Innovation

  

Much as this pandemic and lockdown suck, one part of our professional life may come out the better for it.

 

I've been at odds with the accounting profession since 2010, about working directly with clients digitally.  We could do digital audits of organizations in remote places, using video conference apps for our face to face conversations and any observations we need to make.  In the last couple years there has been some progress in this direction at the national level, but our state, Colorado, has been terrible.  We're stymied by the Peer Review process which refuses to consider a video call as a face-to-face meeting.  We're threatened with failure to meet professional standards, if we dare to disobey, which could be a death-blow to our practice.

 

In 2010, brain surgeons were doing telemedicine consultations with remote patients to determine if they had brain injuries that warranted being evacuated to a major hospital in Denver.  What?  A videoconference is good enough technology for brain surgeons, but not yet ready for accounting!?!?  Okay.  I've been hot about this for ten years.

 

Well, in the last two months, things have changed.  We, as a firm, are no longer alone.  Now every CPA firm in Colorado, and the country, has to choose between not working at all, or working remotely (digitally).  We have not gotten any direct acknowledgement from the state that now it's really okay to use videoconferencing, but we are all being encouraged to keep our businesses open, while keeping everyone safe, by practicing social distancing and avoiding direct client contact.  We have embraced the concept, and I think the genie is out of the bottle now.  We are all working digitally.  Whenever this darn pandemic actually ends (I think it will take years), I don't foresee the state telling every firm to now stop the new way of doing business, which apparently is now in compliance with professional standards, and go back to the old way of doing things.

 

So maybe, finally, we can take advantage of the technology that has been here all along.