“The key questions that the
leading economic advisors to the
president asked about were risk
management, and the opportunity for the profession, both inside corporations and from an
assurance perspective, to be
much more involved in processes and metrics around
risk management that are
critical to the successful
operation of a business,” said
Melancon.
Melancon also talked about
some of the challenges confronting the profession today, including
recent proposals for mandatory
audit ;rm rotation; the likelihood
of a delay in a ;nal decision about
incorporating IFRS into U.S. ;nancial reporting; and the likely shape
of the Financial Accounting Foundation’s ;nal decision about private
company standard-setting, which
was due out the following week (see
our cover story).
Melancon described the institute’s continuing e;orts at ;nancial literacy education, and also
reported that AICPA vice chair Rich
Caturano, the managing partner of
the Boston office of Top 10 firm
McGladrey, is leading an e;ort to
expand diversity in the CPA profession, and plans to bring together a
group of leaders this fall to examine
what strategies work.
Melancon noted that the profession had seen declining numbers in
the 1990s, and the AICPA made an
investment in programs to attract
younger people to the profession.
;ose e;orts were successful, and
by 2009 there were record numbers
of people majoring in accounting,
both in Bachelor’s and Master’s
degree programs. In 2010, there
were all-time-record numbers of
people taking the CPA Exam, and
today there are a record number of
members of the AICPA.
More recently, the AICPA has
been expanding internationally
through its joint venture with the
Chartered Institute of Management
Accountants to o;er the Chartered
The AICPA at 125
Spring Council marks milestone
BY MICHAEL COHN / WASHINGTON, D.C.
Global Management Accountant
credential. ;ey began o;ering the
CGMA for free to CPAs with management accounting experience
at the end of January. So far, more
than 13,500 CPAs have signed up
for the new credential.
The American Institute of CPAs
marked the 125th anniversary of its
founding during its Spring Meeting
of Council, with meetings on Capitol Hill and at the White House with
lawmakers and policymakers, and
a host of high-pro;le guest speakers, with a lavish black tie reception
as a highlight.
In his opening address, AICPA
president and CEO Barry Melancon
reminisced about the long history
of the institute. “Who could have
imagined 125 years ago where our
profession would be today?” he
asked. “Our clients used to be the
people in our communities, next
door, around the corner, but now
they’re global.”
He also looked ahead, speculat-
ing on how the AICPA might look
on its 250th anniversary, with a
video chat with a purported CPA
from the future. Melancon and
AICPA chairman Greg Anton pre-
sented video clips of past institute
chairmen and CPA profession lead-
ers talking about the challenges
and initiatives they tackled during
their careers.
LOOKING BACK
At a luncheon on the second day,
Moss Adams chairman Robert Bunting, a past chair of the institute, offered a fascinating look back at the
earliest days of the organization.
“I looked up our founding fa-
thers who started this whole in-
stitute,” Bunting said. “One thing
I noticed about them is they were
all men. ;e other thing I noticed
about them is they all had Europe-
an British surnames.” As a sign of
progress, he noted that the profes-
sion includes women and minori-
ties — though he cautioned that
there was still work to do. “We do
not necessarily re;ect the society
out there, but I think we have made
some progress in that regard.”
The original founders, he
quipped, were not about diversity:
“;eir interest in diversity stopped
at allowing two accountants from
California to join.”
But many of their values still in-
form the profession. “What were
they interested in, these founders?
One of the values at the AICPA is
competence. ;ey wanted to ele-
vate the profession both in the eyes
of the public and by working on the
credentials of the profession. ;ey
elevated it by requiring education
and training, and requiring expe-
rience to be a practitioner, and by
having some form of entrance ex-
amination.”
Perhaps most important, the
profession was willing to do the
hard work necessary to live up to
its values: “It is built into our DNA
to make a promise, and then make
the payments on it,” he said.
At the end of his speech, Bunting
gathered an unprecedented collection of previous institute chairs to
thank them for their service and
take pictures.
SPECIAL GUESTS
;e Council agenda also included
panels and addresses by a number
of high-pro;le regulators.
Public Company Accounting
Oversight Board Chairman James
Doty spoke about the history of
the accounting profession in the
United States and paid tribute to
the institute. “In 125 years of lead-
ing the accounting profession, the
AICPA has achieved an enormous
amount,” he said. “I have the ut-
most respect for what you have put
forth for the public interest in those
years and I have high expectations
for the years to come.”
In a panel discussion of standard-
setters, International Auditing and
Assurance Standards Board chair
Arnold Schilder thanked the AICPA
for its help in completing the Clar-
ity Project, revising the institute’s
suite of standards for auditing and
assurance engagements with pri-
vate entities. He said the IAASB’s
similar standards have now been
adopted and would soon be used in
87 countries around the world.
The chair of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, Leslie
Seidman, praised the AICPA as an
American institution and likened
it to baseball, hot dogs and TV. She
noted that the original Committee
on Accounting Procedures had estimated in the 1930s that it would
take only ;ve years to do its work.
Another regulator to address the
Council was Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Doug Shulman,
who congratulated the institute on
its anniversary. In looking back
at the IRS’s own history and how
much it had changed, Shulman noted, “125 years ago, the main activity
at the IRS was breaking up alcohol
stills.” He went on to emphasize the
importance of its dialogue with major stakeholders like the AICPA and
the tax preparer community — citing the robust back-and-forth over
the recently enacted tax preparer
registration regime as an example,
and noting that the input of groups
like the AICPA led to CPAs and cer-
