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Stay ahead with essential CPA resources

Surviving and Thriving on the CPA Path

At our recent CalCPA Candidate Town Hall, three rising professionals shared what it takes to navigate the CPA path—and how to make smarter moves along the way.

From Classroom to Career

The path to an accounting career now includes more than technical knowledge. Instructors are evolving their teaching to prepare students for the realities of recruiting and professional expectations.

Transaction or Transformation: How Are You Using AI?

Using AI to get something done is one thing. But those CPAs and firms who see AI as an opportunity to set themselves apart are using the technology to transform and become something more.

CalCPA to DOE: Recognize Accounting as a Professional Degree

CalCPA has joined the AICPA and a national coalition requesting the DOE revise its graduate loan proposal and recognize accounting as a professional degree.

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Looking for an old article or a past issue from California CPA magazine? You're in the right spot!

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CPAs: Making Sense of What Comes Next campaign

The path to CPA licensure is a challenging and rewarding journey, and at CalCPA’s recent Candidate Town Hall, three young accounting professionals pulled back the curtain on what the journey entails, what it feels like in the trenches and how to make smarter decisions along the way. 

Whether you're a student eyeing your first exam section, a candidate in the middle of the process or a seasoned CPA who remembers what it took, their conversation offered something for everyone in the profession.

David Lo, CalCPA’s Senior Manager of Workforce Pipeline and Engagement, opened the session by walking candidates through the framework that governs CPA licensure—Education, Exam and Experience—and the financial investment each carries.

From exam fees to application fees to review course and other costs, candidates can expect to spend between $3,000-$5,000 to complete their licensure journey. And depending on the firm, employers may pay for some or all those expenses to help candidates along. 

Justin Hsu, a recent USC graduate working in deal advisory at KPMG, described the experience of a campus hire at a Big Four firm. As a campus recruit who had already begun the exam process before graduation, he received full access to Becker review materials from day one.

"In terms of Big Four reimbursement and coverage, they will cover exam fees, application fees and provide a bonus upon passing, he said. “The terms might differ slightly, but in terms of coverage, they are all there."

Hsu did note an important distinction candidates should understand: the policies and bonus structures for “campus hires” typically differ from those for “experienced hires” — those who have worked elsewhere before joining a Big Four firm. Reading the fine print before signing matters.

Monica Wysocki, a supervisor at Rogers, Anderson, Melody & Scott (RAMS) and a licensed CPA, took a different road. When faced with two job offers—one from a larger firm that offered to cover her Becker course and one from RAMS—she chose RAMS and paid for her own prep materials out of pocket. Her reasoning was deliberate.

"I am spending this money, but I'm going to make it 10 times more—a thousand times more—over the progress of my career,” she explained. “I saw it as an investment in myself."

Wysocki said that while the larger firm's benefit was generous, she completed all four sections in 10 months while managing a more sustainable workload at RAMS—and earned both a passing score and a promotion for her efforts.

All three panelists agreed that the sticker price of CPA prep doesn't have to be the final price if candidates are strategic. Several approaches came up repeatedly throughout the conversation.

Taking advantage of free trial periods is a top recommendation. Most major review providers offer 14- to 15-day free trials for each section, giving candidates a chance to evaluate teaching styles and course formats before committing. As Wysocki pointed out, learning style is personal and what works for one candidate may not click for another.

Supplementing paid materials with free resources is another way to stretch the budget. Wysocki turned to YouTube channel I-75, whose straightforward explanations helped revenue recognition finally click after formal lectures hadn't. Hsu suggested reaching out to recently licensed CPAs for used physical textbooks or asking current Becker users to share PDF supplements outlining content changes—avoiding the need to repurchase entire packages.

Also, scholarships are more accessible than many candidates realize. Campus ambassadors for review course providers can offer discount codes or connect candidates with scholarship opportunities. CalCPA itself offers scholarships and is active on many California campuses. School advisory committees sometimes facilitate local firm sponsorships for students as well. Hsu even mentioned that CalCPA's annual Mt. SAC Accounting Conference typically features scholarship giveaways from review course providers.

