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How finance is important in the age of social media and AI
In this episode of The Better Finance podcast, the speakers Myles Corson and Tom Hood discuss the evolving finance profession.
Related topics
In this episode of the EY Better Finance podcast, host Myles Corson is joined by Tom Hood, Executive Vice President of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).
An early adopter of social media, Tom reveals how it has helped him engage with a new generation of finance professionals. Also, he provides advice for CFOs considering venturing into the world of social media.
The episode also explores Tom’s work with the AICPA and the future of the Finance Leadership Group — a community of senior finance leaders who meet to discuss major issues and the future of the industry.
Tom discusses how new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), are beginning to have a significant impact on the finance profession. And how these new technologies could help finance teams to focus more time on adding value across complex finance matters. This is achieved by reducing the amount of resources needed to complete simple and repetitive activities.
The episode explores how mastering these new technologies could lead to the reverse mentorship, in which seasoned financial professionals could benefit from the capabilities and experiences of their younger counterparts. This collaboration with other departments and age groups could help financial professionals widen their perspectives and skill sets at all levels.
Key takeaways:
- Social media can be an important tool for finance leaders, and can help them communicate their vision and learn from others’ experiences.
- Finance professionals should look to develop a deeper technical skill set.
- Cultural transformation is occurring where finance works closely with other departments to create value.
- By engaging AI and new technologies to help automate repetitive tasks, finance teams can focus on more complex areas and deliver more strategic value to the business.
For your convenience, full text transcript of this podcast is also available. Read the transcript.
Myles Corson
Hello, I’m Myles Corson from EY and You’re listening to the Better Finance Podcast. A series that explores the changing dynamics of the business world and what it means for finance leaders of today and tomorrow by sharing insights from global leaders on key topics affecting the world of corporate finance.In this episode, Tom Hood, Executive Vice President of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants – or AICPA – discusses the evolving finance profession and how new technologies like artificial intelligence, are beginning to have a significant impact.
It’s a great and wide-ranging conversation. So, let’s jump straight in!
Corson
Tom, welcome and thank you so much for joining us on the Better Finance podcast. It's a great honor to have you on. As we get started, perhaps you could share, for those of our listeners that haven't heard of you, your background and your role.Tom Hood
It's great to be here, by the way, Myles. My current role at the AICPA-CIMA [American Institute of Certified Public Accountants — Chartered Institute of Management Accountants] is, I'm the Executive Vice President of Business Engagement and Growth. What does that mean? It means my primary focus is to engage corporate finance and accounting community, where roughly 45% of our members are. And find out what the key issues are and what are some of the key needs and more importantly, where they see the profession going. At the same time, I'm still keeping maybe one foot in the public accounting side, doing work with lots of major firms and firm associations, and looking for things that are common across those two spectrums. And I bring that back to the association and we try to act on some of those insights.Corson
I'd sort of jokingly said, "for those that haven't heard of you" and just wanted to start off by setting the stage is that you are recognized as one of LinkedIn's top 100 influencers. You have this massive following on social media. Perhaps you could tell us about how an accountant came to have that kind of social media presence?Hood
I like to say even a blind squirrel can find a nut, sometimes. Um, it nearly totally by accident. I was at the Maryland Association Certified Public Accounts as the CEO [Chief Executive Officer] there. And in that role, we were trying to be more relevant to young people. Right at the beginning of really the formative stages of social media, and believe it or not, we have a Myspace account, if you can remember back into those days. So, this is before Facebook, actually. And we started to say we've gotta be on social because that's where all the students are. And so, that led us to try to create some things around social media that we thought be relevant to students ultimately to young professionals. So we did MySpace, Facebook, when it started to come about. But early on, I got onto Twitter. I think my first tweet was like right in 2007, shortly after they started. Soon after I found a blog coach, because blogging which was meant to be web logging. That's what blogging came from. And so, we hired a blog coach. A lady named Debbie Weil, who went through what blogging was and what was meant to be. She was very much ahead of her time. And gave me lessons on how to blog. And so, we started a blog at the association, one for students and one for our core professionals. And