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Episode 41: Leaders Are Readers: Be Curious, Don't Be Afraid, Keep Learning With Tom Hood

I interviewed Tom Hood, the CEO and President of the Maryland Society of CPAs, as well as the Business Learning Institute. He is one of the most influential leaders in the accounting profession. In 2018, he was named the Second Most Influential Person in Accounting for the sixth year by Accounting Today Magazine. He was 1 of the first 5 thought leaders inducted into the Accounting Hall of Fame by CPA Practice Advisor. He is on a mission to help CPAs, finance and accounting professionals thrive in times of exponential change. He firmly believes that we got us here, won't get us there as the profession faces unprecedented changes and opportunities. During my interview with Tom, he shares his journey from wanting to be in law enforcement to eventually leading one of the largest CPA societies in the USA. Learn about his approach to innovation culture and helping professionals be future-ready.

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Welcome, Tom. Do you want to give a little bit of your background to everyone?

I am Tom Hood, the CEO of the Maryland Association of CPAs and the Business Learning Institute. I am a CPA, CITP and a CGMA. I've known Amy for a decent while from days way back in zero and beyond. It's great to be here with you.

I’m glad to have you on because I know you'll always have good stories. We've talked a little bit before, but I'd love to get back in your background of where you grew up? What did your parents do? How your background was before ever entering the accounting profession?

I am probably 7 or 8 miles from where I grew up. My wife and I moved down to Baltimore City. Both of us grew up in Baltimore City. She was an Eastside girl and I was a Westside guy. My dad was a Baltimore City police officer and my mom was a data entry person at an auto parts store. It's going to keep punching back in the day. That's where I got a little bit of my IT curiosity from living with her all these times. She still has IBM punch cards. As a matter of fact, that she takes notes on in her apartment. I was always curious about what my dad was doing as a police officer, helping people doing the community police thing. Interestingly enough, it's a bit of déjà vu because it was back during the 1960s when there were massive riots and protests, which we are coming full circle.

How did you feel when your dad was involved with all that? Was that scary?

I was in first grade, but my mom was petrified every time he walked out the door. He was in a tough spot in Baltimore City. One where there was a lot of activity, but he kept his calm through it and made it through all that well helping that community. That got me curious about law enforcement. They were hoping I was going to go to college. I went to a college prep school. I thought, “What can I do in law enforcement, but that would be more like with a college degree?” I had this crazy idea that I wanted to be an FBI agent. Back in those days, there were two primary ways of becoming an FBI agent. One was law and the other one was accounting. Law school is much cheaper when you're paying your way through school like I was doing. I was like, “I better go with the shorter one,” and that was accounting. I did an internship with the Baltimore City police while I was going to school in college. It was a junior police thing that they did. That was a little mini start.

What did you do there?

It was like desk work. He put you in their police headquarters and had you filing things. At least, it got me exposed. When I started researching the FBI, when I got into college, I was going to night school, I started out at Johns Hopkins University and then I transferred later to Loyola Marymount University. When I started looking into the FBI, I realized that you had to have 20/20 eyesight uncorrected back in those days. I wore contacts. I was like, “My dream has been shattered.” Looking back, I don't know that I'd want to be an FBI agent given all this stuff that’s going on there too. I'm in school doing my accounting and I was like, “I guess I’ve got to get a job as an accountant.” That's what I did.

Did you enjoy being around law enforcement? Was that disappointing?

That was one of the things I wanted to do. I was like, “I got to make a living. I'm going to get this degree. I got to pay the bills.” I’m going to school at night, so I needed a day job. I got a job in a finance company as an accountant. In those days, we were hand posting general ledgers with a fountain pen. Every day it was me on the general ledger side. There was a cash receipts lady who is Helen. Every day she would be adding up all the cash receipts. I would be getting the journal entries from the different departments where the cash was going in. We had to balance or we couldn't go home. She's over there with these hand calculators and she was amazingly fast.

The tape is spinning out, spitting out the tape and I'm by my stuff then I'd be like, “We're out,” and then it was like, “How did we find that?” It was neat because we were always being careful about our quality, but when we messed up, we had to dig in and investigate like, “What was that going on?” It was a good group of people there. My boss at that time was a CPA and he got me exposed to the CPA profession. He said, “You need to get your CPA if you're going to do this.” That got me involved in the Maryland Association of CPAs. From then, as I moved into new jobs, they always got me involved in the association. I enjoyed that part of it.

