When you hire a financial professional, one of the most important and decisive factors should be if they genuinely are looking out for you. Knowing if your CPA is genuinely looking out for you is going to be a hugely important part of the process.

If you hire someone to look at your finances and your overall financial performance, it pays to know if the information that they can offer is actually up to scratch.

Some accountants want to get the job done with quickly and will cut corners, others just want to do the bare minimum. The choice for you, then, is the CPA that looks to:

  • Provide you with information and advice about your industry. If you are working in a particular background, they should be interested to find out more so that they can, if possible, research better alternatives to your current options. From your suppliers to how you handle payments, they can make sure that your account looks a little more optimistic.
  • At the same time, your CPA needs to be able to point to where you might be going wrong. They should be active in showing you where your best improvements could take place, and how they could best improve the way that you come across in a professional sense. From reducing wastage on failed ventures to helping you better manage resources, a CPA is absolutely vital to improving the depth and detail of your financial profile.
  • A CPA that has your best interests at heart will also look to talk you out of certain actions. If a CPA just keeps telling you to go for things, you should question why. Smart fiscal policy means rejecting something when it isn’t a clear, 100% win for yourself. We recommend that you take the time to better understand that if someone just keeps offering you more and more on top of what you already have, that they might have ulterior motives.
  • Always look to hire the CPA that gives you advice followed up by examples. Do they work with people who they can trust? Do they give you information about people they worked with previously in your industry who they helped? What is the context to their advice? Without depth and detail, it’s just empty words.

Always be sure to look for the CPA who is contextual, deep and detailed and who listens to your every word!