Meet TSCPA Member Bruce Behn
From growing up on a farm in Wisconsin to working in The Netherlands, TSCPA member Bruce Behn, Ph.D., CPA has let his passion and drive guide him to where he is today - Associate Dean for Graduate and Executive Education and Deloitte LLP Professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, as well as a husband and father of two.
A first-generation college graduate, Behn graduated from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and went on to complete both his MBA and Ph.D. at Arizona State University. He started working at the University of Tennessee in 1994 and says, “I still love going to work every day at Haslam College of Business - who wouldn’t?”
An Educator’s View on the Future of the Profession: The change that has occurred in just the last 50 years is truly amazing. I think all of us at some stage feel challenged in keeping up with all these changes. Change has always been a constant and will continue to be so; it is the speed of change and the significance of the changes that will be the challenge. The next generation of accounting professionals will have to have the digital agility to be able to lead and adapt to these changes in ways we can’t even envision.
As Charles Lee, the Moghadam Family Professor of Accounting at Stanford University in his American Accounting Association 2015 Presidential Scholar address, pointed out, “We are in a battle for talent and the only way we are going to compete for that talent with the other learned professions is to become a learned profession ourselves.” As an example, I teach in our Physician Executive MBA program at the University of Tennessee and as a consequence of that I get asked to speak at a number of physician conferences around the country. It always amazes me that they will have 50 percent practitioners and 50 percent academics in the same room all trying to solve the same problems. Our accounting profession is at the other end of the spectrum in the United States. We have separate organizations for mainly practitioners (e.g., AICPA) and mainly academics (e.g., AAA), and seldom do you have many practitioners at AAA meetings and/or academics at AICPA meetings.
Our research needs to be more relevant and have more impact on practice and education. The Pathways Commission (2012) talked about the reasons this is the case; some of these are: 1) our students are not trained on the intellectual techniques (as in medicine), 2) it is challenging to get data from our laboratories (i.e., companies and audit firms), and 3) it takes too long for our research to get published (time to market).
Working with AICPA’s Pathways Project and Being Appointed to the AICPA Board: It is truly an honor to be on the AICPA board, especially being the only academic on the board. It has been interesting because I was chair of the Pathways Commission and am now involved with the AICPA and NASBA’s CPA Evolution project. Both of these are touching on similar issues.
In chairing the Pathways Commission (these are my personal views and not those of the AICPA), it was clear that our profession needed to do something to have multiple pathways to become a professional accountant. One way to think about this is to look at the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). Think of this as the overall brand for engineering. They accredit college and university programs in the various disciplines of engineering. In its overall membership, some members are also in the AIChE (Global Home of Chemical Engineers), CMAA (Construction Management Association of America), CSAB (Computing). While all of these various societies have different qualifications, testing etc., in the end they are all engineers under the ABET umbrella. So, think of the AICPA as the overall brand; couldn’t we have multiple pathways to become an accountant? Maybe a machine learner/accountant, business analytics/accountant, or AI/accountant?
World Traveler: I love traveling, elk and deer hunting, and any kind of fishing. Over my life’s journey and with my beautiful bride Julianne, we have had many wonderful opportunities to see the world. My top four places I’ve been to in the world are 1) Machu Picchu in Peru, 2) Xian in China (terracotta warriors), 3) the South Island of New Zealand (Milford Sound), and 4) Prague, Czech Republic.
