Gideon Malherbe, the president of Virtual Consulting, Inc. and principal consultant on the CPA Vision Project agrees.

"The overall need for judgment-based input... for knowledge... for opinion, is increasing and the type of information that businesses require is much broader than the traditional CPA services," Malherbe said.

Five Core Competencies
Thousands of CPAs across the country participated in the Vision Project, and developed a list of five core competencies, as well as five core services CPAs will need to provide in the future.

The Vision Project names five core services to be provided by accountants in the future:

• Assurance
• Technology
• Management Consulting
• Financial Planning and
• International

That goes beyond the assurance that a CPA provides to a client or employer when he or she renders an audit opinion. According to the Vision, the new generation of CPA consultants will be positioned to provide strategic advice and direction to organizations on broad-based management issues, performance improvements, human resource systems and other non-financial matters.

Malherbe added, "What the Vision is saying is that the CPA is ideally positioned to provide those services because he or she has the foundation."

Malherbe and the others involved in the Project examined the forces affecting the accounting profession - political, economic, social, technological, human resources and regulation - and developed a picture of what the world will be like in the future and what role the CPA will play in that world.

Technology
"The thing that became clear is that the historical work that the accountant does is becoming pressured by technology," Malherbe said.

Leigh Knopf, director of strategic planning for the AICPA concurs that technology is driving change in the way CPAs practice. "An example is online tax services and some of the software that is available," Knopf said. "The public can utilize those resources and bypass the CPA, so technology is actually displacing CPAs."

Competition
Competition is also a major factor, Knopf said.

"The area of Financial Services is diversifying, with non-CPAs moving into traditional CPA areas," Knopf said. "As a result, CPAs are competing not only with other CPAs, but with those who are not certified." Add to that the competition from around the world that comes with the globalization of the marketplace, and some say evolution and change is a matter of survival.

"My personal view is there will be a home for the so-called traditional accountant," Knopf said, "but that portion of the profession is narrowing. The growth area is the consulting assurance area."

Consulting
Despite the recent focus on specialization, especially on consulting, it's really not that new. Many firms and sole practitioners have already branched out into specialized areas. In fact, by the early '80s all of the then-Big Eight firms had expanded into the consulting arena.

"This is a phenomenon that has evolved over the past 30 years," said Peter Horowitz, senior management director of Global Public Relations for PriceWaterhouseCoopers. But Horowitz added that that evolution continues.

"It's gotten much bigger," Horowitz said. "The growth of all the Big Five consulting practices over the past five years... has been astronomical."

Those practices at the Big Five have developed over the years in a variety of niche areas - from business planning and cost management to systems design and even software selection.

Horowitz estimates that the Management Consulting Services division at PriceWaterhouseCoopers accounts for more than a third, but less than a half of the company's business. He adds, though, that even in the so-called traditional accounting areas, practitioners are called upon to provide some type of consulting service.

"If you look at traditional attest being auditing and tax compliance, and call everything else consulting, I'd say it accounts for half of the fees generated," he said.

Room for other views
Still, not all have jumped on the bandwagon. The CPA Vision Project has been criticized for promoting consulting over traditional tax and accounting services... and for saying "the future survival of the CPA profession" rests on specialization.

Some also accuse the AICPA of pushing the idea of specialization in order to appease the Big Five accounting firms. Rank-and-file members don't want specialties, opponents say.

"I think it's an unfortunate reading of what the Vision is about," Maiman said. "This came out of grass roots forums from across the country. Most people in those forums were sole practitioners or from small firms who said this is a way they have found to establish profitable practices."

Despite the controversy, it is likely that more and more CPAs will dip their toes into the consulting pool. "It's a pretty obvious direction in a globalization environment," Malherbe said "Specialization becomes kind of the norm."

A final report of the CPA Vision Project is being drafted and submitted to the state societies and other groups. It will go up for final ratification in October at the AICPA's annual meeting.