“This isn’t a flash in the pan. This is an actual structural change in the profession.”

Big 4 Transparency
By Dominic Piscopo, CPA
For CPA Trendlines

Private equity in public accounting is often reduced to a caricature - buy, cut, flip.

Tim Brackney, CEO of Springline Advisory, says that framing misses what many accounting investments are actually trying to do: fund a growth thesis built around expanded capabilities, talent development, and modernized service delivery. Springline, backed by Trinity Hunt Partners, is a “buy-and-build” platform that has completed nine deals across CPA and advisory firms as it works toward becoming a national and eventually global firm with “all of the capabilities inside our four walls that our clients will need.”

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Brackney’s path to the CEO seat isn’t the “serial PE operator” stereotype. He started at PwC as an auditor, then moved into advisory and BPO work, and later spent two decades at Resources Global Professionals (RGP), a publicly traded Deloitte spin-out, ultimately serving as president and COO. He describes an 18-month mutual diligence process with Trinity Hunt, emphasizing that the goal wasn’t a quick arbitrage play, it was building an enduring firm, potentially by bringing in future investors over time rather than forcing a rapid exit.

A key early lesson, Brackney says, was that 2023 still required “Private Equity 101” education for many sellers.

Burnout pushed him to rethink growth, rebuild his processes, and make room for a better life.

The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

When Nick Boscia joined his father's accounting firm in 2013, it was like stepping back in time.

“When I joined, we were still using like the green ledger sheets,” he recalls. “I started in 2013, and it was like it was 1980.” Today, Boscia is known as the Balanced CPA and is co-owner, with his brother Joe, of Boscia and Boscia PC, the firm their father founded in 1975.

Working for his father was difficult.

“He didn't really value going on vacations or taking time off,” Boscia recalls. Adopting new technology was out of the question.

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“I’ve been doing this for 40 years, and it works, so we’re not changing things,” his father would say. But when Boscia and his brother took over, things changed dramatically.

“My dad was like, we’re not making changes,” he recalls. “I’m like, I want to change everything.”

In just a few years, Nick and Joe transformed a legacy, paper-based practice serving 700 clients into a modern firm that, at its peak, served 1,800 clients.

Leaders reveal a widening gap between adopting new capabilities and building firms that can use them effectively.

Accounting Voices
With Rob Brown

A firm buys powerful technology, announces ambitious growth plans, and asks an already stretched team to deliver more. The tools change. The way the business operates barely moves.

Accounting Voices explores the strain inside that scenario. Drawing on reflections from 48 firm leaders, consultants, media professionals, technology experts, and other industry voices, it examines what their observations reveal about accounting’s direction.

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