CohnReznick LLP on Giving Back to the Community

Steve Adubato goes One-on-One with Frank Longobardi, CEO, CohnReznick LLP, to discuss how passionate his company is about giving back through community involvement.

10/30/18 #2173

Excerpt:

"We are pleased to welcome back my good friend Frank Longobardi, who is a CPA. But the other side recognition for him is the chief executive officer of a firm called, CohnReznick which is… where is it in the top… we are number 11. that's right. we have about 27 offices across the US, and our headquarters is here in New York City. that's right. 6th Avenue and 53rd. just a few blocks away. CohnReznick is an accounting firm, does all kinds of stuff... by the way, I want to disclose that I've done coaching... leadership and communication coaching for the firm for more than a couple of years. right. you've done a great job, too. thank you, Frank. One of the things I've picked up in coaching folks at the firm... over ten years, I think it's been... it's how the industry itself has changed, the accounting industry. some of the biggest changes are...? incredible time right now. you know, we are a industry going through disruption. Disruption? disruption. there is a lot of people out there saying that Barry Melancon was the chairman of the AICPA basically said that by 2020, forty percent of all of the accounting tasks that we do today of CPAs will be eliminated through automation in robotics. what does that mean for those doing those tasks? what that means...do they have to evolve? yeah, what has to happen is...what's happening across some of the bigger firms... big four, big eight... they're looking at hiring different skill sets. so they're not necessarily hiring. I heard one big four executive basically say they're gonna hire 50% less accounting majors by 2020, and they're looking at hiring stem majors, science, technology, engineering, math, data analytic majors... so there's a lot of change going on but it... but it's happening at the University and it's happening with... inside the firm. so you take a firm like ours... we've got to change the skill set of our people. we've got to teach them to be more trusted business advisors. Right. you've heard that in some of the training and coaching that you've done. more analytical? more analytical, less...it's gonna be less mundane-type work. you're gonna see people that are gonna have to you know, look at data and look at anomalies in that data and then figure out what does that mean, and how do you go about you know, making recommendations either…to change... to make the changes…as a trusted business advisor ...as a trusted business advisor. as you're talking about this, Frank, I'm thinking about people that... "oh, accountants or accounting"... it's…you're doing tax returns... of course there are tax returns being done. Right. but that's a smaller and smaller piece of the accounting equation. yeah, so the..."