The Tax Matters Partner: Special Rules for Partnership Audits

With the National Future Forum, held in Phoenix in mid-January, phase one of the CPA Vision Process came to a close. Practitioners in both public practice and business and industry are now deep into tax season. Daydreaming about possible future scenarios has been eye-opening, but now it's back to business as usual. Or is it? The Journal of Accountancy recently contacted National Future Forum delegates and attendees at the fall forums to get an inkling of whether the seeds the Vision Process has sewn have begun to sprout at the grassroots level. Following are signs that the seeds are taking root. TURNING THE VISION PROCESS INWARD Before Lenore Clemenson joined Anderson ZurMuehlen & Co., PC, three years ago, her 11-year career had taken her from a Big 6 firm's audit practice to employment at several small concerns in the business and industry sector and back to public accounting in a new area: litigation consulting and business valuation. She chose the Helena-based accounting and consulting firm not only because it was the leading provider of litigation and business valuation services in Montana but also because it was for-ward thinking. "Among our peers in Montana, we are the outside-the-box firm," says Clemenson. "Consulting--information technology, litigation services, business valuation, pension and employee benefits--is at least half our business and growing. Our long-term goal has been to get clients to view us more as advisers than compliance people." Anderson ZurMuehlen's senior shareholders were already attuned to the CPA Vision Process when Clemenson attended a Future Forum last September with a colleague from the tax department. The firm's own visioning process began a month later, at the outset of its 1998 fiscal year, with a special day-long brainstorming session at the annual shareholder retreat. "We're applying the visioning process internally to see where we can be in 10 years or more," she says. "The idea is to begin focusing on the types of services clients will want, need and value in the future, along with ways to get them to come to us first with their business issues and problems. In looking at services that would draw on our strengths and skills but go beyond what we're doing today, it's been difficult to avoid getting hung up on `Can we really do this and how?' It takes effort to leave the office brain behind." One idea that surfaced at the initial brainstorming session was for the firm to own and operate a corporate retreat center where it could facilitate creative thinking sessions to help other groups work out their business problems. "We believe there's a need, and we have both the skills and the location," Clemenson says. "Montana in the summertime would be perfect. So why not?" To bring more of its 100 or so. staff members into the visioning process, Anderson ZurMuehlen began holding monthly creative-thinking sessions. Cross-functional teams representing all disciplines and practice areas discuss a different topic each month--with all four of the firm's offices addressing the same topic. One of the first topics the teams tackled was client service. "We looked at how to provide what we call A-level service, including what it means to clients and how to differentiate ourselves from other practitioners," says Clemenson. "Then we turned it around the next month to look at how we could become an A-level organization in terms of how we treat employees and conduct our business. What's great is that the composition of the teams lets you see each issue from differing perspectives. " At the end of a brainstorming session, each team submits a formal write-up to the firm's executive committee, which reviews the reports--looking for consensus and convergence--and reports on findings and resultant actions at monthly staff meetings. Occasionally, the committee will assign a very focused follow-up topic to elicit more in-depth discussion and input. …

Field of study: Business