What does a bad accountant look like?
In my years as a professional, I've worked with many different accountants. Some of them were both the nicest and smartest people I've met in my career, while others were the complete opposite. As a financial professional, it's important for you to understand what makes an accountant bad. So today, I'm going to share my experience and perspective on bad accountants to help you better understand what they look like. Let's jump in:
Understanding your situation:
The determination of whether an accountant is good or bad most often depends on the situation and expectations of them. Accountants are professionals that have a wide range of services to provide, and no accountant will be good in every situation. I can't come on here and make a blanket statement saying "any accountant who isn't ready to account for derivatives is bad," because most of the time, that skill isn't expected or necessary. However, if there was an expectation that your accountant had to know how to do that, then their lack of ability would be considered a bad thing.
Knowing this, you can determine if you have a bad accountant by dividing their services into two core components: hard skills and soft skills.
Hard skills
In accounting, hard skills represent the accountant's ability to follow the relevant accounting guidance and treat financial transactions properly according to that guidance. Here's a few examples:
The accountant responsible for keeping the books of a company that recorded practically everything on the balance sheet, including expenses that belong on the income statement, would be a bad accountant.
The accountant responsible for preparing a company's tax returns that does not understand that equity needs to roll forward from the prior year return would be a bad accountant.
An accountant responsible for preparing financial models that does not know how to use Excel or other financial modeling software would be a bad accountant.
As I mentioned above, it's important to understand that no accountant will be perfect at everything. However if an accountant is hired to do a job, they should have the technical proficiency to do it correctly. It's also important to understand that doing something correctly will require different levels of skill depending on the situation, a bookkeeper servicing small businesses doesn't need to know the latest technical accounting to do their job and be considered a good accountant. On the other hand, someone responsible for keeping the books of a Fortune 500 company will need to know such standards to be considered good at their job.
Soft skills
While hard skills are crucially important to an accountant's success, they aren't the only thing that serves to differentiate good and bad accountants. I've seen plenty of smart accountants who are simply difficult to work with because they lack soft skills. Here are a few examples of accountants who are lacking soft skills:
A tax accountant working with clients is nearly impossible to get a hold of. They don't respond to emails or phone calls in a timely manner and get back to the client weeks after an initial contact. Communication is an important part of the relationship between an accountant and the client, and failure to promptly communicate would reflect badly on the accountant in these circumstances.
An industry accountant that communicates unprofessionally in emails, often in the form of vocally voicing complaints about having to do their job. Professionalism is an expectation of the job and you should steer clear of any accountant who is willing to speak like this in writing.
An entry level professional that does not ask any questions to their higher ups regarding the quality and timeliness of deliverables. Accountants learn a significant amount of their craft in the first few years on the job, and those who aren't asking questions and trying to learn won't be considered quality employees by many.
Just like hard skills, the level of soft skills required by an accountant will depend on their position and expectations. In the modern professional world, it is incredibly difficult to offset a lack of soft skills using hard skills because communication is the underlying tool in which accountants create value and solve problems.
What is your best example of a bad accountant?
I've had my fair share of experiences with bad accountants, sometimes working for them, and sometimes working with them. In all my experiences, I have to say that there was one set of bookkeepers that stood out by lacking both hard and soft skills together, a rare combination. They checked off all of the following boxes:
Unprofessional email communications - these people were difficult to get a hold of and displayed in a very negative attitude in the email communications we did have.
Terrible record keeping - half of the things we asked for were simply not there. The items that were there were scribbled on scanned sheets of paper and were difficult to read.
Inaccurate financial reporting - practically every account was listed on the balance sheet, which was not appropriate for the company in question.
In short, I did not see this accountant meet any standard of quality in several areas.
But how can I tell if someone is a bad accountant?
To answer this question, you just need to ask yourself: is this person living up to professional expectations for their role as an accountant? If you aren't confident in your ability to assess someone else's technical capability, try to find someone who can like a friend or your local CPA. While there are tons of great accountants out there, there are also quite a few bad ones. Be on the lookout for any signs that you may be working with a bad accountant, and be proactive when you need to make a change!