April 15, 2020 was not met by the collective sighs of CPAs nationwide nor the acknowledgment of arduous work done well for the nation’s millions of taxpayers. This April 15th marked an indistinguishable day amongst many of social distancing, sheltering in place, and bearing witness to the sudden collapse of a robust economy.
As a career CPA, I had to spend a few hours that week doing absolutely nothing, save quelling the high emotions of grief and loss I was experiencing. It feels high time to carve out some space to explore the CPA’s social, financial, and, yes, emotional role during this crisis.
Consider your client list and the intimacy of information you share. How often do you know more than their financials? How often do you keep track of those not only financially reliant on your clients, but also emotionally?
Here’s the thing, the real job of a CPA is to understand the dreams of your clients and balance those aspirations against financial realities, market trends, and a million other variables in order to help them get as close to that dream as you possibly can. Our role extends far past the limitations of keeping the books. In fact, our value is measured by the intangibles of personal investment in achieving our clients’ goals. That’s how we know we’ve done a good job: when our clients succeed in building their perfect small business or supporting their 10 kids through college!
This past few weeks, I've watched loss after loss. Perhaps it seems crass to draw attention to material collateral when people are dying. I know. However, I’d argue that the sum of COVID-19’s damage is in the full breadth of what it has robbed us of. To limit the scope to death would deny other forms of pain.
In the past, I've coached my clients through bankruptcy, through mass layoffs, through systemic reorganization…. But never have I had to field these extremities of financial collapse at this scale. 57 clients. And by the end of this, likely more. That's countless calls per client, countless hours of bureaucracy and filing, sleep lost trying to keep up with new legislation, new papers to be filed with new government entities...I can go on and on. Needless to say, the past few weeks have marked a perilous time for all Americans, and it has been my job as a CPA to help mitigate loss and traverse the demise of professional lives and many dreams. It’s been nightmarish!
I want to offer this up to my community of financial professionals to let them know that you are not alone, and you are not wrong for having an emotional response to the losses suffered by your clients, who are in many cases your friends and family.
I’ll be dedicating a handful of blogs to a guidebook, of sorts, on how to protect ourselves from the overwhelming chaos surrounding us while continuing to emotionally and professionally support our clients. The aim is to get through COVID-19 as a marathoner, built for endurance, so we can be there with consistency and avoid, as much as possible, burnout and “ugly crying.” We got this.
Here’s the quick list provided by my guardian angel, and CEO of pLink Leadership, Gretchen Pisano: