The move into the advisory space is a familiar journey for many accountants, one accelerated by the emergence of AI and the increasing role of automation (see this AB article). While the move may not be seamless – a recent survey of Australian accountants found 68% describing their profession as ‘harder now than ever before’ – it is clearly rewarding: the same survey found 84% of respondents agreeing their clients valued their advice, mentoring and guidance.
A future where consultancy services are prioritised is also one where critical ‘soft skills’ fall under the spotlight and many firms are happy to identify the personal aptitudes they believe personnel in advisory roles should have (see ‘Skills Required’ boxout).
‘Advising is typically treated as “good judgment” rather than a competency’
How these skills are acquired or fine-tuned is, perhaps, a less clearcut matter. Writing for Harvard Business Review, business academics David A Garvin and Joshua D Margolis argue that, across the business and professional world, ‘advising is typically treated as a matter of “good judgment” – you either have it or you don’t – rather than a competency to be mastered’.
Stressing a time-honoured toolkit of ‘emotional intelligence, self-awareness, restraint, diplomacy and patience’, they also identify the less-than-welcome behaviours that can lead to advisory fails (see ‘Common Mistakes’ boxout).
Good advice
For many in practice, the issue isn’t just how they themselves interact with clients, but how colleagues, and particularly the next generation of talent, do too. Mentoring will be seen as critical in this regard and ACCA offers training courses upskilling both mentors and mentees as part of its well-regarded mentoring programme.
A clear understanding of what ‘good advice giving’ looks like will be a helpful starting point for many. Garvin and Margolis’s research leads them to high-profile US attorney William Lee, who says the advisory traits he seeks in colleagues are: ‘Someone who is open and candid. Someone who gives advice that people can act on. (Otherwise, it’s like telling them, “get taller” or “get smarter”.) Also, someone who recognises that every situation is different.’
‘It is always important that we have the full facts’
It’s a view shared by Paul Murphy FCCA of Dublin-based Martin J Kelly & Co, who has built a career in advising both business clients and other accountants on complex tax issues. ‘While there is a relatively consistent element to consulting in this area, each engagement with a client is completely different,’ he says. ‘It is very important to understand where they are coming from and how they see any proposed transactions developing.’
The fundamentals
Murphy will speak for many accountants when he says his career as an adviser ‘happened organically without any great long-term plan. I cut my teeth at the accounting and tax coalface and understood how the compliance end of things worked for a host of different businesses.’
While technical knowledge and practical experience are bedrocks, experience points to other relevant attributes, with the ‘soft skills’ requirement boiling down to some key fundamentals: the ability to ask the right questions and present answers in the best way.
Skills required
Relationship building
Focus on developing solid relationships with both colleagues and clients.
Client expectation management
At a minimum, you should meet your client commitments and deliver on your promises.
Organisation
Keep on top of your workload and allocate resources accordingly. Don’t be afraid to look for assistance when required.
Curiosity
It is acceptable to say you don’t have all the answers, but important to take time to learn how best to find a solution where required.
Management
Look at cultivating and then demonstrating management skills such as delegation, motivation, feedback and coaching.
Leadership
Leadership is an ability to inspire confidence, trust and respect through your words and actions. It also involves taking personal responsibility, acting with ethics and integrity and demonstrating good judgment.
Source: BDO Ireland
A diligent approach to information gathering is critical at the beginning of any assignment, Murphy says. ‘It is always important that we have the full facts. This element is generally undertaken by correspondence and perhaps a meeting to tease out the scope.’
‘Advice brings responsibility, as almost all advice has consequences’
The end point – the delivery of advice – requires further considerations. ‘It can vary from a detailed step-by-step plan to a simple bullet list,’ he says. ‘Some clients like to read the report, absorb the contents and come back with detailed queries. Others just want the “diagnosis”.’
What matters in all instances is that ‘the advisory piece is easy to read, sets out the implications of the proposal in a clear manner and is applicable to their business’. It is, he adds, ‘easy to spot a generic report where it is clear that the adviser does not fully understand the business that they are advising on’.
Dealing with consequences
No one can know everything, and even the most experienced adviser may find that, after concluding an assignment, there could have been a better response. ‘There is only one answer to that, and that’s to go back to the client with the better response,’ Murphy says. ‘The world of tax planning is extremely complex and an entire structure can change because of a certain fact pattern or a condition that had to be met.’
Less easy to fix, if only because advisers may not be aware of it, are situations where advice is incorrectly acted on. A 2022 survey by UK insurer PolicyBee estimates bad advice to have cost the country’s microbusinesses some £13bn, with finance and investments, bookkeeping and tax among the top areas where poor advice was identified.
‘Advising is more than dispensing wisdom; it’s a creative, collaborative process’
While genuinely suboptimum services are at the heart of some of this, misunderstandings are also a factor, with the method of communication often having a part to play: a recent survey from Preply found 90% of business misunderstandings having their origins in email.
Accounting author Des Peelo says ‘advice brings responsibility, as almost all advice has consequences’. He believes even the most diligent professional adviser is likely to ‘have experienced clients or circumstances where it is later claimed that advice was wrong or inadequate’.
Peelo stresses the value of clear letters of engagement from the outset and adds clarity should be the watchword throughout the advisory relationship. ‘It is increasingly necessary to ensure that the recipient understands what the advice is not, as well as what it is,’ he says.
Garvin and Margolis conclude ‘advising is more than the dispensing and accepting of wisdom; it’s a creative, collaborative process – a matter of striving, on both sides’. For all the value of soft skills, the exacting, precise nature of the accounting profession should never be out of focus either. Amazon chief Jeff Bezos once said that entrepreneurs must be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time. Accountants have no such luxury.
Common mistakes
Overstepping boundaries
‘Helpful suggestions’ that are not invited seldom go down well, and neither does chiming in in areas where an adviser is not qualified to do so.
Misdiagnosing the problem
It’s ill advised to define a problem prematurely because the adviser thinks they see similarities with a previous problem. This can be compounded by forgetting the advice seeker is a self-interested party who may – deliberately or not – be presenting partial or biased accounts.
Communicating advice poorly
Avoid vague recommendations that can easily be misconstrued; specialised expertise that uses inaccessible language; or a laundry list of options with no explicit guidance on where to start or how to work through them.
Mishandling the aftermath
Taking offence when guidance isn’t accepted wholesale can mean lost opportunities to provide a sense of direction and a growing distance between adviser and seeker.
Source: Garvin and Margolis, Harvard Business Review
