Blake really isn’t letting this one go and I don’t blame him:
Some PE-owned firms are telling CPAs to remove their credentials from email signatures.
— Blake Oliver (@BlakeTOliver) May 13, 2025
Where does this stop? Taking our certificates off the walls?
CPAs worked for years to expand our role, but now we're being marginalized.
An earlier tweet of his confirms what we’ve also heard that LinkedIn profiles are being scrubbed of those three letters at the behest of accounting firm employers as well. That’s the real story here, not firms telling you what to do with your email signatures but the authoritarian overreach of dictating what you put on your Facebook-for-work profile. Some firms have been telling staff not to put CPA in their email signatures for some time now, long before PE. But LinkedIn? FOH.
How does this housecleaning help recruiting? Hey kids, how about you invest five years in college (thankfully 150 is no longer the only option in several states with more on the way), spend thousands of dollars on prep and exam fees, sacrifice sleep and friends and romantic relationships for two years and then you don’t even get the bragging rights? Sounds great doesn’t it! Oh and there’s no proper partner carrot either, best we can do is non-equity partner.
Never thought I’d see the day that the CPA credential is widely treated like a shameful secret but here we are.
Pe sucks….the worst kind of people do these jobs…greedy…corporate raiders…
Seriously, CPAs should be embarrassed to work at PE firms. PE firms shouldn’t be embarrassed to have CPAs working for them.
If you are a CPA working at a PE firm, or an accounting firm owned by a PE firm, please know that you can do better. You can do more with your life. You can do good.
The CPA credentials means that the person holding that credentials has passed the most rigorous test in the nation next to the actuarial exam and the Medical profession exams. There is a small group in the profession that is pushing the AICPA to allow all people that have passed the exam to be able to use the credential. Currently, if your are licensed and practicing public accounting, is the only way to use the CPA behind your name. The AICPA has degraded the value of the accomplishment by sticking to this rule. The alternative paths to becoming a CPA will not improve the pipeline and many in the profession believe this. The profession should not bow to undetermined people that do not want to be the best in quality and ethics.
“Currently, if your are licensed and practicing public accounting, is the only way to use the CPA behind your name.”
This is not true. Maybe that’s the law in your state, but it’s certainly not in mine.
It is true in my state.
The statement remains false, even if that is the law in two states.
What state allows someone who is not a licensed CPA to use the CPA credential?
The original post says “Currently, if your are licensed AND PRACTICING PUBLIC ACCOUNTING, is the only way to use the CPA behind your name.” The issue is around “and practicing public accounting”, not whether the person is licensed. I have been licensed in 6 states and none of them required PRACTICING. If that were true, people in corporate/industry, professors, etc. would not be able to use CPA. Along with the person who first questioned this, I am not aware of any states that require practicing public accounting to use the designation, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any. I am surprised that states would incentivize potential licensee fee payers to not bother renewing their license by restricting use of the designation, but stranger things have happened.
“Currently, if your are licensed AND PRACTICING PUBLIC ACCONTING”
Generally speaking, you can be in industry and use the CPA title. That’s pretty obvious, I fear.
No, that would be the CFA.
I’ve heard this as well but not clear on the why – anyone know why? (‘recruiting’ doesn’t seem like enough of a reason)
PE is the virus of our country.
A PE owned CPA firm sounds like an abomination!
I blame the greedy and soulless CPA partners who sold out to a PE firm. Talk about selling out your profession and the future of your profession just to make a quick buck. These greedy bastards are the true villains here. Everyone expects the PE firms to be assholes.
Not in this lifetime
This move should attract a lot of new talent. I would advise every college student to major in something society values. The year 2025 the death of the accounting industry.
Makes perfect sense. Your employer wants you to stay and grind for them. Add CPA or any other in demand credential to your LinkedIn profile and recruiters will target you over your non-credentialed coworkers etc. Therefore they can pay you less competitive compensation.
This is not OK.
At Grant Thornton we’ve always had a policy of not ‘holding yourself out’ as a CPA in e-mail communications or on business cards, even long before the PE deal. I never heard an explanation for why that was policy. I thought maybe it was so that clients wouldn’t know who is or isn’t a CPA so that you don’t have to worry about them requesting that only CPAs work on their engagement.
Same at RSM.
Removing it from LinkedIn profiles means other recruiters can’t see it. Instead of worrying about retention by treating employees better, lets be sneaky and try to trick them into making themselves look less appealing to recruiters from other firms. Sounds like a quintessential PE move.
Of course PE firms don’t want people using “CPA” in their signature — the ethics and accountability that come with the license clash with the image and tactics PE is known for. The CPA title suggests integrity, which doesn’t always align with private equity’s playbook.
If I get an email from a PE firm and I see “CPA” in someone’s signature, my first thought is: this is the person who’s going to pump the brakes on whatever shady terms are buried in the deal lol
A lot of really good comments on a GC post, which is a pleasant surprise. There are a bunch of interesting (and some funny) theories for why “CPA” is discouraged, but none of them seem like the real reason to me. Does anyone have any idea what the real reason is? I am genuinely intrigued.
I think I heard the AICPA President Mark Koziel state this was more of a legal reason/classification issue.
The root of the issue is that not every state is uniform in the qualifications required to become a CPA so they didn’t want a CPA with a CPA earned in an “easier” state to put themselves out as a CPA in a “harder” state so legal teams at these firms would push for CPAs to not sign themselves as CPAs in email and other communications.
Another point is that State Boards/AICPA didn’t want certain states to flood the market with “CPAs” because they made it easier to become a CPA in their state.
This sounds nice on paper and when spoken…but the reality is that the CPA has a real problem which is not this made up problem, no thanks to the efforts of every state board and the AICPA itself, and the real crisis is the offshoring of the work CPAs do. It’s a really wild stance to take when you have someone clearly unqualified in India or the Philippines doing CPA work on the firm’s behalf while the CPA US side claims credit for it.
Wild and sad times we live in…
This. It’s because these PE-owned CPA firms want to offshore and at the same time want to sell customers on the idea that the work is being done by qualified individuals and reviewed by people here in the U.S. However, we all know the truth.
My boss contacted some dipshit AICPA director about holding out as a CPA. She told him something about it being an act discreditable which made no sense. The AICPA is ran by complete morons.
The PE sharks will ultimately ruin the profession. Just need it to last another 16 years so I can retire and get my ownership paid out.
This has always been policy at Big 4 firms, and likely upper middle markets as well. It is not new. The given reasoning is that CPAs are licensed state by state, and national firms don’t want clients in other states getting the wrong impression. It is not a PE thing, and quite insane that GC is not giving any of that context. Has anyone here worked for a firm before?
“Some firms have been telling staff not to put CPA in their email signatures for some time now, long before PE. But LinkedIn? FOH.”
I know this is going to expose me as the gen-Xer that I am. I am just waiting for the next WorldCom and Enron to happen. It seems to be a recipe for independence issues to run rampant.