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Ditch the Ladder. Climb the Jungle Gym.

Is it time for the CPA profession to replace the traditional ladder with a jungle gym—a more flexible, dynamic and inclusive vision of career growth that reflects the complexity of modern accounting and the aspirations of today’s workforce?


Ditch the Ladder

CalCPA Welcomes New Chairs

At our annual Members Club Summit this week, CalCPA appointed Jillian Phan as chair and Scott Donnelly chair of the CalCPA Education Foundation. Both leaders bring deep CalCPA roots and a passion for strengthening the future of the CPA profession.

2025-26 CalCPA Chairs

CalCPA Empowering Students

More than 300 aspiring CPAs were awarded CalCPA scholarships in 2024–25, with an average of $1,500 to support their education.

Student Scholarships

Turn Chaos Into Clarity

To solve and resolve crises while continuing to move forward takes a laundry list of actions, strategies and planning. We’ll boil it down to three essentials—and the role CPAs can play.

Crisis Management

Golden State wisdom straight from the experts

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Legislation in 2016 created CalSavers, California’s retirement savings program, designed “to ensure all Californians have access to a workplace retirement savings account.”  

The following are some key elements that tax practitioners in California might encounter regarding the program—both for their own firms and for small businesses they work with.

Although the deadlines for larger businesses have already passed, employers with one-four employees have until Dec. 31, 2025, to 

. According to CalSavers, “Businesses that do not employ any individuals other than the owners are exempt from the expansion of the mandate.”

 started to send emails in March based upon businesses with active EDD Employer Payroll Tax Accounts. These emails assign a unique access code to login to the CalSavers website to either register or apply for an exemption.

Employers that do not offer their own retirement plan must register in CalSavers. Sponsoring a qualified retirement plan, such as a 401(k) or SIMPLE IRA among other plans, will exempt a business from needing to register. However, CalSavers will still want to know if the employer is exempt, so there is a mechanism to indicate this on the website (Request Access Code) or via email (see above). 

It is also worth noting that religious, tribal and government organizations are exempt from the program.

Although the employer registers their business in CalSavers, the business cannot contribute or match any funds toward the employees’ retirement accounts. The employer simply remits employee contributions to each employees’ account on their behalf. 

Employees are “automatically enrolled” and must opt out if they do not wish to participate. Default contributions are set at 5 percent of gross pay and increase 1 percent on Jan. 1 of each year until that percentage hits 8 percent. Employees can change this default percentage if they wish.

The funds are automatically invested based upon the employees’ date of birth and target retirement age. Most of the underlying funds are State Street Index Funds. 

The employee’s retirement account is treated as a Roth IRA and therefore is subject to annual IRS contribution limitations. For 2025, the contribution will be limited to earned income up to $7,000, or $8,000 for those age 50 or over.  

Staying informed of the CalSavers program is important for California tax practitioners, even if they already have their own 401(k) plan in place. There will be communications from government agencies, payroll processors and clients that necessitate a general knowledge of this area.   

Note that this article does not cover all elements of the program, so it’s advised practitioners review available resources via 

CalSavers: Did You Get the Memo?

Understand some key elements surrounding CalSavers that tax practitioners in California might encounter regarding the program—both for their own firms and for small businesses they work with.

Accounting is no longer just about numbers. It’s about navigating possibilities—and career paths should reflect that.

For decades, the accounting profession has sold the dream of a singular path to success: graduate with your degree, land a job at a firm and work your way up the ladder to partner. Or exit the firm and become a controller and work your way up to CFO.

 For many, that ladder was clear, structured, and (for some) satisfying.

But for too many others—especially younger generations, mid-career changers and those from historically under-represented backgrounds—the ladder can feel limiting, outdated or even out of reach. Or even worse, not reaching the top can feel like failure.

It’s time for the profession to replace the traditional ladder with a jungle gym (thank you, Sheryl Sandberg) —a more flexible, dynamic and inclusive vision of career growth that reflects the complexity of modern accounting and the aspirations of today’s workforce.

Unlike a ladder, a jungle gym offers multiple ways to reach new heights. You can climb up, sideways even backwards—and sometimes take a step down to ultimately leap forward. That’s the kind of career agility that today’s accountants need.

Consider the rise of nontraditional accounting roles:

These are not deviations from the profession. They are evolutions of it. And yet, many firms and organizations still talk about success as if there’s only one direction: up the ladder.