And for candidates at firms without formal reimbursement programs, his advice was direct: ask anyway.

"Talk to your supervisor, talk to a partner. They do value your hard work,” he said. “Maybe they say, 'Even though we don't have this policy, we're willing to make an exception.' That definitely happens, especially in private and local firms."

One audience question cut to the heart of a dilemma many candidates face: what if you're working somewhere that offers flexibility for studying, but there's no licensed CPA to sign off on your experience hours? Lo offered measured advice: pass the exam first, then worry about the experience requirement when applying for licensure. Passing all four sections without the experience requirement in place still makes a candidate highly competitive in the job market.

Wysocki offered a cautionary counterpoint, however. She described knowing professionals who passed all four sections but had risen so high in non-CPA-supervised roles that they couldn't easily move to a position where someone could sign off on their experience, leaving them stuck just short of licensure.

"Don't get in that position. Internships count,” she said. “As soon as you can, get into a position where you have that experience under a CPA."

The Emotional Reality: Endurance Over Intelligence

Perhaps the most resonant part of the conversation was the one least covered in any exam prep guide: the mental and emotional toll of the CPA journey.

Claudia Sanchez, who spent more than three years at EY before stepping back to focus on exam prep full time, spoke openly about the isolation of retaking sections, the difficulty of returning to the material after a setback and the way social media's highlight reel of passing scores can make the journey feel lonelier than it is.

"It's a mental drain. It just drains you,” she said. “No one really talks about how lonely it can get while you're going through your exams. You feel like people don't really understand you."

Lo added that even among partners at major firms, first-try passage rates are often around 50 percent. Yet the exam is not a measure of intelligence or professional competence—a point Wysocki reinforced.

"The CPA exam is not a linear journey. It's a rollercoaster,” she said. “And it's not a measure of intelligence—it's a mental endurance exam."

The group pointed to community as a critical support mechanism. Online forums help connect candidates across the country who understand the grind in a way that friends and family often can't. And communities like CalCPA exist precisely to offer support at every stage of the journey.

There's no disputing the time, money and energy that's invested during the CPA licensure journey, yet the panelists agreed it is worth it as the CPA license can change career trajectories and pays dividends for decades.

For accounting students, college is demanding enough. Exams, projects and technical coursework require precision and discipline. But beyond the classroom, another pressure point looms: the recruiting process.

Job fairs, networking events, application deadlines—and, for those fortunate enough to advance, interviews—all unfold while students are still learning debits and credits. 

The competition is real, and the stakes are high.

For community college transfer students, that pressure often intensifies. Just as they are adjusting to a new university environment, building relationships on a larger campus and proving themselves academically, they are also stepping into the most consequential phase of their early careers.

Understanding this environment, accounting instructors at the community college level are adjusting their approach and adapting to evolving employment markets to prepare students for transfer and the increasingly complex demands of the profession itself.

For 36 years, Debra Johnson has walked into classrooms at Cerritos College with the same conviction: teaching isn’t just a job—it’s a calling.

Cerritos College runs three generations deep in her family. Johnson’s mother taught there. And years later, her daughter would as well. 

“I know how much good teachers meant to me,” she said. “I know how helpful they were when I was a student. It’s something I want to pay forward.”

Over nearly four decades, she has taught and mentored thousands of students, many of them first-generation college students who transferred to four-year universities and became the first in their families to earn bachelor’s degrees.

Her impact extends beyond the classroom. Johnson, a CalCPA member and an active supporter of CalCPA’s Pathways to Success program, helps students develop the professional and interpersonal skills needed to thrive at top CPA firms.

One of those students was Thamir Kazwini.

“I laughed in her face,” Kazwini recalled, remembering the day Johnson suggested he consider transferring to USC. “At the time, I thought there was no way I could afford a school like USC.”

“Thamir has a heart that is unmatched by most I’ve encountered,” she said. “I’ve rarely seen a student his age display that level of thoughtfulness and care for everyone around him. That’s what impressed me most.”

