability is important because it affects how much value you get out of the second characteristic, which is professionalism. A professional accountant knows their stuff, keeps up with changes in laws and regulations, and generally understands what they’re doing. They aren’t just good.
I would like to hire an accountant, but I’m not sure what qualities to look for. Should I hire one who is trusted by many people or one who is smart? Or maybe someone who gets me? How about someone who is aggressive, or who has strong opinions?
The qualities that make someone a good accountant can be different from the qualities that make someone a good friend. You probably want your accountant to be honest and hard-working, but you don’t need to worry about whether your accountant will remember your birthday or help you move.
The best accountant for you depends on what you want an accountant for. If you set up a business, you need someone who understands how taxes work, understands your business, and can handle the paperwork. If you just want to do your own taxes, it’s more important that he or she be patient with questions and able to focus.
I could go on–different kinds of accountants are needed for estates and trusts and nonprofits–but this list should be enough to give you an idea of what to look for in an accountant. The next step is finding an accountant with those qualities.
One of the reasons you want a good accountant is that they can save you money. This might seem a little surprising. Why would a good accountant save you money? Isn’t it their job to find ways for you to pay more?
Actually, a good accountant will not just look for ways to save you money. What makes a good accountant is looking at everything from your point of view, which is not the same as his or hers.
For example, if your accountant is on commission, she will look at everything from her point of view, which is how much your job costs her firm. But if your accountant is salaried, or owns the firm outright, then she will look at everything from your point of view.
To put it another way: an employee’s loyalty is to her employer; a customer’s loyalty is to herself. Employers and employees often have conflicting interests, which is why employers want control over hiring and firing. The more control they have, the more likely they are to hire someone whose loyalty to them outweighs her loyalty to you as a customer.
When you hire someone as an employee instead of as an independent contractor, what you are buying is not just the work but also the loyalty.
A good accountant is a person who takes the trouble to understand what kind of business his client is in and then makes that business as efficient as possible.
Good accountants are rare because most businesses don’t really know what kind of business they’re in. They’re in the widget business, or the real estate business, or the restaurant business. But they don’t know why they’re in those businesses. And any good accountant worth his salt will tell them to get out of those businesses and go into a different one.
Being an accountant is a lot like being a scientist: it’s a profession that rewards the ability to do difficult puzzles. You want to be able to see patterns in numbers and remember what you’ve seen and use your memory to make predictions. But it’s not just pattern-matching; you need to be able to think outside the box and ask whether the patterns you see in one context can be applied somewhere else.
A good accountant doesn’t just add numbers in their head; they make connections between different things, even if those things don’t seem at first to have anything to do with each other. They’re like the physicists who helped invent the atom bomb by realizing that nuclear physics and chemistry were more closely related than anyone had realized. A good accountant sees things that other people don’t, and that makes them more valuable as well as more interesting.
A good accountant is not just a bean counter. In fact, the best accountants I have ever worked with had trouble balancing their checkbooks. They were more interested in how money flowed than in where it came from or where it went to.
A good accountant is also not just someone who has memorized the tax code. That person is an expensive lawyer whose advice you can’t trust, because he knows the rules will change tomorrow.