What roles did you do with the Maryland Society when you started out?

This goes back to probably to that joint my dad in law enforcement, my mom in data entry. I always wanted to find ways of doing stuff easier. I was like, “There’s got to be a better way than doing all this manual work that I was doing.” As we moved through and stuff starting to get automated, when I went to my next job, which has an architecture firm, they were all starting to do the computer-aided design on these big mini computers. There were word processors where they typed in all the big requirements and standards.

When you start looking at those word processors, VisiCalc was invented. It was Excel in the pre-Lotus 1-2-3. It had 64 rows and 64 columns. We could do these contract calculations that we were doing those big fourteen-column pads. That was a game-changer and we started learning about doing that. In the association, other CPAs were all playing around with this stuff and we started the EDWP committee, Electronic Data, and Word Processing. Back in those days, the only way you got access to apps like VisiCalc or Lotus 1-2-3 was a word processing environment.

There weren't PCs back then. There were mini computers like Wang, DEC, and IBM. Our job was to find ways for CPAs to understand this new technology. Soon after that, we moved into the PC era. Our job in the association as a volunteer, we had one of the first computer laboratories. It was Austin, Georgia, and Colorado. We had a laboratory because at that time when they went and bought computers, you were buying them from the stores like CompUSA. They had training at the store on how do you use these PCs. That's when Lotus was coming out, but CPAs don't like to look stupid. They didn't want to be sitting in a class with potential clients or clients where they don't even know how to turn the thing on. We said, “If we could buy them as the association and run training, CPAs could be in one community, learn how to do it in a safe environment, and start learning this stuff.” That's what we did. That got me hooked on technology because it was game-changing.

Isn't that interesting that psyche tool, even then of trying new things and being concerned you're not the expert at it?

The same stuff that we see nowadays. A degree of laziness, I wanted to do it and put it away.

Through that committee, did you find a role at Maryland Society?

That committee led to a board of director’s appointment. I was on the board directors early on. I was probably one of the younger ones. I won the Committee Chair of the Year because we were doing important stuff. That was catching at the time. It would lead to getting on the executive committee there. I became the treasurer. I got some great mentoring though. It's still true to this day, but being surrounded by other professionals who were some of the best in the field, it's an amazing experience.

I got on the base of the board directors, went to the executive committee, and became the Chair of the association. This is back in 1993 to 1994. I knew the executive director, the staff, some of our key team members like Jackie Brown. The executive director came to me and I'm in highway construction for about many years. We went through this severe downturn and ultimately had to sell our company. As CFO, I was instrumental in trying to figure out the deal, but the company that bought us had a caustic culture and it almost forced us into bankruptcy.

It was a hostile private company acquisition. I had no taste for moving into this big foreign conglomerate that didn't treat people right. I was like, “I'm going to look for another job.” The executive director was retiring and she went, “We're putting on a search committee, you might want to throw your resume in.” They had a National Search Committee and because of highway construction and we had to put asphalt plants around and get permits. In most businesses, whatever doesn't relate to sales or operations goes to the CFO. I had HR and IT. We're permitting a plant in a neighborhood that didn't want us. I'm in-charge of community relations and legislative. They were putting laws to try to stop us. I had that background, which was perfect for running an association. I said, “As long as you're going to run it like a business, we can start to think about how we add value and do those things.” I got lucky and here I've been for many years.

Knowing you and all the things that you bring to society and the profession at large, how do you stay excited about it? You're always ready to push the next thing for many years in the same job.

It's because the job has allowed me to do things and trying to help the profession move into the future. If your job is helping profession be future-ready and helping it to transform, that means it's never done. The first day of my job was at a national meeting with the AICPA, shortly after Barry took the helm and all the states, he based societies. I remember it because they announced this CPA Vision Project. One of my lifelong friends, Jeannie Patton from Utah initially picked to help the institute to put this together while she was executive in Utah.