then, that would end up getting tweeted. And this was even before LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn came in around 2008 or 9. And so, once that happened, we got on there because that was much more professional. But between Twitter, LinkedIn, and at that point, MySpace and Facebook, that's where the presence started. So, as I got to blogging, I created a nice following on twitter, which is the where most professionals were. And when LinkedIn started their influencer campaign, they wanted someone who would understand the accounting and finance profession. And they found me because of that Twitter account and said, "Hey, we want you to write for us and give us some of your thoughts." So, when I started doing that, they were promoting it, obviously. Next thing you know my followers just went up like a big exponential curve and I ended up with like 730,000 followers on LinkedIn.Corson
That's a remarkable story. You've obviously been an earlier adopter. You've been right away through the birth of a lot of this. So, if you have to kind of distil down some of the lessons you've learned, how would you summarize the things that have worked most successfully?Hood
For me, it's my primary learning tool. Early on, I found out that there's a lot of people sharing really good stuff on both Twitter and LinkedIn. I know Twitter could be controversial these days. But you get to choose who you follow. And so, you create your own network of thought leaders and that's how it's easier to keep up on things. So, Twitter, learning. Obviously, linking and networking. And then ultimately, listening. So, in my job at the association Maryland and even now at the AICPA-CIMA, my job is growth and engagement. Engagement meaning I have to have an ear to the ground and know what people are talking about and what's going on. There's no better tool than that, from that standpoint. And so, that's where I came from that and so my network is my learning community, if you will. Like you're one of them, your whole webcast and all that. I connected to you on LinkedIn and on Twitter. And that's where I start to pay attention to things.Corson
Well, I appreciate that and I think it's a really important point, a lot of people see it as communication tool, but the knowledge aspects of it are hugely beneficial. One of things that I'm observing as well to your point, as you start to follow people, that there are more finance leaders, CFOs, starting to engage and I think it gets to your point about engaging with the studentsand younger communities. How do you connect with those individuals, where they are and where they’re comfortable? Do you have any specific recommendations for finance leaders that maybe thinking about this, but maybe nervous about dipping their toe into the social media world?
Hood
It's like anything. You have to start. I always say that CPAs and social media, it's like rattlesnakes. They like to look at it but they don't wanna touch it. And that's the same thing with AI [artificial intelligence], by the way, right now. We'll talk about later, I think. But the notion of social media scares the heck out of people. And it's not too hard to, especially now with LinkedIn. LinkedIn you can create a post, you don't have to write an article. You don't have to go crazy. Just write a post. Take an article you see in HBR [Harvard Business Review] or something in Wall Street Journal and say, "I just saw this article about talent and here's my point of view." It's about expressing a point of view and one of the three things I took away from that article. And start with that. And you put it out there. And even if nobody listens, you've taken the time to digest and synthesize something into a point of view. Now, when somebody's gonna like it and share it. And they might even put a comment and be controversial, but if they do, that's the listening part. So now I go, "Okay, I'm listening to what you say, instead of defending it, what can I learn from that? Or what are they trying to get across?" And then you can respond to it. That's how you begin to build up that muscle. And then you get to write your own long-form article on LinkedIn. The other part though is start by paying attention to other people. Like follow you or me and all the other finance people out there and begin to see what they’re talking about. And what are they saying and then suddenly you go, "Oh, I've got a point of view about that, let me put something out there." So, it's about studying a bit about some of those things and by the way, there's also recent, I think Debbie Weil’s book, it might be out of print by this point, but it's great, it's like the corporate blogging handbook or something it, it’s just full of great — examples won’t be relevant today because there are a lot of things that are gone since back then but it's basically this little concept to write.Corson
I think that's so well said. I mean the other thing again I know following you I see you do a lot, you're obviously out and about meeting with members, meeting with a lot of the committees etc. Just posting the photographs of who you're connecting with and certainly for CFOs, one of the things I observe is CFOs when they're out and about amongst the business, just posting the photograph, that's actually where a lot of the engagement comes from because people like the personal connection, seeing a little bit behind the corporate face of the individual.Hood
