Anne-Marie Henson:
Embracing all this new technology has been a great advantage, but sometimes a little bit of a challenge as well because not only do you have to get through your day-to-day work, but you have to learn how this new tool works. And sometimes you have questions and it takes a longer time to get them answered. But to remember that technology isn't something that we should see as a competition to us as CPAs, as accountants, as CFOs. It's really something you should actually learn to collaborate with to be able to help you in the future.
Narrator:
Welcome to Accounting for the Future, a BDO Canada podcast for financial leaders to navigate change and achieve business growth. We'll uncover the challenges financial leaders may not have dealt with yesterday, but will definitely have to manage for the future.
Anne-Marie Henson:
Hello and welcome to Accounting for the Future. I'm your host, Anne-Marie Henson. On today's episode, I'm joined by Mary Matthews, a partner in our accounting advisory group who does both accounting advisory work and works on accounting standards. This season we're doing something a little bit different. Given all the events we've seen happen around the world, some of our previous podcast topics remain very relevant today and we have new insight and information that makes them even more interesting. So for season five, we'll be re-releasing three previously aired episodes with additional insight and background and releasing three brand new episodes as well. So Mary, nice to have you back. We're here today to talk about the Great Resignation and the finance function, which was one of our first couple of episodes that we'd ever aired. A couple of years later into the pandemic, the Great Resignation talked a lot about what happened with the COVID pandemic that really impacted a lot of the ways that all of us work.
Most of us were very abruptly told to pack up our things and go home. A lot of us weren't entirely sure what that was going to mean for the future. Some of us thought it was going to be for a week and we'd be allowed back into our offices. And a few months later we saw that was really not the case and three and a half years now post pandemic, we see that sort of the way that we're working today with remote work, flexible hours and hybrid is definitely here to stay. So Mary, I wanted to talk to you about these changes and how they've impacted you and your team and what would you say is the best thing that's come out of hybrid work?
Mary Matthews:
So Anne-Marie, and thanks again for having me here. It's good to connect on these relevant topics just as they were a couple years ago too. So with my team, and the best thing that has come out of hybrid work is, of course, the flexibility. We can't ignore that, but I will say, I admit I was one of the resistors at the beginning thinking we'd go back to five days a week. But I have come around and I see the benefits of hybrid work and that flexibility it offers to us and to our employees as well and to our clients. And one of the big things that I think also really comes out of hybrid working is being able to access the right resources. And that's changed where it no longer needs to be just the person sitting next to you in the office or the person right next door. It can be across the country, it can be global. We do try to bring the right people with the right expertise and skills and that really has made it easier in some respects to solve problems, collaborate, but with the right people.
Anne-Marie Henson:
Yeah, I've actually seen that myself firsthand with your team. There are times where I tell you that there's a client of mine that, say, issued a new stock option plan and the right person could be someone from completely across the country, but they've seen that issue and we're able to get on a call really quickly and have the best resources with the most knowledge be able to answer those questions.
Mary Matthews:
Exactly.
Anne-Marie Henson:
And what would you say would be your least favorite thing about this hybrid work environment?
Mary Matthews:
I'll start off with the amount of meetings. I think my calendar just ballooned in volume. I don't think I'm the only one. I think it got to a point where our organization, many different organizations were trying different things to kind of alleviate some of those back-to-back meetings, trying to change our invite times to be 50 minutes instead of one hour so that you would have a 10-minute break to stretch your legs and get a glass of water. So that's definitely been a challenge. And I think in the last few years, we've collaborated, talked about what works and what doesn't work even with my own teams. And one of the things I have to do is just start my day with a meeting block for myself to even just have some focus time so that I'm not always available for every single meeting. Of course, there's the emergencies and the scheduling conflicts that we always give a way for, but I find those meetings have been kind of a troublesome. What about you, Anne-Marie?