Barry's explaining this project, Robert Mednick, Arthur Andersen & Co, was the chair at the time. He was talking about this thing and they started this project that would be all over the country, running these forums and each state would have their role if they want it to help run them interstate. For going into a new job and being able to sit with members in your state and create forums about the future, it couldn't get any better. I was like, “Sign me up.” Jeanie Patton quickly grabbed me as this new kid on the block and she asked me to help her co-lead it. Ultimately, she would hand it off to me as she moved out of it.

We ran these forums all over the state, got all great input from members about what they thought about the future in 2011. This was 1998. The things that came out of that are what led us to start our Business Learning Institute because we crowdsourced the future of the profession. To this day, no one knows that no other professions ever have done this. Our profession's done it twice formally and we did it again with the CPA Convene platform. That's what keeps me interested when we can sit down and get CPAs to think about, talk about the future and help co-create it, that's exciting.

That's the premise of innovation even if you're doing it in your business or firm or whatever you do for a living. When you try to do it alone, it's a much harder change management process than when you build relationships along the way and get feedback. What have you learned from that?

CPAs are smart people, which I love. If you give them the background and context, they can create some powerful stuff. I think that the power of the wisdom of the crowd was critical and that was probably one of my biggest learning. It's shown up in all of the ways we try to do learning and development. It's all about whether it's sticky notes or polls, it's important to get the people talking and expressing their ideas because ideas, link, and leverage can turn into powerful stuff. The magic of teaching future CPAs and current CPAs how to do that, we love doing that. That to me is truly exciting.

The other thing is the profession. Some say we're not that creative or we won't ever be able to get to some of these future-ready skills and strategic thinking. That's not true. I've learned that again with the right context, giving them here's what we know about the future or some reports, once they get it, they can go, “Let me imagine what else I can do.” To me, that's the biggest thing I learned. Those two things, power the crowd and the ability to do some strategic thinking.

How do you turn that into action? You do the thinking, you can come up with the ideas, but I think in a lot of places that try to do innovation stays there.

We're doing a lot of work with innovation with firms. We're doing the work with Dan Burroughs. I know you've been familiar with some of the whole idea of being anticipatory. That's the core skillset. The innovation agenda is we've finished developing a framework that CPAs can use it. What CPAs need is structure. I used to be critical of that and I started to appreciate it. If you give them a frame and not necessarily every step, fill it in, but if you give them structure, they can fill it in. That's what we've done for years in our strap planning practice, using sticky notes and we had big wall templates.

We need cognitive spreadsheets. To do that kind of work because if you have a CPA in an Excel spreadsheet and a problem, they can go to town on it. What we've learned is putting innovation in a framework of, “Here are some rows and columns that give it structure.” They go, “I could create an innovation inventory. I can then take those most important things, top five, and then I can start, ‘How do I plan how to execute that?’” That's what we're starting to play with because I think that's what they're all looking for. They didn't use to think they had to innovate because they didn't have to because things weren't moving that fast.

If you look at your journey, it's not a typical career path. It's an important thing to highlight because I had this conversation about there's a lot of young professionals that come into the profession and immediately get turned off. I don't think it's accounting. I have a nineteen-year-old. I see him struggling to go from like, “I'm about to become an adult.” I talk to a lot of young professionals through speaking engagements and other things.

There's a perspective of wherever you come in, let's say you start as an auditor, you see that one path and then you think that's what the career is and give up because you're like, “I don't like this. I don't want to do this my whole life,” without realizing that there are other opportunities out there. I know you work with a lot of young professionals and get them excited. With your background and also your experience with that, it's an important thing to highlight in your story of what you do to keep people excited about the profession when there are jobs you have that you don't enjoy sometimes. How do you not give up on all the expertise and experience that you have leading up to that?

There are lots of people in our profession that are first-generation college graduates. I was the first in my family to go to college. I did it on my own and did it at night so I could get a job. That helped. If you're hungry, you're not necessarily going to get as bored because you're like, “I got to get food on the table.” The other part was though, I was never afraid to say, if I felt like I wasn't growing in my skills or in what I was learning, that's usually what triggered the next move.

