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Amy Pitter
Title: CEO, Massachusetts Society of Certified Public Accountants
Age: 60
Experience: 35 years
Amy Pitter has seen a lot of changes in the accounting industry since she began her career 35 years ago. She joined the Department of Revenue in the early 1990s and worked her way up to deputy commissioner before consulting for various revenue agencies. In 2011, she returned to the department as commissioner and it was then that she connected with the Massachusetts Society of Certified Public Accountants. When a leadership position opened up, she took a shot at it. Pitter recently sat down with Banker & Tradesman to talk about challenges facing the industry and by extension, the organization.
Q: What kind of lessons or experience are you hoping to import from your public service role into your work here?
A: Well, the first thing I learned, which I already sort of knew and which I hope to do here is, you’ve got to talk to people. The only way you can really know what’s right and what’s working and what people really need and really want is to talk to them. That was lesson number one.
I’ll give you one example: I read a member survey that was done here a few years ago about whether or not our members valued networking events. The percentage of people who really had no interest in networking events was quite high, and yet our networking events are incredibly successful. Finally, it occurred to me – we have 11,000 members. If only 10 percent of our members want to do networking events, that’s over 1,000 people, so sometimes statistics lie and the things you think you know, you don’t know. I learned that there and I’m hoping to apply it here.
Q: You’ve been on the job for just about a month; what kind of challenges are you anticipating in this role?
A: The organization just did a strategic plan before I got here and it’s a great plan, so I think for me, one of the challenges is to take that plan, which is exactly right, but it’s very high level, and to give it life – to say, “What does this really mean in terms of initiatives, and how do we take that plan and make it something actionable? How do we measure it and how do we make sure we’re doing the right stuff?” That’s very high level. That’s my biggest challenge, is to give that strategic plan the organization worked really hard on, to give that life and meaning and substance.
There are also challenges for the profession, so therefore they become challenges for the society. The profession itself is changing. Way back when, when I got my accounting degree, accounting was tax and audit. Now accounting professionals get involved in consulting and business advice and all sorts of much more sophisticated and interesting aspects of financial management.
That means we need to change people’s impressions – particularly young people who might be considering accounting as a career. They shouldn’t be thinking, “It’s tax and audit,” they should be thinking, “Hey, that CPA degree is going to open up a world of opportunity for [me] in business.” It’s almost branding, so that people – young people in particular who might enter the profession – can think about getting an accounting degree in a new and broader and exciting way.
We’d like to see the profession become more diverse. There are a lot of women in the profession now, a lot of women managing accounting firms and so forth, but in terms of ethnic diversity, it’s not there yet. The younger crowd is better than the older crowd, but we want to make sure that people from diverse backgrounds and ethnic minorities think of accounting as a great profession and think of it as something they’d like to do, so that’s another challenge.
I think that talent management, recruiting and retaining the best and the brightest of the profession, is definitely one of the hottest topics right now.
Q: How has technology impacted the accounting industry?
A: For our members and their clients, technology is changing everything. So much of the traditional work that accountants did 30 years ago can now be done on a computer, so a lot of the low-value work that accountants do has been supplanted by technology. And a lot of the high-value stuff … now you need high-value professional work, so the profession has up-scaled over the last 30 years.
It’s also created all sorts of new problems to deal with. Cybersecurity, for example. That’s a big one. … The reason people steal identities is for tax fraud and other government benefit fraud. That’s what happened this year – tax fraud just skyrocketed – so the whole profession needs to think about how we can help.
But also the whole cybersecurity issue – any time you are managing confidential information, the question of how do you keep it secure and what’s our security plan, becomes enormous. That’s another hot topic.
Pitter’s Top Five Strategic Goals Of The MSCPA:
- Advocate good public policy for the profession and the economic climate in Massachusetts by being a trusted voice in the administration, the legislature and the news media.
- Provide the best in relevant, high quality education, tools and content delivered through our members’ channel of choice.
- Support the profession by encouraging talented and diverse young people to pursue and maintain a career in accounting.
- Maintain a strong society through leadership and resources with support and direction from an engaged membership.
- An outgrowth of the first four – continue and enhance our primary goal: to provide outstanding value and service to our 11,000 members!