Anne-Marie Henson:
Yeah, I agree with the meetings and I think it's become even more important to just better manage my calendar proactively to really block out that time because there are some days where I have a half hour left in my day and someone finds it and books that last meeting for that time that I had available for myself. So I definitely have learned my lesson and the same as you, I try to block off some time where I can work on just clearing inbox or different client things that I have going on. One other thing that I found as well is it has been a bit of a challenge. Our job is a training ground for a lot of young professionals, and I felt that sometimes not being together as a team, you lose a little bit of that learning and that collaboration. So trying to find a way to get people more engaged has been a challenge of mine.
I think we found a way to make it work a bit better, recognizing that people do really appreciate Mondays or Fridays working from home, but encouraging people to come to the office when they're working together on a project or on some client work where they can really learn from each other and collaborate more as a team. So there's some pros and cons for sure, and I think we're both leaders definitely manage a team below us. So taking some of these sort of tips or tricks away and trying to make it a really engaging work environment for people has been a challenge. But one that I think that we've, I hope, found a way to make work for us. And I wanted to bring it back for a second as well to the role of the CFO because Barb and Armand, who were the original host and guest of the podcast talked a lot about how difficult it is for the CFO.
I think Barb is the one who said that it's very lonely at the top and that sometimes you don't have people that you can go to, to ask for advice or to get some real time information about what's going on. And she stressed the importance of building your own community and your network of people who can help support you. And that's one thing I've noticed that has come out a lot throughout these past few years during and post pandemic is the existence of a lot of these communities that help each other out. Sometimes they're even competitors, but they get into a room or they get on calls and they talk about issues that are bothering them or that they're having difficulty solving, and it becomes an environment that really enables people to feed off each other and support each other in a way that I haven't seen previously.
Another thing is just for a lot of us embracing all this new technology has been a great advantage, but sometimes a little bit of a challenge as well because not only do you have to get through your day-to-day work, but you have to learn how this new tool works. And sometimes you have questions and it takes a longer time to get them answered. But to remember that technology isn't something that we should see as a competition to us as CPAs, as accountants, as CFOs. It's really something you should actually learn to collaborate with to be able to help you in the future.
So I didn't want to leave without plugging one of our other podcast episodes about the ever-changing role of the CFO where I got the chance to have a really interesting conversation with the CEO of CPA Canada, Pamela Steer, who had some great thoughts to share on how the role of the CFO has evolved and continues to evolve. So if the listeners are interested in the role of the CFO and how it's changed over time, please tune into that. And now we'll be able to listen a bit more from Armand and Barb about their thoughts on the Great Resignation and the finance function.
Barb Palmegiani:
I don't know if you've heard this, but they're referring to the 2020s, this decade, as the decade of disruption. And so it's just a matter of time before here we go again.
Narrator:
Welcome to Accounting for the Future, a BDO Canada podcast for financial leaders to navigate, change and achieve business growth. We'll uncover the challenges financial leaders may not have dealt with yesterday, but will definitely have to manage for the future.
Armand Capisciolto:
Hello and welcome to Accounting for the Future. I'm your host, Armand Capisciolto, BDO Canada's National Accounting Standards Partner and Leader of Accounting Advisory Services. On today's episode, I'm joined by Barb Palmegiani. Barb is a partner with BDO Canada and leads our national CFO and Controllership Services Group. She's also a learning and development expert and thought leader about the future of the finance function. Since 1998, she's been an author session leader and facilitator for CPA Ontario where she continues to lead executive professional development programs for senior financial leaders in both industry and public accounting. Barb, welcome to Accounting for the Future.
Barb Palmegiani:
Thank you so much. So happy to be here.
Armand Capisciolto:
And Barb, with a name like Capisciolto, I'm pretty sure I butchered your last name and I shouldn't given our names are of similar ethnic backgrounds. I apologize for that.
Barb Palmegiani:
You're good, you're good.
Armand Capisciolto:
So Barb, I'm very excited about our discussion today on the Great Resignation and the impact of the finance function. But before we get into that, let's talk about the state of the finance function before the Great Resignation.
Barb Palmegiani:
Yeah, of course. I'd say it was about 2016 and in the professional development programs for CPAs that I teach, I've been focusing them on re-skilling or upskilling for the future. It was definitely becoming clear to me probably about six years ago now, that the educated knowledge worker jobs could soon become threatened. And that would be through the accelerating advances of evolving technologies like RPA, AI. And that doesn't just apply to accounting and finance. It goes for many professions like journalism and law as well.