When I was younger, I was less likely to talk to my employer proactively. I would often start to think about, “I better go look because I didn't see anything obvious in front.” I couldn't go into public accounting back then because when you went to night school, the public accounting firms did not want you once you had experienced. I had experience as an accounting clerk, as an accountant, and had 2 or 3 years of experience. I never went to public accounting. I stayed incorporate the whole time. Although I was in a finance company, then I went to a printer, publisher, architecture, highway construction and then the association, 4 or 5 jobs in that first ten years. The key is to keep learning and learning about yourself like, “What is it that you liked and didn't you like?” That's critical. You have to be curious. That was the big thing.

I wanted growth, new roles, and new responsibilities. I'll tell you the other thing though is hanging out with the other CPAs at the association, having the network I did with public accounting, all the other people in business, in industry, that was huge. It's not the same now as it was back then because you had to go to these committee meetings and you were constantly out doing that stuff. There are ways where people can get connected and it's those relationships outside your work. Most of the firms I know, everyone's staying connected to their work. That's where you get myopic. When we have our Leadership Academy, we bring in CPAs, business and industry, public accounting, different all over the place. They all love learning about what each other's doing. I think that's what's missing. If they stay only connected to the world they know, even on the corporate side, they're missing out on this world of this profession because this whole pandemic has put an exclamation mark on how important accounting and tax is to the economy in every business.

Not just that, but understanding it. There's been so much time, we're out speaking and people like, “I'm afraid technology is going to take my job.” If there's ever a time that's been proven more that technology can't take your job, it's if you don't learn how to be proactive and give advice. People are hungry for their accountant, but they need an accountant that's going to be proactive and help them.

A lot of our profession is rising to that occasion because they were heads down doing a tax return. All of a sudden, someone took a big switch and flipped off the whole on the economy and said, “You need to help this company to survive.” You better figure out cashflow, PPP, and EIDL. That's the cool part, it’s like, “What was hidden behind spreadsheets?” In the back room here comes Tom, the accountant again, instead of like, “Tom, I need you to come and help me figure out my business. I’ve got to survive.”

I would also say to some of the things that you're talking about to employers and leaders, that if you try to hold on too hard and not allow people to network and learn what others are doing, thinking, “They'll leave you,” they'll leave you. Your employer gave you the push to get involved with these things, which only helped their business, because of that, you felt loyal to them for forgiving you the opportunity of learning and grow. Too many times, we try to pull it on versus when we expand someone's perspective and horizons, that can only help our own relationship and business.

We've done that in AICPA Leadership Academy in Maryland and for several other states. I've been working with these young professional emerging leaders. Every time they're in together, they're never sitting there talking about, “What's better? I want to get a job there.” They're not doing that. They're saying, “What are you doing?” “How do you do that?” It's because there are all these nuances that they bring to the table. This is where I think we've got a challenge because I was grabbed by my boss and took me to Maryland Association. He said, “You're going to join the MACPA” They don't do that anymore. They're all afraid, like, “If they meet another CPA from another company or firm, they're going to want to work there.” It's like, “It's not that way.”

If you have the right culture, no one would want to leave you. If you had the right technology and openness in place, there is a generational difference that the old way of networking was going to those events, which is still there, if you're good at that. If you find that you've got staff that is better on social media and better writers, maybe you're not as aware of something, put them on it, push them to do that. It doesn't have to be a one size fits all. That will get them excited about working for you because it expands their skillset.

That's the secret. You've got to push them and give them some new ways of finding things that they can do well and find their superpower. Look at your pathway, you are becoming an international thought leader because you're speaking, writing, and doing some cool stuff.

When people look at different people's careers, you think you could target that. I wasn't targeting it. What it is as a person, when we come back to the Breaking Beliefs theme of this show is breaking your belief of what a career pathway is. It's being more open to that opportunity, “It looks good. I want to learn that.” Not like, “What title gets me?” It's more like, “That’s expanding my skillset and I'm going to learn something else that might take me in another direction, but not being too narrow-focused of thinking there's only one path,” or that you're not ready. I know both of us, even in your story, opportunities come along where you're like, “I've never done that before. I'm going to go learn it.”