Three major trends are accelerating the shift away from the ladder model:

What the Jungle Gym Looks Like in Practice

Transitioning to a jungle gym model doesn’t mean abandoning structure. It means expanding it.

Instead of a single upward track, offer multiple pathways with interchangeable roles across departments, service lines or specialties. A tax associate might shift into a tech implementation team. An auditor could explore sustainability consulting or training roles. A controller could try being a business analyst with a focus on data analytics and operations.

Normalize lateral transitions and rotations as growth opportunities. These can deepen perspective, prevent burnout and build team resilience. Empower employees to shape their own trajectories. Let them combine technical, leadership and personal growth goals in ways that make sense for their aspirations—and your business needs.

Encourage mentorship models that support exploration and risk-taking, not just grooming for the executive path.

It’s time to redefine what success looks like in accounting. The jungle gym model honors the complexity of modern accounting and the humanity of the people who choose this profession. Whether you're a managing partner, CFO, HR director or young professional trying to find your place, ask yourself:

Let’s Design the Profession We All Want

The future of accounting is inclusive, dynamic and fulfilling. But we can’t get there if we cling to outdated models of what a “successful accountant” looks like. Let’s give people the freedom to swing, climb, pivot and grow. Let’s build teams where the view from the top isn’t the only one that matters.

Let’s ditch the ladder—and build a jungle gym together.

—At its annual Members Club Summit, CalCPA welcomed new leadership, appointing 

, partner at Meloni Hribal Tratner LLP, as chair and 

, founder of PDM CPAs, as chair of the CalCPA Education Foundation.

Both leaders bring deep CalCPA roots and a passion for strengthening the future of the CPA profession.

A member of the CalCPA Board of Directors and past president of the CalCPA Los Angeles Chapter, Phan had her eyes set on a medical career while in college, but found herself instead drawn to accounting classes, changed her major and has never looked back. 

"Accounting just clicked with me," said Phan, who sees attracting the next generation as the biggest issue facing the profession. 

"There is a talent shortage, and we need tech-savvy professionals to lead the CPA profession into the AI-driven future," she said.

Also a past president of the CalCPA Los Angeles Chapter, Donnelly has served as a member of the CalCPA Estate Planning, Communications Advisory and Technology committees. 

As someone who enjoys working with numbers, Donnelly also landed on a CPA career while in college.

"When I transferred into the business school at Cal State University, Long Beach I started to hear more about CPAs. I took an audit class and didn’t like it very much," he said. "I met with my counselor, and he suggested I take tax classes. I was hooked after the first day of the individual taxation class."

Donnelly also believes attracting students to pursue an accounting degree and career is paramount for a profession that "has so many avenues to pursue," he said.

Speed, quality or cost—pick two of the three. We have all heard this phrase and possibly said it to clients ourselves in some form. In sales or engineering organizations this is sometimes referred to as the “Iron Triangle” since these three factors are inextricably tied together. For CPA firm purposes, let’s call this the “Service Triangle.” 

This article aims to provide visual models to understand the interplay between the inputs to the Service Triangle and the client’s experiences of our service output in the dimensions of speed, quality and cost. This model will also illustrate how perceived constraints can be turned into leveraged growth with technology and global talent sourcing.

As firm owners and business professionals, we often see a triangle used in sales or engineering as a simplification of the relationship between speed, quality and cost. The common wisdom is that your client can have two of the three, but never all three at once. Even though every client believes they can and should get all three every time!

This framework shows how your clients experience your services—each side translates into how fast, how good and how much your services cost from the client’s perspective. Their total experience is the output of your work represented by each side of the triangle, which looks like this: 

Your Grandparent’s Triangle—Service Triangle 1.0

In the traditional concept of the Service Triangle, you have your firm’s positioning in the market based on your balance of the three sides of your clients’ experience of your services: speed, quality and cost. It’s obvious—to everyone but the client—how emphasizing one or two of these factors de-emphasizes the third. Of course, quality is never compromised under our professional standards, so you only have the other two to work with. 

: Yes, Mr. Client, you can have the report next week, but it’ll cost you.

Each of the output sides of the triangle can be grown or improved based on how you manage and invest in certain inputs. For this discussion, let’s simplify these inputs into three points: Skill, Labor and Process: 

“Skill” includes all the training, experience and knowledge you and your staff bring to an engagement. “Labor” is simply the hours or effort applied. And “Process” is the procedures, templates and work standards that you’ve developed over time. 

