On this episode, Nicole Graham, Risk Consultant — Aon, and Stan Sterna, Vice President — Aon, the national administrator and broker for the AICPA Member Insurance Programs, discuss identifying high-risk clients and managing conflicts of interest. They share their experiences and insights on professional liability risks, client acceptance and continuance protocols and the importance of maintaining objectivity and ethical standards in the accounting profession.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

Why it’s critical to have and follow client acceptance and continuance protocols.
How to properly manage a conflict-of-interest situation within a firm.
Best practices on termination of client relationships.
The importance of having an engagement letter in place particularly when dealing with high-risk clients.

AICPA resources

Client Termination Practitioner Checklist and Notification Letter Terminate a client relationship by following these helpful practice management reminders and then formally communicate the termination to your client.

Say “I do” to engagement letters

This podcast centers around the importance of engagement letters for tax practitioners.

Client Continuance Evaluation Tool

Tool designed to help CPA firms determine whether or not they should continue working with a client or terminate the relationship.

Transcript

April Walker: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the AICPA's Tax Section Odyssey podcast, where we offer thought leadership on all things tax-facing the profession. I'm April Walker, a lead manager for the Tax Section, and I'm here today with Nicole Graham and Stan Sterna. They are both with Aon, and I'm going to let them tell you a little bit about what they do. We're here together recording, which is always exciting to be able to do that in person at Digital CPA in Denver, and they are doing a session called identifying conflicts of interest and high-risk clients.

I thought, that sounds really interesting and something our listeners might want to learn more about. Stan, we'll start with you. Tell us a little bit about your background and where you're coming at this session.

Stan Sterna: Sure, thank you, April. I have a legal background. I started off practicing law, about 34 years ago, I'm dating myself. My entire career has been defending professional service firms and then an opportunity to take a position with Aon, who is the national administrator and broker for the AICPA Insurance Program, of which CNA is the underwriting partner, the carrier and had worked with Aon for a long time and they wanted me to come over and serve as a risk control consultant for not only the program but also for some of the larger firms as well.

I came over about 2016 and I currently advise firms on professional liability risks, cyber risk. I'm also involved in doing presentations like I am here today at Digital CPA and other industry events, writing articles for the Journal of Accountancy, as well as other publications. I like to look at ourselves as risk advisors as not somebody that puts a stop sign up and says, don't do anything or don't do something. It's giving folks in the accounting profession the tools in order to manage the risk while providing services and expanding and growing their practice.

April Walker: Nicole, what's your perspective on this topic today?

Nicole Graham: Well, I am here to scare everyone just a little bit.

April Walker: That's okay.

Nicole Graham: But I'm Nicole Graham. I am like Stan, a recovering attorney. I was in litigation practice for almost 18 years. For the majority of that time, I represented professional service firms in professional liability litigation and also disciplinary actions. I did that for a long time and decided to take off the boxing gloves, stop fighting every day, and instead take all those lessons learned and now try to work with firms proactively to avoid some of those pitfalls.

April Walker: Let's talk about identifying high risk. High risk could mean different things to different people.

Stan Sterna: I think the first thing you need to do, April, is you have to have client acceptance and continuance protocols in place. That's vital to identifying, is this client a right fit? You have to have that process, but as part of that process, you have to identify initially what is the risk appetite of the firm. What is your ideal client? It could be by industry, it can be by size. It could be by geographical location. It could be by the amount of revenue they make if it's a company or income. Identifying what is your ideal client, I think, is the first step.

Then you have to not only, and I think this is important, evaluate a client when they're coming through the door to see if it fits the risk appetite at a firm, but also you have to continually and regularly monitor the client and whether or not the client is still a member or still fits within your risk appetite. That's what we call client continuance. Sometimes client acceptance, everybody does client acceptance and might not be in one shape or the other, might not be the best client acceptance.

April Walker: It's not formal maybe.

Stan Sterna: Everybody's evaluating even folks that don't have written criteria or developed any concrete parameters. In some subconscious level, you're thinking, is this somebody that I want to work with or have as a client? But on the other hand, continuance seems to get short changed, especially in the tax area. One of the things that we've seen when we've dealt with a tax claim is situations where you have a client who maybe doesn't pay on time, or the client is constantly providing information at the last minute, and you're scrambling and you have to get extensions.

But yet, when the client came in the door, it seemed like a perfect fit for the firm. You're not re evaluating the situation, whether it's the demeanor of the client, the way they cooperate or maybe just circumstances change with the client that at least should be the impetus for looking at the client and rethinking is this client a good fit for our particular firm? Unfortunately, we've seen a lot of claims in the past, both Nicole and I, where continuance was the issue and not monitoring, is this a potentially high risk client? I think, in the tax area, one of the biggest risk flags or red flags is not paying fees and/or not giving information on time.

Unfortunately, when people don't pay fees and they're constantly either slow paying or they want to pay a fraction of it, if you pursue those fees, a lot of clients will turn around and point the finger at the accountant and say, well, there was something that you did that I didn't like, and that's the reason why I'm withholding fees. A lot of them it's a ruse to be frank with you, a client ruse in order to avoid either paying the fees or have some leverage in negotiating the fees.

April Walker: Sure.

Stan Sterna: Folks people are dedicated to the profession and I'm sure there's a lot of folks out there that absolutely love what they do and they love their clients, but for the most part, people aren't doing tax work for free. This is not a hobby.

April Walker: This is not nonprofit.

Stan Sterna: You should get paid. We've seen plenty of circumstances in the past where you know it's a problem client. Every time you say, well, I'm in the midst of preparing your returns for this year, I need to get paid from last year, and they'll put it off because they don't necessarily want to get in a situation where they're going back and forth with the client. Some folks will look back and go, well, the founder of our firm brought that client and it's a legacy client, and yeah, they don't pay, or yes, they're always questioning what I'm doing. They always want to, and these are other red flags, take shortcuts when preparing their taxes or giving you incomplete information.

Then you continue to say, look the other way and muddle through it and file a return with the best information available. Keep your fingers crossed.

April Walker: That's not a good risk plan.

Stan Sterna: That's not a good risk risk plan. In that situation, you should really look at that individual. It could be a friend. It could be a legacy client and decide, do we really continue together on this path in a tax preparer client relationship? Is it in my best interest to do that?

April Walker: These are good things. I'd like to pivot a little bit now and we'll talk about with Nicole, and certainly a high risk client could be, or another way of looking at it would be a conflict of int...

Navigating professional risk: Identifying conflicts of interest and high-risk clients

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