So as a profession, we should continue to take more of a positive outlook on how the rise of automation can impact us going forward. And the key to this is ensuring machines are ... we see them as an augmentation to our finance roles and not just viewing machines as competitive interlopers, if you will. So what I do is encourage all CPAs to become much more focused on taking charge of re-skilling or up-skilling themselves with what we call future fit skills. So for example, these include skills that enable us to see technology as more of a partner or a collaborator. We can each start proactively developing our own personal future fit plan as we become more and more aware of how machines and technology is going to impact our profession.
Armand Capisciolto:
I really like that, looking at it as an augmentation, looking at the machines, look at the technology as something that makes us better, not as something that's going to take our jobs away. And so when you talk about this future fit plan, I've started Pilates recently, is that what you're talking about? What do you mean by this future fit plan?
Barb Palmegiani:
Yes, exactly. Good one. Talking about that future fit plan means really becoming a little bit more self-aware about clarifying our own purposes. So in other words, as we think about the things that are most meaningful to us, not just in our work, but to your point, Armand, in our lives. So based on there's a lot of research and one in particular that is of note was by the London School of Economics and they produced some statistical evidence of the link between purpose and motivation.
So the goal of leading purpose-driven workshops in the work that I do with CPA Ontario is to try and inspire an improvement in CPA's intrinsic motivation to go that extra mile in their current roles. And in doing that today, it'll definitely help ensure themselves a sustainable career in the future. So there's no formula in the future of do one plus two plus three, and you are guaranteed to be employable in years from now. But what we can be doing is understanding that the way we do things today is status quo and status quo is no longer an option with respect to being ready to work in tomorrow's finance function.
Armand Capisciolto:
Again, so interesting some of the words you used there. You talked about purpose and you talked about sustainability. One of our other topics that we were talking about, one of our previous episodes, was about sustainability. And when we talk about sustainability, we talk about profit with purpose. You're talking about even motivating ourselves individually, our own kind of individual profit or motivation and having that purpose. It's really interesting how these things connect.
Barb Palmegiani:
It's almost like saying practice what we preach. What we do in our professional lives, let's apply it to our own career development as well.
Armand Capisciolto:
Yeah, great. No, that's excellent. So let's talk about the finance function. We've talked about our own development, but the finance function and we look at it. If we were looking at it in the past, present, future, what did it look like? What did it look like before? What's it look like now? What's it going to look like?
Barb Palmegiani:
For sure. So I always characterize talking about the past finance function with concepts like recording, supporting, collaborating, and contributing. So these were really our mandates as a finance function, as finance professionals, mostly reporting historical financial information and focusing on stewardship responsibilities. And these include, of course, all our fiduciary responsibilities to our stakeholders. So that really characterizes what we thought of and focused on in the finance function in the past.
In the present, we've added on initiatives like challenging and influencing and more recently predicting, utilizing financial information, but more characteristic of what we refer to as a strategic business partner. So balancing that stewardship hat with that strategic business partner hat. We've been talking about this now for the last little while in the finance function and specifically in the controller program, we focus on that balancing act. And this involves working closely with operations as an example, improving the value contribution of in particular the FP&A function to our organization. That's where I feel the biggest opportunity exists.
Armand Capisciolto:
Really quick pause. Not all our listeners speak in acronym like we do. FP&A, just for the uninformed.
Barb Palmegiani:
Financial planning and analysis, so big opportunities to all the CPAs out there. When you think about the present finance function as it exists, I can tell you for sure that significant majority of the controllers and CFOs that I interact with acknowledge that they can do a better job in planning, financial planning, the budget process forecasting. We're really trying to move towards more dynamic and more fluid planning for the business. There's a lot going on in the finance function already, and that's the present. Now later on, if we look to the future, we're doubling down on focusing on more forward-looking financial information. So with the tools that we're on the cusp of developing, finance has to master big data, analytics alongside AI and specifically layer on predictive analytics to that financial planning and analysis work we do today. Now all of this is going to be augmented, of course, with the tools, but there are upskilling things that we can be doing today to pivot ourselves from looking in the rearview mirror, as we say, to looking through the windshield.