With scholarship support, encouragement from Cerritos College accounting faculty members like Johnson, and guidance from CalCPA’s Pathway to Success program, Kazwini transferred to USC and graduated in December 2024 with a bachelor’s degree in accounting. Today, he works as an assurance associate at EY in Los Angeles after he completed an internship with the firm.

He still credits Johnson for helping change the trajectory of his life.

“Quite frankly, I would not be where I am today if it had not been for Professor Debra Johnson.”

Since August 2014, CalCPA member Bennet P. Tchaikovsky has been teaching accounting at Irvine Valley College (IVC)—and he has done it his own way.

Tchaikovsky, co-department chair of accounting at IVC, doesn’t assign a traditional textbook. Instead, over time, he has built and continually updated an extensive catalog of accounting lectures on YouTube, freely available to students and the public. Each year, he refines and expands the content, ensuring it reflects current practice and real-world application.

Former student Ves Vafadari (IVC, Class of 2016), now an audit senior manager at Baker Tilly in Irvine, still remembers his first class with Tchaikovsky.

“I liked Bennet right away,” Vafadari said. “He was a big reason I got hooked on accounting. His presentations were interesting, his work experience was impressive, and he was incredibly engaging and personable.”

Vafadari went on to transfer to UC Irvine, earning a degree in economics and accounting before beginning his career with Baker Tilly in 2018.

But what stood out most, he said, was Tchaikovsky’s connection to the profession.

“One of the things I was most impressed by was Bennet’s network of industry professionals,” Vafadari recalled. “He helped me secure an internship with a local Irvine startup, and that experience really launched my career in public accounting.”

Beyond the classroom and beyond YouTube, Tchaikovsky has worked to build structured pathways for aspiring CPAs.

He created the IVC 30 to CPA program, designed for students who already hold a bachelor’s degree and need additional coursework to qualify for the CPA Exam. He has also supported the Guaranteed Accounting Program 4+1 (GAP 4+1), a partnership between IVC and Cal State Fullerton that allows students to earn both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in accounting or taxation in just five years.

At the core of his teaching philosophy is a simple idea: make accounting real.

“I show students actual public filings from Fortune 500 companies submitted to the SEC,” Tchaikovsky said. “I try to use real-life examples to teach accounting and business that students recognize.”

His advice to practitioners considering a move into the classroom is equally direct.

“You have to get out of the textbook and focus on the real-life examples you work through every day,” he said. “Trust that students will find that far more interesting—and far more useful—than anything that comes straight from a book.”

More than a decade into his time at IVC, Tchaikovsky’s commitment continues to shape students’ careers and strengthen the profession’s pipeline.

At Pasadena City College, accounting instructor Michelle Lee found inspiration for one of her most effective teaching tools in an unexpected place: Facebook’s corporate headquarters in Menlo Park.

By 2017, Lee was already 15 years into her teaching career at PCC when a Facebook campus tour sparked an idea.

“Whiteboards. Seriously, that simple,” Lee said with a laugh.

Walking the floor of Facebook’s headquarters, she noticed rows of rolling whiteboards covered in notes and code. “There were so many of them,” she recalled. “I came back to PCC, found some old whiteboards in storage, put them up in my classroom, and had students work through problems together. They loved it.”

Haley Chung, now a first-year audit associate at EisnerAmper and a UCLA graduate, remembers the collaborative energy in Lee’s class. “I loved the group work,” Chung said. “She always encouraged collaboration and engagement. Doing problems on the whiteboards with classmates was one of my favorite parts of the course.”

Chung had originally entered college intending to study biology. A friend encouraged her to try Lee’s accounting class instead. “I instantly loved it,” she said. “Professor Lee was welcoming and encouraging. She cared about me as an individual—not just the grade I earned.”