Correct. The one thing I used to say very early on is business is social. So social technologies belong in the business world, if used properly. Now that's the other part, use the tool, don't let the tool use you. But to your point, all the selfies and photos of people that you're with make a big impression and your people are watching. If you're a CFO or a CEO, it's a great way to informally communicate what you care about. So, if I was a CFO, and obviously every CFO right now is probably driving some form of transformation project, I would see an article about transformation or a piece from someone that I respected about what's going on in their world with a transformation. And then I would put a point of view about that. What you're doing is subtly sending a message to your people about what you care about and what you're thinking about. I remember some examples like back in the MACPA [Maryland Association of Certified Public Accountants] we were going through a transformation and I was putting stuff about the cloud, cloud technologies. And that was clearly sending a signal that that's where we're headed. And we had an IT person on staff who didn't want to go to the cloud. Wanted to stay on premise and I'm like, "Everything we're seeing in profession right now is pointing to the cloud, we're going there as an association. So, we're up where our members are." So, like that's an example where you start doing that and your people pay attention.Corson
Great point, I think that brings to life. We've done some research that you're 2.6 times more likely to have success in your transformation, if you get the people dimension right. And there's some data that also shows no matter how good you think your communication with your vision is or how much you think you're listening to your people, they perceive it differently. And so that whole over-communication and using as many channels as you can I think, I think, is key.Hood
Exactly right. Again, to your point earlier, it makes you more human.Corson
I can talk about this topic all day, Tom. But let's move on and talk about some of things you've been doing with the AICPA and particularly, for some fantastic work you've been doing with the future of finance leadership advisory group. Can you talk about the group, some of the opportunities and challenges that you've been focused on?Hood
I've now been in this role with the AICPA-CIMA just over two years. Barry Melancon, our CEO, when he hired me, he said, "Tom, I would love you to create a group of major company CFOs, like we have the major firms’ group at the AICPA. So, we have a group of the top 100, generally below the Big 4, but Big 4 usually invited to speak and share insights." So, I'm sitting there think, "Well how would I do that?" So, we just started calling members who were senior finance leaders in major corporations. And the first five or six calls, it started with something like, "So, hey Myles, this is Tom from the AICPA-CIMA. What's going on in your world?" and suddenly, they're saying these are some of things that we're seeing. And after about five calls, they were all talking about the same major themes. Transformation, talent, new skills, complexity and changing role of the CFO, and so we started saying, "Hmm." So then after the next set of calls we would go, "Are you interested in getting together and seeing if we could actually do something about this? Help us co-create the new future?" Keep in mind this is coming right out of the [COVID-19] pandemic. and everything was still like emerging from a deep fog. And so suddenly they all start to say yes. So we, one by one, we built this community of about 50, senior finance leaders, in major corporations — CFO's, global controllers, CAO's [chief accounting officers]. And then we started meeting and we started with what do we wanna do and what do you wanna get outta this group? And almost to a “T,” they all said, "We really wanna learn what other people are doing?" That's fascinating because, they all had their own industry groups. They get —together, well you know you run some of them so weyou getthey get together as a big pharma, or they get together in the retail sector or manufacturing. They were curious about what happens across the industries. And what are other people seeing and they didn't care about the size or the specific industries. So, we had this kinda fifty representing all kinds of industries and that group meets every other month for about an hour and a half. And we basically begin to say, "What are the top issues? What are they things you're working on?" And then we do demos. We have somebody from the community say, "I'm doing a transformation, let me share what we're doing here." And then go and do that and then everybody starts to react to that and we capture that data. And then we send it back to the group so it, it gives them a source of insights from these other pieces and they we hold a big summit once a year. So, we've now held two. We'll hold the next one in December in Orlando. But it's basically a peer group dealing with the top issues and trying to help us as the association redefine what the future of finance is going to look like in the next few years.Corson
One of the things that's come out of that is this concept of the “T-shaped” leaders, T-shaped CFOs. Can you talk a little bit about what that means to you, I mean there's some fantastic stuff out there, but this idea of anticipation, agility, adaptability and some of the skills you need to be successful in that future model will be really helpful to talk about.Hood