Armand Capisciolto:
So as we all know, the last two years been significant disruption due to the pandemic, but it sounds like there was a lot of disruption, a lot of change happening in the finance function prior to COVID.
Barb Palmegiani:
I think it was 2019. I actually came across a great book and I borrowed the title and talked a lot about it with the controllers and CFOs and it was called the Squiggly Career. And I think it applies really well to the finance function because what it does is describe the impact of the disruptors that we were already dealing with pre-pandemic, so automation. And another big disruptor that we all acknowledged pre-pandemic was the multi-generational workforce. And so those two large disruptors were already having an impact on how we did things in the finance function. So the Squiggly Career says how professionals should be sculpting out their careers to match their interests and to focus on upskilling or re-skilling themselves. In other words, take a project, take a role that is going to enhance your skillset, enable your skillset to be a little more broad.
So that involves definitely taking some risks, taking on new challenges and going into new territory. But those moves will absolutely set you up well for the future of finance. We can't look at our career anymore as just a career ladder that sort of has that very clearly defined title going up the ladder and that indicates experience. We have to be making sure as CPAs ourselves that we're putting ourselves in roles and in situations where we'll gather up that toolbox of skill sets, if you will. So I always equate it to a plumber or an electrician. We're like a trade, and the bigger your toolbox, the more tools you're going to have to take out whatever the situation you'll be facing in the future.
Armand Capisciolto:
Okay. So with all this change going on, and as someone who, I guess, would be defined as mid-career, over 45, I guess that's a good thing.
Barb Palmegiani:
I didn't know that. It's not like I can tell.
Armand Capisciolto:
How are CPAs reacting to all this change?
Barb Palmegiani:
Yeah, it's really important to talk about this, Armand. It's that age range from about 45 to 60 year olds, and it's been proven that they are actually the most overlooked employee bracket. And so I would say for about the past six years, mid-career individuals have made up a consistently high percentage of what's referred to as that long-term unemployed. And so hiring managers have considered those who are 45 and above, like you and I, to actually be the worst cohort in terms of application readiness. So there's this stereotype around their fitness and their previous experience. And one of the surveys that I read talked about their top concerns about hiring in a mid-career person is their readiness to try new technologies, their perceived, I'm going to say, inability to learn new skills and potentially, and it's true in some cases, their difficulty in working with other generations, somebody that's very different from themselves.
And so we're coming through the other side of the pandemic now, and I honestly believe there's a correlation between all the combined disruptions that are taking place pre-pandemic that we've talked about, and this moment of knowledge worker empowerment. So whether it was their own choice or whether it was a chosen path, more of these mid-career individuals are becoming their own bosses. And this includes the mid-career, but it's also including, interestingly, a lot more early stage CPAs and mid-career CPAs as well. So it's like a perfect storm. Employers are finding themselves in probably the most competitive market we've ever seen, and it's being described, as everybody's heard, as the war for talent, a skills shortage, a significant challenge for leaders for sure, across not just finance, but most functions in an organization.
Armand Capisciolto:
I would like to say, at over 45, I'm learning how to host a podcast, so I am trying new things.
Barb Palmegiani:
You techie you. For sure, for sure.
Armand Capisciolto:
Yes. You have all this going on. And then the past two years dealing with the pandemic, dealing with working remotely, and it's the debate, right? We're all having that debate right now of return to office, continue remote, hybrid. How has this whole remote environment impacted finance departments?
Barb Palmegiani:
Yeah, I would say flexibility and remote work have almost become the poster child for these types of trends. And definitely, definitely priorities have shifted over the last two years. We can't stay with our pre-pandemic principles or in other words, what worked in the past. And it's really interesting to have this conversation because so much of this information is being written about right now and is publicly available, but it's almost like saying that people want the autonomy, they want to be able to continue to work remotely in many cases, but by the same token, they also want more connectedness.