Lee’s emphasis on collaboration extends beyond the classroom. Starting in 2015, Lee started a professional speakers lunchtime series, leading campus tours to CSUN and USC and a partnership with EY. By 2022, those events were organized and managed by the student-run club, Lancer Business Organization (LBO). The club, mentored by fellow PCC accounting instructor, Gregg Lee, gives students valuable leadership experience, while strengthening connections with numerous business professionals.

“We realized that if students ran the club, they could scale it far beyond what we could do ourselves,” Lee said. LBO has since hosted CPA firms including EY, PwC and EsinerAmper, giving students direct exposure to recruiters while developing organizational and communication skills along the way.

As CPAs, we benefit directly from the work of these and other accounting educators throughout California’s 116 community colleges that sustains and strengthens our profession. California’s community colleges are some of the profession’s primary gateways. They are where confidence is built, talent is identified and career paths begin to take shape. The instructors are adapting their methods, modernizing curriculum and responding in real time to the evolving demands of accounting to ensure the next generation of CPAs is prepared and inspired.

Artificial intelligence is no longer a distant concept for the accounting profession—it’s a rapidly evolving reality. And according to accounting researcher and educator David Wood, the biggest challenge for CPAs today isn’t whether AI will impact the profession. It’s how quickly firms and professionals are willing to adapt.

Wood, an accounting professor at Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Business and a recipient of the 2025 AICPA Distinguished Achievement in Accounting Education Award, recently joined a CEO Chat discussion to explore how AI is reshaping accounting, education, and professional development. His message to the profession was clear: the future of accounting will belong to those willing to experiment, learn continuously, and rethink how work gets done.

A Tool, a Partner, or Something Else Entirely?

One of the first questions posed to Wood was one that practitioners across the country are still debating: Is AI a tool, a team partner or something else? His answer cut through the noise immediately.

“The reason there are so many different opinions about AI right now is because it’s so new,” he explained. “Nobody really knows what it is or where it’s going—and that’s the fun part. If you get involved now, you get to help establish what the future looks like.”

Wood described adoption as a spectrum: early adopters diving in headfirst, skeptics holding back and a third camp that has decided to sit it out entirely. That last group, he warned, risks becoming progressively smaller and less competitive. For CPAs and firm leaders, the message was clear: neutrality is not a safe position.

He also identified two critical mistakes leaders make. The first is falling into extremes and either dismissing AI as hype or treating it as an infallible oracle. The second, and perhaps more costly, is trying something once, finding it lacking and never returning. 

“Somebody might try it once, decide it didn’t work, and then think they don’t have to worry about it anymore,” he said. “But the technology is progressing so rapidly that if it couldn’t do something a month ago, you should try it again.”

To illustrate the dangers of that mindset, Wood offered a striking data point: when ChatGPT-4 was tested against CPA, CIA, CMA and enrolled agent exam questions, it struggled to pass. Just 18 months later, though, a comparable model achieved a perfect score on the same multiple-choice questions. The pace of change, he emphasized, demands constant re-engagement.

The broader implication for CPAs is that continuous learning is no longer optional.

“This isn’t like sending someone to Excel training and expecting that knowledge to last their whole career,” he said. “Once you start down the AI path, you have to keep educating yourself and trying new things.”

Transactional vs. Transformational: The Mindset That Matters

A central theme of the conversation was what Wood calls the difference between transactional and transformational AI use. Transactional use means offloading a task—pasting a prompt, getting an answer, moving on. Transformational use means asking a deeper question: How can I use this to do my work better than it has ever been done before, possibly better than anyone in history has done it?

“The question becomes: how can you use AI to do something better than you’ve ever done it before?” Wood said. “Maybe even better than anyone in history has done it.”

For CPAs, that could mean reimagining how audits are conducted, how tax preparation workflows operate or how insights are delivered to clients.

“Accounting has traditionally been a profession where processes change slowly,” Wood noted. “AI is forcing us to rethink those processes in entirely new ways.”

CPAs and firm professionals that only use AI to shave minutes off routine tasks will likely see incremental gains, Wood said. But those that use it to rethink service delivery, client advisory and internal workflows entirely will define what modern accounting looks like. 

