The first known instruction to accountants that their future didn’t lie in compliance work and that they should look to getting involved in advisory work instead was recorded during an address at the Chicago Technical Institute…in 1928!
At the time of writing this, there isn’t so much as an agreed upon definition within the accounting profession of what ‘advisory’ actually constitutes. Just as well we don’t live in that ever changing, hyperconnected, fast paced world that marketing content always tells us we do, huh?
The Thompson Model asserts that there are three types of advisory work:
Primary – engagements that help the client’s immediate business performance such as management accounts interpretation, cashflow forecasting or cloud migration services.
Secondary – engagements that help the client’s longer term business performance such as strategic planning, finance sourcing or specialist tax support.
Tertiary – engagements that can be carried out by the firm or referred to a third party such as probate, HR or family office services.
The Bissett Definition of advisory has an even simpler instruction:
‘The most noble iteration of an accounting qualification is to help the client achieve their personal and professional goals – in that order. There is no other professional service provider that holds the same or better level of financial intimacy with the client as the accountant/bookkeeper. Therefore, the ethical imperative of the accounting professional is to proactively understand the businesses needs and provide whatever support is accepted by the client to help them achieve what they’ve set out to do.’
Here are the bullets:
In accountancy you can spend your entire career:
- Building your own retirement fund
- Being a ‘without whom’ to your client
- Both.
The vast majority, the average accountants, focus on #1 and are quickly forgotten. The greats, the legacy builders, the ‘without whom’ types, focus on #3.
Which one have you chosen?
To your success
Martin Bissett