And I really believe that anybody who's listening out there who is managing and leading a team, you can really sort of think a little bit about how often you interact with your team and how you do that. So in other words, if the only time you interact with your team is when you need something or they're calling you because they need something, that becomes transactional and that doesn't lend itself well to that connectedness, that meaningful relationship building that we all know that everybody's craving right now.
So we've just got to find ways of increasing the connectedness and at the same time, working remotely. And those two things don't have to actually be mutually exclusive. So simple things like reaching out and having meetings that are more than just when you need something or when someone needs something from you. And so it comes back to that empathy. I think if you were an empathetic leader, if you were able to put yourself in somebody else's shoes before the pandemic, I think you've actually thrived as a leader during the pandemic.
And I think for those of you who are off the charts, results oriented if you will, and everything's about output, just slowing that down a bit and balancing your relationships and your communication with your team so that it's beyond just, "Here's what I need from you, what do you need from me?" And I have to say, Armand, just as an aside, I've worked with you for a few months now. We've all been working remotely. I've seen you interact with your team. You are absolutely one of those empathetic leaders. I see the relationship you have with your team and you're walking the talk, if I may say.
Armand Capisciolto:
It's funny. Managing a remote team, it's interesting. I always try, at the start of any discussion, to not talk about work. Usually it's about what we're watching on Netflix or what we're ordering for dinner or making for dinner. And it's amazing how you get to know people and build that relationship beyond the transactional level because, like you said, the transactional level, that's when people don't stick around, which leads us to the Great Resignation that we're dealing with. So how big of an issue has this been for people in the finance function? This is your group, this is who you talk to, CFOs, quite regularly. What are they saying? Are they experiencing this in the finance departments? Are they experiencing this?
Barb Palmegiani:
For sure. I mean, I have to say that when we are together in a learning and development environment, we talk very, very openly about not only what's working, so it's not a group of CFOs coming together and trying to impress each other about how smart they are and how successful they are. It's more of a focus on what's working, yes, but what's not working. And that's where the real learning opportunities and the networking opportunities of the CFO community really benefits us. Because I always say, Armand, the CFO role is a very lonely place, and it's a lonely chair to be sitting in. And when I say that to a group of CFOs, when we're sort of kicking off a session, there's collectively this huge sigh and you see everybody's shoulders go up and down because they're living it. And you can't really be unloading on your team.
You can't be unloading to your CEO. You can't be unloading to your peer group. They're all heavily relying on you. And so yes, CFOs need a community and a network of others that are sitting in the same chair. And this is where we come together and talk a lot about the burnout more recently and acknowledging the fact that many CFOs and their controllers have absolutely played an important financial leadership role during the pandemic. And that has put them under even more pressure over the last two years than would normally exist.
Some of the stories that they share are about helping their company survive. And now more recently, revive. And in other cases, the pressure on the CFO was about helping their company thrive because they may be working in an industry that has significantly benefited during the pandemic and they want to be taking advantage of that. But in both scenarios, finance leaders have been in the spotlight. So there's a lot of discussion about burnout and sharing ideas around what we're each doing to manage that. And I would say second to that, what comes next is a lot of discussion about the anxiety of going back to work in an office.
Many CFOs and controllers have been working remotely, and it's incredible that we all did this for so many years, and now the last two years, we're thinking, "How can I go back to that?" And yet, as a leader, they can't really speak openly about that if that's the direction that the organization is taking. They have to lead their staff and employees, whether it's a hybrid or whether it's back to work full time. But they themselves are feeling the same things as their staff are feeling, of course.
Armand Capisciolto:
So you're seeing a large number of CFOs kind of resigned from their full-time roles and moving into these types of roles?
Barb Palmegiani:
I would say, again, because of this perfect storm that we've been talking about, anecdotally, in my opinion, there's a record number of them that are either leaving or thinking about doing so. And most of them in leaving, if the ones who have left, like I say, they're not stopping to work. They're not leaving and doing nothing. They're doing all kinds of things either still within the finance profession or working for themselves. We just had an example recently where somebody left the finance profession, actually two examples, and they opened up small businesses. So CPAs make great small business owners. Right?