Wood illustrated the point with a student in his data analytics course who, after just four weeks of AI training, was pitching a product he had built to a Fortune 500 company. The barriers to creating meaningful, client-facing innovations have collapsed.

“It shows how powerful these tools can be,” Wood said. “Anyone who has the curiosity and willingness to experiment can accomplish things that would have been impossible before.”

His practical advice for professionals who want to start: open an AI tool every morning alongside your email. Experiment daily. Build a small peer group—a lunch rotation—where members share one thing that worked each week. Let the AI itself suggest what to learn next. Then set your news feed to surface the latest developments. Competence compounds quickly when approached this way.

The Experience Gap Is Not Generational—It’s Experiential

For decades, accounting has operated as an apprenticeship profession. Staff learn from seniors, seniors from managers, managers from partners. That hierarchy rested on the assumption that experience accumulates linearly. AI has disrupted that assumption in a fundamental way.

“The gaps we’re seeing are not between partner and staff. It’s between who is using AI and who is not,” Wood said.

Wood shared an example that captured this idea: one of his students was invited to walk a multibillion-dollar private company’s C-suite through a generative AI governance framework. The executives had more years in the profession than the student had been alive, but the student had spent time immersed in the technology and they had not. The gap was experiential, not generational.

For firm leaders, the takeaway is that internal AI capability—or the lack of it—is already sorting talent in ways that traditional credentials cannot capture. Hiring decisions, development investments and client assignments may all need to be reconsidered through this lens. It also means firms have an opportunity to invest in AI fluency today to create a meaningful and durable competitive advantage, regardless of firm size.

The Future of Audit and Tax: Big Questions, Bigger Opportunities

Wood reserved some of his most forward-looking comments for the audit and assurance space, where he does much of his research. He described the current environment as a three-way standoff: regulators trying to understand AI, audit firms trying to implement it and preparers waiting for guidance. 

The result is a profession that knows transformation is coming but is struggling to move in concert.

In the near term, he sees AI agents taking over tasks that have long consumed staff hours: rolling forward prior-year work papers, reconciliations and preliminary analytical procedures.

Wood also described ongoing research into AI-powered audit interviews. Studies conducted before generative AI emerged found that individuals were more willing to disclose misconduct to a computer than to a human being, because there was no perceived judgment. If AI interviewers can outperform human ones in eliciting accurate disclosures, the implications for fraud detection and internal audit are significant.

Looking even farther into the future, Wood offered a continuous assurance model, where a financial institution, for example, could deploy a program that allows any authorized party to query financial records in real time, rather than waiting for a point-in-time audit. That may lead to a time where the annual audit engagement is supplemented—or supplanted—by ongoing, AI-driven monitoring with a human auditor verifying that the system is properly installed and functioning. For CPAs in assurance, this is both a challenge and an invitation to invent entirely new service offerings.

Trust Remains the Profession’s Unassailable Asset

Amid all the disruption, Wood stressed that one constant of the accounting profession is not going anywhere: it is built on trust, and that is something AI cannot replicate.

“We are all about trust. Someone gives me all their financial information. They have to trust me. That requires relationships, and that human skill is so important,” he said.

As AI absorbs more of the procedural work that once occupied junior staff, the time and capacity freed up will flow toward the work that matters most: understanding client goals, navigating complex situations, providing judgment-driven counsel and maintaining the relationships that make clients return. The CPAs who thrive will be those who deploy AI to handle the column of a thousand numbers and then invest the recovered hours in deepening the human relationships that no algorithm can replicate.

For CPAs, the answers to current and future questions about the impact of of AI will be written in the choices made now: whether to experiment or wait, to invest in learning or protect existing habits, to see AI as a threat or as the most powerful tool the profession has ever been handed. The conversation is happening everywhere—in classrooms, boardrooms and regulator roundtables.

“The big question everyone is asking is: what should the accountant of the future look like?” Wood said. “We’re trying to gather as much data as possible to help answer that.”