Growing means investing in one or more inputs with the expectation of improvement in one or more of the corresponding outputs. You invest in each of the inputs, so your client’s experience improves in certain areas. 

The more you invest into each input, the higher or better outputs on each side of the client experience. Connecting each corner are the outputs that are directly influenced by the inputs.

Processes are great, as they can improve the consistent output of higher quality work and yield higher cost efficiency by reducing friction and providing focus. However, left in the hands of too little Labor or low-Skilled staff, the Processes can run the show and slow things down. Of course, curses upon the staffer who skips a checklist to increase speed of delivery but ends up having the missed checklist come back to bite them (i.e., the process is there but still fails). 

Higher Skill inherently increases quality of work and often leads to an increase in Speed of Delivery (more Skill usually means someone can perform faster). But we know that Skill costs money and this puts a lot of pressure on Cost Efficiency. If you weren’t experiencing how difficult it is to hire quality skilled staff in our profession without spending gobs of money, you might not be reading this article!

Based on your firm’s positioning, you have the outputs in a particular balance. Ideally, you can grow each input in tandem with the others such that outputs grow as well. But maintaining the right balance is hard. Growing while maintaining that balance is even harder. If the growth is out of balance, even as your ability to perform at a higher level in one of the outputs, you might still be constrained in other areas and the client experience can still suffer. Let’s look at what happens if you don’t grow while maintaining balance.

Yes, it would be great if you could grow all input factors in tandem. But that is often not possible. 

Each point of input can be leveraged individually, but this has potentially significant risks:

Just like any form of leverage, changes in the inputs can swing the experience outputs both ways. The forces on each corner of the triangle can bring opportunity to improve each side spurring growth and improvement. Constraints or limitations on an input can hamper growth in that area and limit the corresponding sides. 

For example, if you’re lacking Process, then you may find it hard to improve the Speed of Delivery and it may be extremely difficult to ensure that your Quality is consistent. Conversely, focusing on Process (e.g. quality control procedures) would allow you to turn out extremely high quality, reviewed and vetted work product, but your Cost Efficiency will suffer, irrespective of whether you hit your deadline or not. 

If you have lower Skilled staff, Cost Efficiency may be more upfront, but it will be a challenge to deliver high and consistent Quality of Work (and likely Speed of Delivery will suffer as well).

If you are finding it hard to find Labor, then you’ll probably have to pay more (worse Cost Efficiency) or the Speed of Delivery to the client will be slowed. 

If you are unable to grow the inputs at a consistent pace, the constraints can lead to one or more of the outputs to suffer. And remember, the output is really your client’s experience of your work product.

So, if one of the inputs is out of whack then the growth is hampered, uneven or perhaps just stuck. Even worse, when things are out of balance, every aspect of the client experience erodes simultaneously. How hard is it maintain good Quality when your Speed of Delivery is suffering—i.e., your clients are banging on the door to get their project?

But there is one tactic that leverages technology to move all the levers at once.

By Making Your World Bigger, You Make Your Triangle Bigger–Service Triangle 3.0

More and more, Labor is the one input that is most constrained. Any professional in the business for a while has Process that works for them in terms of their basic technology stack, their models and templates. Skill can be ramped up by teaching the brilliant things you know to your team—if only you had the right team in place or could free up your super stars to continue learning! But with rare exception, finding good and sufficient Labor is like finding a unicorn. Even worse, all too often that unicorn turns out to really be just a donkey with a paper maché horn.

Technology allows secure, always-on communication which makes global labor sourcing possible and effective in a way it never has before. Using all the hard-won lessons from the work from home culture, we can now run highly effective firms with teams ranging from down the hall to around the globe. Tapping into other countries professional populations allows you to obtain highly skilled and abundant labor to support your practice. Releasing the constraints on Labor allows you to simultaneously maintain or improve quality, increase speed and contain costs as you grow your firm. 

Our firms’ inputs directly shape client experiences. With local labor limited, we turn to global talent via technology to break the constraint. How far can your Service Triangle expand when you unleash the power of global labor?

Global Talent Outsourcing 

Understand the interplay between speed, quality and cost when it comes to client experiences of your services.

Global Talent Outsourcing

 for earning the 2025 CalCPA Firm of the Year Award in the Mid-to-Large Firm and Small Firm categories, respectively. The award honors firms that are making a real impact through leadership, vision and values in action.