Armand Capisciolto:
Interesting. Interesting. So going to switch gears a little bit because, as you know, I'm involved in audits and as a firm, that's one of our core services is audits. When I hear about finance leaders, CFOs resigning and turnover in the finance department, it concerns me. Typically, when we see a large amount of turnover in a finance department, those aren't fun audits to deal with that year because of all the things that could happen and the risks that can arise related to it. So do you see risks arising for organizations that are going through these resignations?
Barb Palmegiani:
I do. I think many companies are now in, I'll say dangerous cycles in some cases. So for example, as the number of vacant roles in an organization increases, remaining employees are expected to pick up the slack adding to their workload. And in turn, this is adding to the already existing state of burnout that I was referring to earlier or dissatisfaction with remote work. And this is what is motivating some staff to leave or another risk is they may stay, but given their exhaustion, this scenario can lead to them cutting corners, things like internal controls or worse, rationalizing, defrauding their employer as compensation for the added stress.
And I would say even another risk scenario as I think about it is when companies focus too much on the speed of getting a new hire to sign. And I've seen that very recently to get on board as quickly as possible with this war on talent, and they're expediting the hiring process. And of course, this can be very risky. They're not necessarily doing all of their due diligence that they once would've done, and therefore, they're sacrificing security or quality of a candidate for speed. And so we've seen hiring teams be tempted to cut corners on conducting a proper background check, reference check, if you will, and potential candidates are gaining a competitive advantage or hiring someone who can start work immediately, all of a sudden has become the most attractive candidate.
Armand Capisciolto:
You know what? I think we're all experiencing staff shortages, and that's a hard thing to look past. The person who can start soon is very appealing when they might not be the right person though, and it's hard to manage that. So with all these risks, that's just one of the risks. When you talk to clients and you talk to leaders of companies, how are they managing these risks? What are your recommendations for how they should manage these risks that are arising because of resignations?
Barb Palmegiani:
Well, I'm dealing with this on a daily basis with multiple companies a day. And in 2022, our services has played a key role in the CFO and controllership practice. So we're providing much more of an interim solutions, so many more interim solutions with interim resources. And our value proposition with that is being able to do it on a timely basis. We're able to place these CFOs and controllers and other types of project leaders with a financial background and the fit and the competence that they bring to the client's finance function is our job to diagnose that, to diagnose that fit and put the right person in.
The thing is with our team, these are people that are used to hitting the ground running. They go in and out of companies on a fractional basis regularly. So they have those skillsets, they can provide a significant positive impact in short order. And I can say that it's extremely rewarding to me if I'm dealing with a CEO or a business owner or an executive director and I've been working with them when they've been under quite a bit of stress, whether it's a CFO that's left because of a emergency medical leave, or I'm also seeing CFOs resigning with no notice. This is the first time in my career that I have ever heard of a CFO resigning and not giving notice.
Armand Capisciolto:
Obviously, one way to manage this is to avoid turnover, to avoid resignation-
Barb Palmegiani:
Root cause.
Armand Capisciolto:
Preventative medicine, right? What is that preventative medicine? When you're talking to CFOs, to boards of directors, to executive directors, what you say, how do you retain your finance staff?
Barb Palmegiani:
Yeah, this comes back into all the leadership work and more recently, I think it was MIT, they did a management review and they really simplified what this main driver is more recently. And they call it a toxic corporate culture, is the strongest predictor of turnover these days. I think it was 10 times more powerful than people leaving for compensation reasons or for comp reasons. So they define toxicity characteristics as disrespect, unethical behaviors, so that tone at the top and that top down behavior that everybody's observing, and the failure to promote diversity, equity and inclusion. So this research finds companies with a healthy culture experiencing lower than average turnover. And that study was done very recently, sort of the last half of 2021, which is considered the beginning of the great resignation.
