iscoverAccountants must be more in tune with their advisory skills, strategy and approach to provide more meaningful impact to clients, an advisory expert has said.
How accountants can be more strategic in advisory
31 October 2025
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8 minute read
Advisory is an area and buzzword often thrown around the profession, with all or the majority of accountants claiming they provide it to their clients, yet no one can really give it a clear definition.
Brent Szalay, Leaders in Business director, works within the “strategic advisory” space and teaches accountants and accounting firms the art of being strategic in their advice and how they can be “proactive, not reactive”.
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On a recent Accountants Daily podcast episode, Szalay said from his experience with clients, the accounting industry often referred to advisory in very broad terms, yet the advisory being done was often reactive.
“What I’m working on and what I’ve been working on in the accounting industry is delivering strategic advisory and training people how to be strategic,” he said.
“Strategic advisory is about being proactive and getting on the front foot with what the client actually needs and wants. Accountants need to be strategic about what the client really wants, their goals and starting off from that perspective.”
According to Szalay, strategy comes from structure and using a structured framework to be able to understand the different parts of a business to proactively help those businesses looking forward was significantly beneficial, rather than simply reacting to existing and arising problems.
It was noted that accountants often believed they were providing advice to their clients, as it was simply an unstructured and instinctive reaction to a question.
However, Szalay said this was where it could sometimes get hard, as the majority of accountants were “bogged down” with compliance and therefore had no time to provide structured advice.
When asked what the impact on the industry would be if all advisory was strategic, structured and proactive rather than reactive, Szalay simply said: “Huge. Really, really huge.”
“We’ve got industries of small business owners, which we all know are struggling. And we’ve got accountants that are operating small businesses and they’re struggling too.”
“We just want to equip the accountants with the right structure to make it easy for them to be able to do it. What happens in the industry is the owners are the ones doing the advisory work.”
“That makes sense because of the experience, but they get bogged down with time and they don't necessarily have the structure to be able to deliver it. They've got the instinct which is brilliant but they can only take on so much with their own workload and capacity.”
Szalay acknowledged that for many accountants it wasn’t as easy or as simple as just “making time” for structured advisory, however, emphasised that once structure was implemented, more time would become available.
“Being focused on a client and their goals with a structured approach and plan, rather than just ‘off the bat’ advice will transform the way accountants do advisory. There is true meaning in connecting with a client’s goals.”
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