But he emphasized that firms themselves must be part of the conversation.

“If you’re an accounting firm hiring students, you should be talking with universities,” Wood said. “Tell them what skills you need. Ask what they’re teaching. That dialogue is critical.”

Ultimately, the profession’s ability to adapt will depend on how willing CPAs are to experiment and learn alongside emerging technology.

“The people who will succeed in this environment are the ones who stay curious,” Wood said. “Start using AI every day, try new things, and learn from others who are experimenting too.”

For CPAs, firms and financial professionals alike, the AI era isn’t something to watch from the sidelines. It’s something to actively help shape.

 by registering and accessing the event in your Activities. Designed exclusively for our 

, these CEO Chats bring you insights from some of the leading experts in the accounting and finance profession to keep you informed on the biggest challenges and trends. Be a part of the next conversation: 

Join us June 17 for the next CEO Chat installment

 to the U.S. Department of Education urging the agency to recognize accounting as a professional degree program. This designation directly affects federal student loan limits for graduate students pursuing CPA licensure.

The Department’s proposed rule, issued under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, sets new federal student loan limits for graduate students. Under the proposal, students enrolled in designated professional programs could borrow up to $50,000 per year, with a $200,000 lifetime cap. Students outside that designation, including accounting students as currently written, would be limited to $20,500 annually and $100,000 over a lifetime.

For many aspiring CPAs, especially those pursuing additional education to advance their careers or meet licensure requirements, that difference is significant. At a time when the profession is focused on strengthening the CPA pipeline, limiting access to graduate level financing could create unnecessary financial barriers.

In its comment letter, CalCPA made two primary requests: 

Our comments emphasized that accounting is a licensed and regulated profession built on rigorous education, examination, ethics and competency standards. Students pursuing CPA licensure should have equitable access to graduate level financing consistent with other recognized professional programs.

CalCPA’s advocacy is part of a coordinated national effort with the AICPA and other stakeholders. The AICPA and all state CPA societies have issued joint statements and letters to the Department. In addition, a coalition of eight accounting organizations representing approximately 1.5 million accounting and finance professionals has also called on the Department to revise the rule.

CPA licensure is not a general credential. It is a state regulated process requiring advanced education, specialized training, ethics standards and ongoing professional development. CPAs protect investors, businesses, government agencies and the public by ensuring the integrity of financial information. Failing to recognize accounting as a professional degree would limit access to fair financing for students and could weaken the long-term strength of a profession that California’s economy and communities depend on every day.

The public comment period closes March 2, 2026. CalCPA will continue engaging with policymakers to ensure accounting students are treated fairly and that the CPA pipeline remains strong. We will keep members informed as this process moves forward.

Few people have a better vantage point on the sweeping changes reshaping the CPA profession than Dominic Franzella. As executive officer of the California Board of Accountancy, Franzella sits at the intersection of regulatory policy, consumer protection and professional standards. 

In a conversation with CalCPA President & CEO Denise LeDuc Froemming at the recent CalCPA Council meeting, Franzella addressed some of the most pressing topics facing the profession, including new licensure pathways, private equity in accounting and AI. 

Q: Now that AB 1175 passed, what comes next and how can CPAs, students and firms prepare?

 of how aspiring CPAs in California can earn their license. The new pathways officially open on Jan. 1, 2027, and the CBA is working on a roughly 12-month runway to get everything in place. “The board is finalizing the regulations, the underlying specifics from the legislation, and we hope to have those regulations in place by Oct. 1 so there's a little bit more runway for people to be able to see what it's going to look like.”

Following the start of the new pathway, there will be a two-year transition period, both legacy and new pathways will coexist, and the CBA plans to open its degree and certification recognition process for schools to begin applying in early October, which will add another element to fast-track the verification of education requirements. For CPAs and firms, staying current on these timelines will be critical to advising staff navigating these changes.

Q: Private equity is increasingly entering the accounting profession. How is the CBA approaching this shift and what should CPAs and firms know?