This is part of the notion of this expanded role. So, what we're finding is that the CFO and pretty much everyone underneath of them is having to move up into more value-creation roles. We're getting away from just closing the books and reporting on what happened. We're trying to report on strategic future notions. What we realize is that this notion of a T shape is the skills everyone says they need, form this boundary crossing bar. Built on top of the deep technical functional expertise of today's finance and accounting professional, whether you're a CPA or a CGMA [Chartered Global Management Accountant] or a CMA [Certified Management Accountant], those deep technical skills are there, but they need these boundary crossing skills. And you pointed out a few of them, the number one they always say strategic and critical thinking. That's being able to think in a much broader, almost and external world and way beyond just accounting. Then you get collaboration integration because you're gonna have to work with other divisions and departments and even external entities, like banking and the street and all those pieces. Of course, data and technology savvy is a bit part of that — that's often part of that deeper technical skill set.Agile mindset, that's a new one — relativity new — it's within the last year. It kind of rose up to the top and that's another one that they're all saying they need. Obviously, responding to the fast pace of the world today. Leadership and sensemaking, emphasis on sensemaking, and probably the other one that would actually proceed that is communication and storytelling. So, clearly, today's finance and accounting pro CFO has to able to tell stories about the business with those numbers.
Corson
That's a great summary and those last two were ones that really stood out to me in particular and, and I smiled when I read the sensemaking, because I think it's such a great description. But maybe talk a little bit more about what you think that means in practice and what are kind of the attributes of a CFO or finance leader is able to do that successfully.Hood
There's been research and work from the institute for the future that has a lot to do with that idea of sensemaking. When we did all the work with the CPA vision project, they purpose statement came out as CPAs are making sense of a changing and complex world. Making sense, sensemaking is putting the business and the financial results in the order of what's happening in the external worldso connecting dots around what's going on outside the business with competitors, the economy etc. And connecting it to what they're seeing the financials tell them from that story perspective. That's a really big part of that, so it's bringing the outside into the company. And helping to make sense of it beyond just the numbers.The story. Why are we having reduced margin? Well, our competition has increased because of the movement of e-commerce, that would be a perfect example coming out the [COVID-19] pandemic. And now you're gonna see AI, what's that gonna do to your competitive advantage, what's that gonna do to how your customers behave? All those things become part of that sense making skill.
Which is like to say, is like is like connecting dots. And linking to things that other people might not fully understand and many times it's external, connecting to internal.
Corson
That makes a lot of sense and I think building on that, the story telling word is a great one, it's one I use quite a lot myself because I think it really gets across this idea that while finance is the language of business, in many ways, actually finance has not been good at communicating particularly with other nonfinance functions within the organizations. So, the ability to tell stories and narratives in different ways that connect with nonfinancial stakeholders, I think, is really important. And obviously, the use of technology, visualization, gives us a bunch more things to be able to facilitate those stories if you're, again if you can share your perspectives — any examples you've seen of, again, of CFOs and finance leaders being successful in doing that.Hood
First of all, it's one of the it would probably be the number two skill requested. So, strategic thinking is number one, which obviously relates to storytelling. And then the communication and storytelling. But lots of folks have shared stories of how they've talked about their transformation. We had one CFO that ended up in their transformation story. They had a graphic artist draw a picture of a bridge and people crossing it, and the bridge was under construction. And their point was: we're building a bridge while we're walking or running across it, right? The metaphor to their people was: "Yeah, we don't know the answers. We're going to have to all work together to figure it out." Then they had some people like falling off the bridge. So they're like, are you"If you're not buying into this, you could get left behind or fall off." And so it was a notion we wanna keep everybody on the bridge, working toward this destination. So, that will be a one great example that I remember vividly. Another one would come from — this was a major actually drug company that was doing a transformation and they depicted their transformation with a big Roman or Greek architecture with the pillars. Common thing that they used, but they didn't and filled in the pillars with what those major strategics where and why they we're doing it. So it was a very good picture of a transformation versus just saying we're gonna go to the web and we're gonna put in the next ERP [Enterprise Resource Planning] system and all that. And they all appeal to purpose, Myles, that was something that we see constantly in finance. They had the organizational purpose, but then they create one for finance about the difference they're gonna make and how they're gonna do it. And that's part of the other key point that we see depicted in these graphic or picture stories.Corson