I love to take on things that I don't know how to do, I'm not great at, and I figure it out. That's how I learned a lot. That's the beauty of like, “Can you talk about this?” “Sure, I can talk about it.” You hit on a big point, not one of these jobs did I ever set my sights on or know what the heck it was. It was like a door would open and it would be like, “I think I'm going to go through that door.” After you get through that door and learn a lot and got good at it, then another door would open it, but you're not quite sure. I think it was Steve Jobs that said, “You can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them in hindsight.” The reality is I could sit as you walk me through my career path. We could see how that led to this and that, but none of it was ahead of me. I couldn't say that. It was a crooked path. It was not a straight line. I think that's a mistake. Everyone thinks I got to know what I need to do for the rest of my life, “I'm going to be a tax accountant, I want to be the audit professional.”

Learn as much as you can and find things that you enjoy. Keep learning about yourself. That's another thing I think you help people do because it's learning about your strengths, weaknesses, what do you like, what don't you like, and then be curious and try some different things. There are too many options in this profession you could work for like down the street here is Under Armour, across the harbor is Domino Sugar. CPA firms from sole practitioners to big four, it's all their nonprofits, government, they all need good CPAs.

Nothing has to be forever. You've got such a great background, also that experience with the younger generation. Whatever generation you're in, especially in these times, it's important to break the norms so that you can keep exciting people. There's no retirement if there's no one behind you. You have to be open to new ideas. I love that you have that framework for people to go through as well, because not everybody, nor should it be that everyone thinks the same. If you're a structured person and you don't like the unknown, then there's nothing wrong with that. Like you said, “Know yourself. Know what you're good at and what you need in order to succeed and asking for those things, or as a leader being open to the things people need.”

If I had one big piece of advice for young people, it would be leaders are readers. When I look across our profession and I know we've got all the CPE mentality and we take our 80 hours every two years. When is the last time you read a business book or new business models, or about technology, or the future? What are you doing for snacks? Are you reading some magazines such as Fast Company, Wired Magazine, or Harvard Business Review? That's what I would say because I see a lot of young professionals who aren't worldly in a business learning sense. That's true, no matter where they are. That's the thing is like, I know anybody maybe too much, “I've got too many standards I've had to read,” but you need to read some of those classics like Tom Peters and Peter Drucker or some of the newer people like Burrus and Simon Sinek and all those guys. You should be reading probably at least a dozen books a year.

Beyond your profession, it's learning the entrepreneurial side, the business side, the cultural side, all those things that help you. One thing I'd like to do is ask you some quick-fire questions. Pick a category, family and friends, money, spiritual or health

Family and friends.

Things or actions that I don't have that I want?

I would like to have a boat as long as I didn't have to maintain it.

Things or actions that I do have that I want with my family and friends?

We have three boys who are almost all married, the last one's getting married. The fact of getting our family together with their spouses or fiancé and having a great meal, that's something that we do a bit of and love to do.

Things or actions I don't have that I don't want with my family and friends?

We don't have in fighting that you see sometimes with siblings and things, we don’t want that and we try to keep that going good.

Things or actions that I do have that I don't want with my family and friends?

I would say because of all the busy world because COVID thing made it even worse, but I don't get to see them as much as I'd like to. That's what I like to have more of, but don't have enough of.

It's hard as they get older and start their own families.

They’ve got their own lives and there’s double up with the spouse. We're doing good with Zoom even though with this Coronavirus, we had family things and special occasions.

Anything that you want to make sure that we didn't cover or as a takeaway from your story?

Other than that, be curious and don't be afraid to look for a new opportunity and keep learning would be the big one. For me, it was seeking opportunities to grow. Don’t stop doing that.

Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story. It's always a pleasure.

It was awesome to be here with you. It's good to see you and talk to you again.

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For our Mindful Moments during my interview with Tom Hood where we talked about his beginnings in Baltimore City with his family. His dad was a police officer and his mom was a data entry person on an auto parts store, and how that got him curious about going into law enforcement himself, but also liking the data entry and technology side that shaped the beginnings of his career. I thought it was interesting when we talked about forks in the road of what pivots a career when he found out that he didn't have 20/20 vision and that was a requirement to go into the FBI, at the time.

That pivoted his path in what he was going to do and where he was going to go to start out, which he started in a police department as well, doing the accounting and finance. That led him to get his first finance job as he was going to school at night. This is important where we talked about mentors. His first mentor is the first boss that not only got him involved early on and getting him experienced in the finance area but also getting him involved in the CPA profession and networking with others.

