“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.”

• MORE Dominic Piscopo | MORE Private Equity | MORE Pay & Compensation

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.

• MORE Disruptors with Liz Farr | CPA Trendlines Streaming Network

“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.

• MORE Accounting Voices with Rob Brown

Nontechnical teams can use AI-built scripts to automate repetitive work, reclaim valuable time, and turn an accounting firm’s operational problem into a marketable product.

It's Not Just the Numbers
With Penny Breslin and Damien Greathead
For CPA Trendlines

Most accounting firms talk about AI automation in the future tense. They're waiting for the right tool, the right vendor, or the right moment to start using it seriously.

Trent Yesberg didn't wait. As director of Regional Business Services in Townsville, Australia, he started asking Claude and ChatGPT to write scripts that run his firm's internal workflows directly, with no ongoing subscription or per-task cost attached.

• MORE Penny Breslin and Damien Greathead | MORE Advisory & Consulting
• JOIN From Scorekeeper to Strategist CAS Workshop | BUY "It's Not Just the Numbers"

What began as a way to save his own team a few hours a week turned into Twine Biller, a tool now used by other firms to fix one of accounting's quietest profit leaks: subscription rebilling that slips through the cracks month after month.

His approach cuts against a common assumption, that AI automation in a firm has to mean either building an entire internal platform from scratch or renting one from a big software vendor. There is a middle path, and Yesberg has been living in it for the better part of a year.

Building an accounting tool with AI is only the beginning of making it useful, secure, and sustainable.

Innovation Insights
With Donny Shimamoto and Byron Patrick
Center for Accounting Transformation

An accountant builds a dashboard that pulls information from several systems. A proposal generator turns service selections into a polished PDF. A homemade utility eliminates a tedious step in the monthly close.

Then comes the question that changes everything: How do I let my team use it?

In this episode of Innovation Insights, Donny Shimamoto and Byron Patrick explore the distance between a promising personal tool and software an accounting team can depend on.

• More Donny Shimamoto

AI makes building easier, they say, but sharing, securing, supporting, and maintaining what you build requires a different level of preparation.

For accountants eager to experiment with AI agents and “vibe coding” — using natural-language instructions to have AI generate code — the conversation offers both encouragement and a reality check.

Leaders must align everyday decisions with the flexibility, innovation, and growth they promise employees.

MOVE Like This
With Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk
For CPA Trendlines Research

In this episode of MOVE Like This, Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk sits down with Kassi Rushing, strategist and speaker with Kassi Rushing Consulting, to explore what future-ready accounting firms need from their people strategies, and why culture, caregiving, leadership development, and business performance are increasingly difficult to separate.

Rushing, who has spent 20 years working in and with the accounting profession, says firms have made significant progress in recognizing people as a critical business asset. But understanding that people matter and creating an environment where they can do their best work are two different things, particularly as firms navigate AI, changing workforce expectations, and significant demographic shifts.

• MORE MOVE Like This | MORE CPA Trendlines Streaming Network

One example came from a firm that added a simple question to its employee survey: How many employees identify as caregivers? Leadership expected some but was surprised to learn that more than half of its professionals did. Many weren't simply caring for children; they were simultaneously helping aging parents, stepparents, siblings, or others. The finding prompted the firm to reconsider everything from when it scheduled social events to whether its benefits, training, and leave programs actually reflected employees' lives.

For Rushing, the lesson is simple: firms can't support people they haven't taken the time to understand.

A five-layer “AI trust stack” helps auditors put AI to work while keeping professional judgment at the center.

The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

As AI takes on more audit work, David Marquis sees professional judgment becoming more valuable.

The Caseware CEO argues that the opportunity extends beyond faster document reviews and automated analysis. Firms can rethink how audits work while strengthening the consistency, accountability, and trust that clients and capital markets depend on.

• MORE Disruptors with Liz Farr | CPA Trendlines Streaming Network

In The Disruptors, Marquis explains why putting AI to work requires more than a powerful model — and why the profession’s human responsibilities remain central to its future.

“They’re not simply knowledge industries, they're actually workflow industries,” he says of audit and accounting.

Following those workflows consistently is how professionals deliver work that clients, regulators, and capital markets can rely on. AI creates an opportunity to redesign that work, “and not just do it faster, but also do it differently and do it better.”

Leaders face growing questions about influence, identity, and professional relevance.

Accounting Voices
With Rob Brown

An accounting firm can keep its clients, meet its deadlines, and remain profitable while the people inside it quietly wonder whether they still belong in its future.

As technology, ownership models, and expectations reshape the profession, Accounting Voices examines the questions that software demonstrations and strategic plans often leave unanswered: Who gets to make decisions? Whose expertise still carries weight? And what happens when the career someone works toward becomes a career they no longer want?

• MORE Accounting Voices with Rob Brown