Life as a CPA (5): CPAs Travel a Lot

– Ty’s Summer Internship – Day 9 –

Apparently, the summer is the conference season for CPAs. Donny’s schedule is filled with all different kinds of business trips and he is home literally only for a few weeks this summer. Donny travels a lot in general, and throughout the year he has at least one business trip to the U.S. mainland every month. If you like to travel for work, then the CPA profession could be a good option for you to consider.

Donny is a man of many hats, and one of his hats is as a Chair of the Information Management & Technology Assurance (IMTA) Executive Committee of AICPA. The AICPA has several different membership sections such as Tax and Auditing, and IT is covered in the one called the IMTA section. Donny is leading the group of CPA/CITP professionals who create IT-related guidance, develop IT-related toolkits and practice aids, and help contribute to AICPA conferences for technology-related presentations. That’s why he hops around different cities to participate in the meetings and conferences with the AICPA. Also, he is a popular speaker. He provides workshops and presentations at not only AICPA conferences, but also for many other association and industry conferences. So as long as the schedule allows, he shows up to wherever he is needed. It sounds like a sort of super hero, doesn’t it?

CPAs would take over the world if we weren’t so darn busy –This Way to CPA

As a part of my shadowing experience, Donny asked me to travel with him so that I can see what those conferences are like. Great news! When he asked me if I wanted to travel with him, I thought, “That’s a nonsense question. Who would say no to the offer that you can travel all over on the company’s expense?” Anyway, this is awesome. I know my cohorts back in school will be so jealous. I will get to not only participate in these CPA conferences (that normally cost over a thousand dollars to attend), but also meet CPA professionals from all over the nation. So now I am going to Las Vegas NV, Washington DC, and Towson MD. Towson is a bit random (I was like “what’s MD? Medical Doctor?”), but I have never been to Maryland so should be fun. Sorry, no offense to Maryland.

I am pretty surprised that he does all the logistics (booking hotels, flights, etc.) on his own. He is an MD. Not a Medical Doctor, but a Managing Director of a company. I was expecting him to forward his schedule information and that he has an administrative assistant do all the bookings and arrangements, but the reality wasn’t fulfilling my arbitrary fantasy. It’s not that he doesn’t have anybody to do it, but since he constantly gets calls for meetings and conferences which causes frequent schedule changes, I guess it’s just a matter of convenience and flexibility for him.

So I received the itinerary forwarded by Donny, which is telling me that my first destination is the Sin City – Las Vegas!