: “The question for us is how can we create a regulatory framework that ensures that CPAs are in charge of the decision-making process of those firms, and not having undue influence created as a result of some of the investments from private equity.”

Franzella, who serves on the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy Private Equity Task Force, noted that private equity can bring meaningful capital infusions that allow firms to invest in technology—including AI—and other modernizations. But the CBA's primary lens is consumer protection, with a focus on ensuring that CPA firms maintain independence both in fact and in appearance, even when non-CPA investors are involved.

One particularly concern Franzella addressed is that some private equity-backed firms have reportedly discouraged professionals from using their CPA title. Franzella called this deeply troubling for those who have worked hard to earn the designation and signaled that modernizing the regulatory provisions around the CPA title is a priority. 

Q: How is the CBA thinking about AI and what should CPAs understand about their obligations when using it?

: “We want to make sure consumers are getting reliable information and protected appropriately, and that CPAs are using AI with the appropriate professional skepticism that is required and necessary.”

Franzella said the CBA’s focus is not on advocating for or against AI adoption, but on understanding its impact across all firm sizes and ensuring consumer protections keep pace. He noted the Boards of Accountancy have also been tracking proposed state legislation around AI auditing, working alongside CalCPA to educate both the Board and legislators on how the profession is currently approaching AI. For CPAs, the message is clear: AI is a tool that demands the same professional rigor and skepticism as any other.

Q: What changes are coming to continuing professional education (CPE) requirements, and how will they affect licensees?

: “The technologies and methodologies that can be delivered are advancing faster than our regulations could handle the changes. We're really trying to shift the focus from the how it's delivered to more of the quality and content that's being delivered.”

The CBA has been working on reforming how CPE is delivered and evaluated, as well as reconsidering the total hours required. Rulemaking to modernize CPE delivery is expected by fall, with implementation potentially in 2026 or 2027. 

The board has moved to a self-certification model for CPE compliance to help streamline the renewal process, which has been well-received, and anticipates expanding the number of CPE audits to ensure compliance. 

“I don't think it's going to look fundamentally different,” Franzella said. “The shift now will be instead of looking at did you report correctly, we're going to be more focused on did you actually complete the area.”

Franzella explained that enforcement is evolving in two significant ways. First, with the shift to CPE self-certification, the CBA is moving from verifying whether licensees correctly reported their hours to verifying whether they completed them. 

That means an increase in audits with Franzella indicating the number could jump from roughly 100–200 per month historically to as many as 5,000 per year, with a risk-based approach targeting prior violators.

Q: What enforcement priorities should CPAs and firms be aware of going into this year?

: “We're really spending these next few months trying to safeguard consumers from unlicensed activity, either from people who are truly unlicensed or from CPAs who have allowed their license to go delinquent or expire and continue to practice without completing the continuing education.”

As the board is sharpening its focus on unlicensed activity, for firms, this signals the importance of internal compliance tracking and renewal reminder systems. Clients, too, should be aware that verifying a CPA's active license status is an important part of due diligence.

Celebrating 125 Years of Consumer Protection

The conversation closed on a milestone note: 2026 marks the 

125th anniversary of California's CPA profession

. The CBA has partnered with CalCPA to commemorate the occasion, with Sen. Roger Niello introducing a Legislative resolution, SCR 111. Throughout the year, the CBA will release special features tracing the profession and the board's evolution and is producing a video highlighting its long history of consumer protection.

“We're going to take this year to really show what it means to be a CPA, what it means to be regulating this community, and how consumers are benefited from the roles that CPAs play,” Franzella said.

Shaping the Future of the CPA Profession

In this Q&A from CalCPA Council, CBA Executive Officer Dominic Franzella talks about top issues facing the profession—from AI to private equity to new licensure models.

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Golden State wisdom straight from the experts

Surviving and Thriving on the CPA Path

From Classroom to Career

Transaction or Transformation: How Are You Using AI?

CalCPA to DOE: Recognize Accounting as a Professional Degree

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