Seven Steps to a Learning Organization
by Roman H. Kepczyk, CPA, CITP (October 20, 2004-reprinted with permission) 

CPA firms function in an incredibly complex world, one of continual change both from a procedural and a technical perspective.  New viruses, security breaches, updated operating systems, changes in tax laws, and a transition to a “less paper” or digital world, are forcing firms to constantly respond and adapt to new ways of doing things.  Those organizations that have a system in place to identify and analyze these changes and quickly optimize solutions that can be standardized for the firm will be the most successful and profitable businesses of the future.  The key to being one of these firms that is capable of such sustainable change is transitioning your practice into a learning organization. 

Becoming a learning organization requires making a conscious effort to do so.  This means firms must change their current perspectives on training and learning.  They must have a program in place to evaluate their existing situation and identify areas where learning is needed.  They must then allocate resources to ensure that proper learning can be delivered to those that need it, at a time that is appropriate, and in a format that is effective for that individual.  Learning organizations must also have a system in place to monitor new developments and respond accordingly.  This article will describe seven steps to evolving your firm into a learning organization. 

The first step in the process is to understand the firm’s current attitudes towards learning.  One of the easiest ways of identifying this is talking to a new hire after they have been on the job for a few months. Did they become assimilated into the firm through a comprehensive training curriculum that showed them the firm’s standardized way of doing things or did they immediately jump into work?  In firms without a learning culture, it is usually the latter because often that is the way senior management learned.  Many of today’s firm leaders learned their trade during a time when everything was done manually and the common practice was to “figure it out themselves.”  As these individuals moved up the ranks, they pushed more and more of the detailed work down, leaving them with the higher level types of work and analysis that required them to manually grind through solutions, which enforced their existing attitudes about learning.  Unfortunately for those people, the way things are done most effectively has changed dramatically from the way they were taught.  Virtually all work done in today’s digital world utilizes tools and applications that are much more complex and have an almost infinite number of capabilities, all in a digital environment.  Leaving people to learn on their own in such an environment often leads to individuals “spinning their wheels” trying to figure out how a program works which usually leads to learning inefficient, non-standard ways of doing things that lead to inconsistent results. 

The next step for firms without a learning culture focus is to help management understand the value of developing one.  An often quoted statistic in the training realm is that the average untrained worker takes two to six times longer to get to the same level of productivity as a trained worker and consumes three to six times more resources in the process.  In an environment where the majority of our engagements are somewhat fixed fee, the more efficiently we can effectively complete a project, the more profitable that project will be.  Today, this means using digital tools that capture information electronically, manipulating it digitally, and storing it in “less-paper” ways so the data can be better secured.  This means that firms must have a standardized “best” way of doing things and that everyone must adhere to them, which can only occur through a process of continual learning.  Ask an owner to review an audit or tax return onscreen for the first time, and the need for formal training should become evident.  Without training they would be completely lost, so for firms to develop and adhere to standards, they must develop a learning culture to promulgate them. 

A third step in developing a learning culture is to identify specifically what the firm needs to do well to service clients, which is usually in the areas of tax, audit, and client services; the areas where they make money.  In each of these departments the firm must capture the best method of producing work, must document these best practices, and the steps to see they are standardized amongst the firm’s employees.  Each step of production should be discussed and a recommended, standardized process documented.  Initially, this may entail setting up a task force of the firm’s most productive individuals to identify best practices for a beginning, intermediate and advanced skill set.  For instance within the tax department, an intermediate person should be knowledgeable about doing a tax projection for an individual return.  The specific skills required would include items such as the ability to link the data from the return to the planner, to know which reports to produce to analyze the data, and how to save those files appropriately within the firm’s file naming conventions. 

The fourth step is to take this information and organize it into procedural topics, which can be packaged to create a skill set such that it creates a standardized training curriculum.  For example, for tax personnel, you may have three or four levels of expected skills for those producing individual returns. The introductory level could include an introduction to the firm’s tax program, which would be done with a computer or web-based tutorial.  This would be followed by a training session where the individual would actually re-create a tax return (test deck) that had been previously done and would be reviewed and discussed with a senior employee.  Another introductory session could include reviewing the firm’s document naming conventions and file directory structure to ensure that the new employee could locate documents as well as properly file them. In addition to determining the specific skills, the method of learning delivery must also be identified whether it is reviewing a work book, using a computer-based tutorial, one-on-one just in time learning, or having classroom training led by a qualified individual.  When all these items come together, they create a comprehensive training curriculum.  

After each department in the firm has evaluated and documented the most effective method of producing their work and broken these items down into skills, they must evaluate their personnel’s ability to deliver them to the firm’s standard. A fifth step in the process is to assess each individual’s needs, which can usually be done by an individual needs assessment.  This assessment would list the specific skills and knowledge required to complete a task, based on the best practices list mentioned in the previous step and that individual’s ability to competently do it.  In its simplest form the needs assessment would be a written listing of those tasks with a number rating system, for example, from “0” (having no knowledge) to “3” (having complete mastery of skill or process) that individuals would complete themselves, as well as an item that designates what level the skill would be appropriate for (staff I, senior, manager, etc.).  This needs assessment should be administered when a new employee comes on board and discussed at that individual’s annual review to help monitor their progress, as well as direct their future training.

Another step in creating a learning culture is to ensure this curriculum is implemented by making people accountable for managing the training program.  This means having a person dedicated to the learning coordinator role, either on a part or full-time basis.  To begin, some firms may allocate a portion of an administrative person’s time (i.e. Tuesday and Thursday outside of busy season) to managing the items above.  Please note that this individual may provide some training for firmwide skills (time sheet entry, email, calendar, tasks), but not for technical training in the areas of tax, audit, or client service production.  In these technical areas, the firms designated expert or “product champion” would lead learning efforts, while the coordinator would handle logistics such as setting up a training session, handling CPE requirements, and posting notes to the firm’s intranet.

A seventh step in creating a learning culture is to have a system to constantly develop best practices, which means designating super users and centralized resources. As mentioned above, product champions for each application must be designated and provided additional training to develop the firm’s expertise.  Their training can consist of attending vendor or industry conferences, attending application user’s group meetings, and receiving vendor newsletters and emails as well as other opportunities to network with peers using the same application.  The firm should create a centralized listing of these product champions that would be posted to the firm’s intranet along with other pertinent information such as a secondary champion, support phone numbers, web sites, emails, licenses, etc. all of which will make it easy for anyone in the firm to get appropriate support.  Please note an important part of making this learning culture work is to ensure that product champions get “billable credit” for assisting others either through providing training or answering questions in regards to client matters. These product champions would also be responsible for documenting their best practices in such a way that they could be posted in a centrally accessible format, such as the firm’s intranet. 

The accounting profession operates in a world of constant change.  Those firms that can quickly identify and implement those changes that make them more productive will be the most profitable firms of the future.  The only way this can be accomplished is by creating a culture where this is inherent, which is the learning organization.

Roman H. Kepczyk, CPA, CITP is President of InfoTech Partners North America, Inc. (www.itpna.com) a consulting firm working exclusively with CPA firms on their internal technology utilization and their transition to a digital or “less paper” environment.  For a sample training curriculum, needs assessment or training coordinator job description, please visit the search page of his web site. 

This article is reprinted with the publisher's permission from the Journal of Tax Practice Management, a journal published by CCH INCORPORATED. Copying or distribution without the publisher's permission is prohibited. To subscribe to the Journal of Tax Practice Management or other CCH Journals please call 800-449-8114 or visit www.tax.cchgroup.com.

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