That led to opportunities for Tom throughout his career, as he was realizing how much technology can transform the work that we all do. How he could be a part of it and starting out being on that committee where they were trying to figure out how can they get to electronic data word processing, which was interesting. Moving from manual work with the fountain pen to moving to technology and starting to automate the work and take that work down. It's important to pause on that because of how many times the profession has had to pivot.

It will be important that when we think about change, when we look backward, we see how many times we have changed in the past and thrived? Rather than being fearful of what the future looks like, sometimes it's good to step back and think about how many times you have already changed in your career or had to learn new things so that you could offer new services or be able to grow in your career.

We also talked about his career-changing based on the different committees that he did and taking on more responsibility with the Maryland Society until there was an available opening as an executive director. This led to that conversation of how important it is to network outside of the place that you work and getting to know what other people do as well so that you can expand your horizons. Know that there are lots of different opportunities to take, no matter what your career is, wherever you start. You may think you know what the path is, but as you go further into your career, get more responsibility, get more expertise, what happens is opportunities come your way that you don't even realize that is going to happen. You can't predict that they're going to happen as well.

When he quoted the Steve Jobs quote, which is important that we think about is that “You cannot connect the dots looking forward, only looking backward.” When we try to connect the dots, that's when we go wrong when we try to force the future. Instead of looking at things that are interesting to us, that we can be curious about and we can get involved in that makes us excited. Maybe that's not the thing that we're doing, but it's by getting involved in other things and opening our eyes to trends and opportunities or initiatives where people need collaboration and help, that can change our own future without even intending for that to happen.

A big theme in this was staying curious, but also to keep learning. Not only learning the things that you know, but expanding yourself outside of your world whether it's meeting new people, reading books, magazines, online articles, blogs and getting involved in activities that maybe aren't exactly the norm that you would necessarily get into for the career that you have, opens your eyes to be able to try new things because you never know if a door's going to open. It's when we least expect it, those doors open. As we move forward from this conversation, the most important thing to get across is to not be afraid of the future. What's important is that we will always rise up to the next thing as long as we're open to learning and we continue to be curious.

Important Links:

• Maryland Society of CPAs

• Business Learning Institute

• AICPA

• Arthur Andersen & Co

• https://www.Facebook.com/macpa

• https://Twitter.com/macpa

• https://www.YouTube.com/user/MACPAPRO

About Tom Hood

“Hood uniquely combines three vital traits: He sees the future of the profession clearly; he discovers or creates supremely practical ways to move the profession toward that future, and he generates tremendous enthusiasm for the move in everyone he meets.” - Accounting Today Magazine

Tom is one of the most influential leaders in the Accounting Profession. In 2018 he was named the Second Most Influential Person in Accounting for the sixth year by Accounting Today Magazine (His fourteenth year on the Top 100). He was one of the first five thought leaders inducted into the Accounting Hall of Fame (2015) by CPA Practice Advisor.

Linked-in recruited Tom as one of their Top 100 Influencers and he was named to the Top 25 Influencers in Learning by HR Examiner. He is known for his prolific digital footprint and now has over 780,000 followers on Linked-in, Twitter, and other social accounts.

Tom is on a mission to help CPAs, Finance and Accounting Professionals thrive in these times of exponential change. He firmly believes that what got us here, won’t get us there as the Profession faces unprecedented changes and opportunities.

Tom’s recognition and awards reflect his leadership in helping CPAs be more #FutureReady through his work at the Maryland Association of CPAs and the Business Learning Institute (BLI), a center for the development of leadership, strategic thinking, and collaboration skills for CPAs. BLI has a catalog of over 600 programs and 30 ‘top gun’ instructors who provide state of the art learning and curriculum for the Top 500 CPA Firms, Fortune 500 corporations, non-profits, State CPA Societies, and even internationally.

He is a graduate of Loyola College (B.A. in Accounting) and has a Master’s in Finance (Real Estate) from Johns Hopkins University. He also obtained the Certified Information Technology Professional (CITP) certification and the Certified Global Management Accountant (CGMA) certification from the AICPA.

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