That's a great example. I suppose I mean one of the things I would say is you get the vision and then how do you drive the culture transformation? Because a lot of this is about culture transformation and I think what you're describing is organizations that can create that vision are more likely to be successful. And I think again it comes back to this continuous learning type culture. Again, you work with a lot of these organizations that try and drive this transformation, what are those organizations that are successful in creating that cultural transformation journey doing?Hood
Probably the ones that are most successful are focusing on three things and we actually did some research about this. It really starts with mindset, you said it earlier, right? The point of mindset of your people is a huge driver of how likely they will adapt and accept the change that you're bringing to them. That's a huge one. I think in our research, it was 39% of the transformation success. And then the second part, most important, is skill sets. And the other part is having the right skills so what we're seeing in the finance groups that we think are maybe more exemplars are ones that are now building out curriculums of learning about the exact skills we're talking about. Using the T-shaped curriculum or not, they're figuring it out on their own or with other consultants. But they're focusing on those — I call them success skills — they're not more finance than accounting stuff, right? They're more things like strategy and collaboration and storytelling. And so, then they're building out that and beginning to move their team through those skill sets. So, they're building intentional learning paths, whether it's on their own, like learning management system or they're subscribing to something. But they're making that accessible to their people, they're holding large, sometimes, many in-person events, where they bring in a thought leader to bring the outside perspective in. I'm sure you do a lot of that work. I'm doing a lot that work. And then that helps them prime the pump for people seeing, "Oh, change is coming and it's not just our organization that's doing it. It's a lot and it's something that we have to either buy in or we going to get run over and this starts to happen." So I think that's why we see what I'd say the best practices in this area are.Corson
One of the questions that I get asked a lot is, obviously, if you think about either the spine of the T and the deep technical skills. As we obviously see the impact of technology and we'll come back and talk about AI and in a moment, we obviously seen a lot of off offshoring of those junior roles which I know for many organizations is kinda creating a little bit of an issue in the pipeline as they get into middle management, that they don't have the breadth of the pipeline coming through. What are things you’re recommending to members and to the companies you're talking to, to make sure those kinda foundational skills don't get lost, but are evolved in a different way, so that you don't lose the foundation and then you are able to broaden out and create that top of the T that you every eloquently described?Hood
I think this all gets and you've heard a lot of this stuff from the work of the World Economic Forum [WEF], all the different groups that's written about it. It’s the idea that we have to constantly upskill and reskill. As a pace of change accelerates and we adopt more and more technologies, we're gonna need new skills and that's exactly what our future finance group identified. And then they looked at those T shape and that was where they prioritized, but the point being you are gonna have to — even we're seeing experienced CPAs in some of these large companies, who actually don't have the new skills on top of their core abilities. Now they might have learned a lot of it on the job, but when you look across that whole middle management or even upper-middle management layer, they're finding that they don't have some of those critical skills, like really good collaboration skills or even strategic thinking skills from that standpoint. Because it's never been something as part of the job. It's now kind of new. And it's something that's evolving, so I think you have to not think that my experienced people don't need help, because often they'll look at that T shape and go, "Actually I need some of those skills." And then at the same time the younger people in terms of their careers, also need those skills, because their technical skills are evaporating as they get automated. So, if you want them to be able to move up the curve, which most finance folks will say, "I wanna keep my people to the extent I can." If they're willing and ready to learn, you wanna be getting upskilling them before you start throwing all the technology in that automates their functions or they won’t be able to keep up with the learning.Corson
Maybe we'll use that as a pivot to talk the impact of technology as well, because I think you articulated it very well earlier on, which was saying basically uh, technology is a tool or enabler, don't let it control you. And.Hood