So I'd say that as we think about leaders in organizations, really trying to understand what they can do from a retention perspective, it's about creating meaningful relationships with their team. As you said, Armand, being close enough to them on a social level to understand really what makes them tick. And you've got to be able to do this not necessarily in person. So these interactions are not necessarily in person, and yet, we're trying to create more meaningful relationships. And I think we're just at the cusp of this almost being considered a new skillset. So moving from that transactional, yes, everybody wants the financial perks and nobody's going to say no to a thank you bonus, but those things are transactional and they want those too. But really they're looking to have their employers and their managers and their leaders invest more in them and their employee experience.
Armand Capisciolto:
Okay. So there's one last thing I wanted to ask you about today, because I know one of the things that your group does at BDO is work with CFOs, so work with CFOs on transforming the finance department. And when we think about all the things we just talked about, the different types of CFOs, remote work, which is likely turning into hybrid work, the great resignation related turnover, which probably isn't slowing down anytime soon. What does CFOs do? Do they go on a transformation journey right now? Is that what you're advising them on doing? Or is it different from organization to organization?
Barb Palmegiani:
Yeah, I mean, the other side of this practice is services for CFOs. So CFOs are our main clients. And after the last two years of the pandemic wreaking havoc, as I said earlier, prior to the pandemic, these businesses were already feeling pressures of a shifting working world. And so as you and I are sitting here today, businesses are rebuilding and yes, transformation. It starts with just the ability to think differently, and that becomes critical going forward. As I said earlier, status quo not being an option, today's CFO has a growing portfolio of responsibilities. And so our services to CFO's practice is really about bringing them the right experts at the right time in a cost-effective way. And the biggest barrier to CFOs having these resources that are widely available is actually they have to get out of their own way. So not feel that they themselves have to possess all the answers to every problem.
And I speak from experience as a longtime CFO myself, we came up in a time where you felt that the buck stopped with you and you had to be able to figure everything out. And that's just no longer possible given the breadth of skills that today's CFO requires. And so if you think about what we mean by organizational transformation, in the past, that was often more about cost, right? So cost minimization or maybe cost optimization, and so naturally, that fit in the CFO's domain, but that term, transformation, is being used very frequently, and I think the true meaning has actually been lost.
So the way we talk about transformation to CFOs is that it's not just about implementing more and more technology or an internal focus. It really is about re-imagining the entire business model. And it's about resilience, building in resilience to the organization to be able to ... I don't know if you've heard this, but they're referring to the 2020s, this decade, as the decade of disruption. And so it's just a matter of time before here we go again. And so that agility, that fluidity, that needs to be baked into business models, that fits really well in the CFO's domain to lead. And so we could be talking about, yes, digital transformation, but we can also be talking about ESG as an example. So of course, BDO can help with all of that. We work closely with CFOs and we are looking to augment their finance teams to become more agile.
Armand Capisciolto:
I think you just want this conversation to go on and on because you mentioned ESG, so you know I can get talking on that topic.
Barb Palmegiani:
I do know that.
Armand Capisciolto:
But I won't today. I won't today. But we do have a couple other podcasts or episodes that do cover it. So Barb, so much to consider, so much to think about. We've just kind of scratched the surface here and we have been talking for a while, so if people wanted to get ahold of you, I assume bdo.ca, they can get your contact information. Get your contact information on LinkedIn as well. With regards to the training you do through CPA Ontario, if someone's interested in taking that training, how do they register for that or find out more information about that?
Barb Palmegiani:
Yeah, really simple. You just go on the CPOntario.ca website. There is a professional development or PD portal, and when you get into the portal, just search controller or search CFO as the case may be, and you'll see the programs pop up.
Armand Capisciolto:
Okay. Well, Barb, thank you very much. Myself and our audience, we appreciate the time and expertise. I'd also like to thank you, our listeners for tuning in today. I'm Armand Capisciolto, and this has been BDO's Accounting for the Future. Please let us know if you found this topic interesting and useful, and remember to subscribe if you liked it. We'll see you next time.
Narrator:
Thank you for listening to BDO Canada's Accounting for the Future. Past episodes and related insights are available at www.bdo.ca/accountingforthefuture. Or you can go to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts to subscribe. For more information on BDO Canada, visit bdo.ca.