You’re losing the accounting talent war because you’re fighting it with salary

Pretend for a moment that you’re hiring a new team member. 

You spent a week crafting the perfect job description and far too long sifting through candidates. You’ve interviewed a handful, and there’s a clear standout. They’re pretty close to the perfect hire. 

Except they have a competing offer. They’re transparent about that (further reinforcing that they’re a good fit for your firm), and now you’re deciding whether to match it. 

But what if the firm that you’re competing with isn’t actually offering a higher salary?

What if the goal posts have changed? What if the best accounting talent is motivated by more than money?

The current situation

The global accountant shortage isn’t news to anyone, but just in case it bears reminding:

• The number of people sitting for the CPA exam has declined more than 30% since 2016.

• Accounting graduates hit a new 20-year low.

• Only 6% of accounting and finance managers say they have the staff they need to complete high-priority work.

For Erin Andrews, owner of Florida-based accounting firm Level Accounting & Advisory, this trend isn’t surprising:

“Tuition costing six figures, 150 credit hours just to sit for the exam and a median salary of $79,880 just isn’t going to get most younger people out of bed in the morning when they can work from their couch making money doing things they’re interested in and have a flexible schedule.”

The default response is to throw money at the problem: raise salaries, add signing bonuses, increase starting packages. More money will surely counteract the downsides to starting a career in accounting, right?

Compensation obviously matters, but salary alone isn’t the answer. Something else is happening that just money won’t fix. It’s something deeper and more pervasive.

Nicole Davis, CPA from Conscious Accounting, believes a culture shift is needed. “We’ve built a whole war culture around swapping horror stories,” she says in The Future of Accounting ebook. “That’s not how you attract new talent. We need to shift the narrative from pain to purpose.”

What candidates are actually weighing up

Compensation is still relevant, but for a growing number of people, it’s not the deciding factor when evaluating employers.

Modern technology

According to Karbon’s State of AI in Accounting 2026 Report, 91% of accounting professionals believe that graduates are more likely to join firms that actively use AI and advanced technology. 

That reflects how the next generation evaluates whether a firm is worth building a career at: whether the work will be intellectually engaging, whether the tools will be current enough to not feel like a step backward from what they’re already using, and whether the firm invests meaningfully in how its people work.

Flexibility

The firms that have figured out how to offer real flexibility without sacrificing client service quality are consistently winning candidates from firms that haven’t.

Gary Wood from CRC, a firm based in Missouri, predicts that the rigidity of the profession will melt away:

“The accounting profession, once perceived as a rigid and demanding career path, will finally be celebrated as a flexible career choice that pairs well with healthy lifestyles.”

Career visibility

You know that saying “You can’t be what you can’t see”? That’s just as relevant to young accounting professionals as it is to young children.

Paul Bryant and Stan Hannah, partners at Michigan firm Plante Moran, explain that “Accounting is not a linear profession, and aspiring accountants are often not informed about the various paths they can pursue. As a result, early-career professionals may struggle to envision the long-term utility of myriad opportunities associated with pursuing accounting and tax as a profession.”

That observation applies externally to students deciding whether to enter the profession, and internally to staff deciding whether to stay. In fact, 83% of Gen Z accounting professionals planning to quit in the next six months did not expect to advance at their current company.

Vague promises about growth opportunities don’t solve either problem. Specific, visible paths do.

A greater purpose

According to the Global Talent Trends Report 2026 from the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, a firm’s commitment to environmental, social and governance issues (ESG) is a huge factor in a person's willingness to work there. 

This carries more weight among Gen Zers especially, with 83% seeing a firm’s social impact as a key component in their decision making. And Millennials (72%), Gen Xers and Baby Boomers (67%) aren’t too far behind.

The retention math

Annual turnover rates in public accounting are between 15% and 22%, with 84% of departures being voluntary. And when someone does leave, it costs roughly 1.5–2 times their annual salary. That doesn’t account for the time the role sits open, reduced team capacity during that period, and the institutional knowledge that walks out with every departure.

Salary increases narrow the gap with competitors and can reduce some attrition. 

But they don’t reach the reasons people leave when that gap is already small: a career that feels like it’s stalling, exhaustion that a pay increase doesn’t touch, or a recruiter from another firm that made a more compelling case for what the next five years could look like.

What leading firms are doing differently

Paying people well is necessary. The argument here isn’t against competitive salaries; it’s against treating salary as the primary lever when several others go largely unpulled.

The firms gaining ground on talent tend to talk about career paths in specific, verifiable terms rather than aspirational language. 

They invest in technology as an operational reality, so that when staff arrive, the tools feel current and the work represents a genuine step forward. 

They manage workload not just through busy season but across the year, and they’ve thought carefully about what their culture says to people who are deciding whether to stay.

Zane Stevens runs Protea Financial and is the winner of the 2026 Karbon Excellence Award for Balance & Culture.

Balance is engineered into Protea Financial’s operating model. Staff are intentionally planned at 80% capacity, and if someone consistently works more than five hours of overtime, workloads are reassessed immediately.

Monthly HR check-ins and weekly 15Five pulse surveys mean pressure is caught early across their fully remote, 40-person team spanning two continents. 

And the result speaks for itself: an average staff tenure of 5.1 years, with 6 team members at the 10-year mark.

Zane Stevens from Protea Financial accepts the 2026 Karbon Excellence Award for Balance & Culture, alongside Karbon's Elizabeth Blass, Mary Delaney, Zach Cochran, and Ian Vacin

“One of the biggest lessons we've learned is that culture isn't built through perks or mission statements,” says Zane. “It's built through the small decisions we make every day. Decisions about capacity, workload, communication, and trust.”

What Zane is doing changes what a firm offers clients, and what it offers the people doing the work. The profession’s most talented early-career professionals aren’t looking for the easiest or highest-paying job. They’re looking for the one that will challenge them in ways that feel worth it.

“We will continue to strive to build a culture where everyone owns it,” shares Zane, “build a culture where teamwork is part of the DNA, and create a culture where everyone is pushing to keep improving.

The accounting talent shortage won’t be resolved by any single firm’s compensation strategy. The firm leaders who understand what the profession’s next generation is actually weighing up, and build their operations to reflect that, will find the talent market considerably more navigable than the headline numbers suggest.