The need for accountants to be open-minded and willing to change

“The industry is changing very quickly, but firms aren’t keeping up,” Argent said.

Busy periods within the year can result in a lack of communication between accountants and clients, with peak periods for the filing of tax returns, GST reporting, and quarterly obligations all creating seasonal headwinds for practitioners.

“Clients have told me that their accountant hasn’t responded in three months … and I know the reason,” Argent said.

“Nine times out of 10, the reason is that [accountants] are so backlogged with work and processes that aren’t efficient or effective.”

This can cause key relationships between clients and accountants to slip through the cracks.

Argent noted that facing adversity as a young accountant is fundamentally important for character building, and shouldn't be deterred away if problems occur early on in one’s career.

“I still suffer with imposter syndrome, thinking I can fail at this and something could go wrong,” Argent said.

“I have been exposed to a lot throughout my career, I started my career in a paper-based firm, handwriting journal entries; it was very much character building.”

Argent’s experiences showcase the importance of occasionally learning the hard way, as building resilience early on in one’s career can allow for greater strength later in the picture.

Now the director of her own firm, she emphasised her pride in being an innovative accountant, embracing new methods, improving efficiency and client satisfaction.

“I would genuinely say that I am a change-maker; I do not sit and say that a process is okay because it was the same as it was done last year,” Argent said.

“I couldn’t have had that opportunity [to challenge the norm] at some of the firms I worked at, because as soon as you have partners involved, you have multiple opinions that don’t necessarily agree.”

This depicted the potential benefits that may come from being a sole-accountant, ultimately providing freedom and enabling young accountants to pave their own way. 

In terms of being an innovative business owner, Argent is embracing the powerful nature of AI, but not in the typical way whereby AI is being used as a system to formulate results, but rather using AI to build the system, which helps formulate results.

“I have no trust for putting personal data in AI, but I will generate a work paper or HTML using AI, which simplifies the process and is stored a lot quicker,” Argent said.

Thus, using AI to build a system can still allow for all the typical AI benefits, such as increased efficiency and the formulation of new ideas, but it mitigates any potential breaches of privacy, as potentially sensitive information isn't being inputted.