News & Updates

Sleep, sunlight, movement, and self-knowledge help professionals recharge before stress turns into burnout. In accounting, exhaustion does not always look dramatic.  Sometimes it looks like irritability. Sometimes it looks like staring at a spreadsheet that suddenly makes no sense. Sometimes it looks like mental fog, poor focus, a mild headache, or the sense that even small decisions take too much effort.  In the latest

Understanding a company’s history, leadership, and future matters as much as financial statements. Donny Shimamoto opens a recent episode of Accounting ARC with a simple question: How do you value a business when the numbers tell only part of the story? His guest, Baria Jaroudi, a Houston-based director in BDO’s business valuation and advisory practice, says valuation work requires more

Center for Accounting Transformation expands student-led initiatives with new philanthropic support.  The future of the accounting profession is not just being planned by today’s leaders — it is increasingly being shaped by the students who will become its next generation.  Through its Student Ambassador Program and student-led initiatives, the Center for Accounting Transformation is building a new model for engaging emerging

Young professionals bring adaptability and media literacy that firms need in an AI-driven era.  Student-Led Conversations opens its second season with a conversation that reflects a larger shift underway in the accounting profession: rapid technology change, accelerating adoption of artificial intelligence tools and an increasing push to bring younger voices into the discussion.  Arpan Grewal, a Center for Accounting Transformation

Rural communities offer meaningful work — and a chance to build a practice on purpose.  In an era when private equity rollups and “bigger is better” narratives dominate accounting headlines, Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA, returns to a quieter question: What does it look like to build a firm — and a career — around serving the places that rarely get the

Learn how easily pros tie well-being to success—and how fear of failure can distort self-worth.  Busy season may still be a few days out, but the stress response already starts to hum for a lot of accounting professionals — the calendar fills, the inbox tightens, and the margin for error feels like it shrinks to a sliver. In the latest Accounting ARC, Donny

You can’t demand peak performance without designing for recovery. Busy season is often treated as a productivity proving ground. In accounting, it marks a series of peak stress cycles—tax season, compressed deadlines, and sustained cognitive load. The assumption is familiar: we just need to push through these few rough months, and we’ll be okay afterward. But the reality is different.

From shifting licensure pathways to AI acceleration and new expectations around governance and culture, the accounting profession is entering a decisive new phase. In this featured analysis from Accounting ARC, Donny Shimamoto, Liz Mason, and Byron Patrick unpack what’s changing, what it means for firm leaders, and why the next wave of opportunity may belong to those willing to rethink how their firms are designed.

What does it really mean to be “career ready”? In this end-of-year episode of Student-led Conversations, our student hosts reflect on a season of honest conversations with professionals across the accounting profession — and what they learned when students were trusted to lead the dialogue.

The Accounting ARC trio Liz Mason, CPA, Byron Patrick, CPA.CITP, CGMA, and Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA, react to the U.S. Department of Education’s move to treat accounting master’s programs as non-professional for federal loan limits.