Yes.Corson
Obviously, there's a lot of concern right now about what does generative AI mean, is it gonna take away all of our jobs? What are some of the opportunities from technology for us to use and what are some of the threats and challenges you see?Hood
AI will undoubtedly change the landscape of accounting and finance. It already has. It's already baked into many of the core systems that we all use in finance and accounting. The biggest opportunity in my mind is taking away the drudgery that we all hate to do. You didn't go to school to learn how to check data all day and make sure it's right, looking at transactions. AI will take that role, right? They'll look at that. I think back to the early parts of my career when I was a CFO in highway construction, I'd spend three weeks trying to close the books. Meanwhile, the CEOs in there going, "Tom, what the heck is going on? I want to know what’s happening next month, not what happened two months ago." And so this is finally the point that we've been saying we've probably been saying this for 20 years, it's here. It's about touchless autonomous finance in two or three years. That's the holy grail. So, if you do that, guess what, you can spend all your time doing high value analytics and storytelling. And help the business create more value, that's where I see that going. That's the opportunity. The threat is if you don't evolve yourself whether with your employer or not, you'reget automated. If all you're doing is a lot more transactional side, then the analytical and story telling that's gonna be something, that you're have trouble keeping up with because, it'sgo away.Corson
I mean the other thing for me is you can't have a conversation around technology without the conversation around data. And just the proliferation in the volumes, the sources of data that finance having to deal with. You need AI to be able to interrupt that, but to me, and I'm interested in your views on this, where the differentiation will come? Will it be in the business acumen? And knowing what questions to ask, do you agree with that? And how do we make sure we arm people with that business acumen to ask good questions?Hood
Totally agree with that, Myles. I think it's about — this is where I think mentoring on the job learning, along with good learning, whether it's e-learning whatever that helps them get those skills and then apply them, that's a key one. And creating cohorts. So, this is a case where sometimes your younger people have more of those skills than your older people. And so, in that case, get small working groups across your finance team and have them meet monthly or weekly, and they share the learning with the senior people and say, "Here's some things we learned about how to do this in analytics and how to do that." And then have that conversation so the experienced people can suddenly add their insight for the young folks saying, "Here's how you actually do that." I've seen examples of that in several major companies that seemed to be amazing from a productivity perspective. It's just sharing that knowledge and then the young people feel good about teaching something to the senior people.Corson
The power of reverse mentoring and engaging with the younger generations that are more digitally native are huge opportunities. The themes we're talking about, Tom, obviously, the need for the profession to be diverse, and be bringing in more talent and talent from different parts, is so important. Can you maybe share some of the things you're doing professionally to make sure we continue to make the profession a vibrant and positive destination to start building their careers.Hood
One of the things that we're pretty excited about that I feel like really headed that way, our future finance group early on said, "We will do anything to get a diverse pipeline of talent." So, we have the CGMA credential, which is mainly for corporate or management accounting — Chartered Global Management Accountant. And we took that and when to the US Department of Labor because, of this emerging field of professional apprenticeships. Now this is in response to the cost of college education, the lack of access to many groups, who don't have the resources to go to the traditional four-year university or in for a CPA — five years. We took that and there's about three major professions: insurance, cybersecurity, and finance and accounting now.We were actually recognized at the national apprenticeship week. So, what we've created is an apprenticeship that allows a two-year pathway. And using our CGMA finance leadership program, someone from junior college could start at an employer and take that learning — the learning actually will count for credits in their junior college — along with their work experience counts as a Credit. So, you have to have a mentor. You have to check the work they're doing, which is simulation-based and apply it. And say, "Yep, they're learning that. Check in with the person every couple of weeks and say, yeah they're applying those skills successfully." And that's what we report back to the DOL. But that would give them, not only the credential over about a two-and-a-half-year period. That counts their two-year journey and then it will give them a certificate from the US Department of Labor as a finance business partner. So, we're excited about that kind of idea as a way to bring in social mobility, if you will.