BPM LLP is a California-rooted firm with a global reach and a people-first philosophy that powers everything it does. As a certified B Corp, BPM pairs cutting-edge innovation—from AI and VR to cybersecurity and ESG advisory—with a deep commitment to inclusion, sustainability and leadership development. With recent expansions into the UK, Canada and across the Western U.S., BPM is redefining what it means to be a modern accounting firm: tech-forward, globally connected and deeply human. True to its guiding principle—Because People Matter—BPM proves that when people come first, excellence follows.

Founded in 2022, CPAClub is redefining what an accounting firm can be. With an innovative subscription model, a four-day workweek and a steadfast commitment to people, purpose and progress, CPAClub is transforming the profession from the inside out. This veteran-led, proudly inclusive firm delivers high-impact audit, advisory and quality services to clients of all sizes—while actively investing in the future of the CPA designation. More than just a firm, CPAClub is a movement: one that blends integrity with innovation, creates space for bold leadership at every level and proves that meaningful change in the accounting profession isn’t just possible—it’s already happening.

And we also honor and recognize the other award finalists:

EisnerAmper stands out for its unwavering commitment to cultivating talent through a people-first culture that prioritizes individual growth and development. Their innovative "buddy" mentorship program ensures new employees receive personalized guidance and support, fostering both professional excellence and personal connection from day one. The firm's leadership demonstrates remarkable alignment in their vision, creating an enthusiastic workplace environment where engagement flourishes both within the office and in broader community involvement. Their dedication to developing people as whole individuals, rather than just professionals, exemplifies the gold standard for modern accounting practices and makes them a deserving finalist for this prestigious recognition.

In an era where many firms are merging or accepting private equity, GHJ is proudly taking a different path—choosing to grow intentionally, remain independent and invest deeply in its people and clients. GHJ’s culture-first philosophy is more than a message—it’s a movement, embodied in their #BeMore mantra and lived across every level of the firm. With a track record of purpose-driven growth, standout leadership, and a culture built on empowerment and service, GHJ isn’t just navigating industry change—it’s shaping what the future of accounting could look like.

What stands out most about HCVT is their collaborative outlook and focus on continuous improvement and engagement of their people. They encourage and honor the individuality of their people and their office locations. Each location has its own unique culture, formed by its people, which are brought together under the HCVT umbrella through collaboration and open sharing of best practices. They illustrate continuous improvement in their ongoing investment in learning initiatives, mentorship and staying on the cutting edge of AI and technology advancements and women's support initiatives. Their commitment to people further shows through the investment in off-site training designed for learning and skill development, as well as for furthering the culture and connection among their team.

This firm impressed with its intentional, people-first culture and unique structural choices—like eliminating titles to foster collaboration and reduce ego. Their commitment to community service, both locally and globally, is deeply embedded in the firm’s identity. They’re not chasing growth for growth’s sake, but instead focused on building a sustainable, values-driven environment where people want to stay. Their forward-looking embrace of AI, including internal GPT projects and weekly challenges, shows a thoughtful approach to innovation.

Miller Kaplan sets themselves apart through their thoughtful commitment to their people, clients and community. They illustrate their commitment to their people through investment in education and use of a unique competency-based framework to guide continuous growth and development of their team. They have gone above and beyond traditional accounting services to truly meet their clients’ needs, creating a "family office" style service targeted towards the unique needs of their industry clients, offering branding, licensing, business management, etc. Finally, their commitment to community shows through ongoing support to LA Family housing and very intentional donations to LA Fire recovery, specifically waiting to contribute additional funding to support the ongoing rebuilding efforts.

This firm stood out for its strong alignment between values and action. As a B-Corp, it’s clearly committed to sustainability and inclusivity, with over 40 group initiatives to encompass DEI and a culture that prioritizes mental health and work-life balance. Their innovative approach to partner compensation, investment in non-traditional coaching, and structured development programs reflect a forward-thinking mindset. They’re not just adapting to change—they’re leading it, with intentional strategies that support both people and performance.

2025 CalCPA Firm of the Year Winners

Check out which firms took home our Firm of the Year Award for making a real impact through leadership, vision and values in action. 

Stay ahead with essential CPA resources

Golden State wisdom straight from the experts

Ditch the Ladder. Climb the Jungle Gym.

CalCPA Welcomes New Chairs

CalCPA Empowering Students

Turn Chaos Into Clarity

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