Welcome to The INSIDE Public Accounting Podcast — a show for accounting firm leaders who want to make smarter, data-driven decisions and stay ahead of industry change. Each episode explores what IPA’s trusted benchmarking data reveals about firm performance, leadership and the future of the profession.
From private equity and offshoring to partner compensation and the talent pipeline, we dive into the trends, challenges and innovations shaping public accounting today.
Hosted by:
Chelsea Summers — Executive Director of IPA and curator of the industry's most respected benchmarking insights
Rob Brown — co-founder of the Accounting Influencers Roundtable (AIR)
Whether you're leading a Top 100 firm or building the next one, the IPA Podcast is here to spark ideas, share stories and bring context to the numbers.
Nine Drivers of Partner Income: Running the Modern Firm
If your firm’s partner income falls below a benchmark, where should you look first?
Chelsea Summers and Rob Brown end the series Running the Modern Firm with nine measures associated with partner income in IPA’s 2026 Practice Management data. They examine why revenue per partner, leverage, partner billing rates and revenue per full-time employee deserve attention alongside hours and utilization.
Chelsea walks through how to prioritize gaps in your firm’s results and recognize whether pricing or staffing needs a closer look. They also discuss how firm size, client mix and ownership affect the comparisons.
Choose one meaningful gap for your next partner meeting, with a plan to revisit it.
Explore the 2026 IPA Practice Management Report: https://insidepublicaccounting.com/about/ipa-practice-management-reports/
Earn free CPE with Earmark! Listen, take a short quiz and download your certificate on the IPA channel in the Earmark app: https://www.earmark.app/channels/c5717392-a994-407c-9f27-7f09a08a4b7c
1 Oct 2026
Is AI Working for Your Firm? Running the Modern Firm with Donny Shimamoto
What is AI actually changing inside CPA firms?
Chelsea Summers welcomes Donny Shimamoto of IntrapriseTechKnowlogies, who helped design the AI questions for IPA’s 2026 Information Technology Survey. Together, they examine what participating firms report about adoption, investment and results. Only 3.2% describe AI as fully integrated into their operations, while 42.9% report no measurable impact yet from their AI tools.
They discuss how firms can define success before a pilot, evaluate vendor claims and put governance in place before purchasing software. Donny also explains why better client service and employee experience belong in the assessment of AI’s value, alongside financial returns.
For leaders planning their next investment, the conversation offers a practical starting point: establish where the firm stands, what it wants to change and how it will know whether the investment is working.
Earn free CPE with Earmark! Listen, take a short quiz and download your certificate on the IPA channel in the Earmark app: https://www.earmark.app/channels/c5717392-a994-407c-9f27-7f09a08a4b7c
29 Sept 2026
Are You Redesigning Work or Just Adding Tools? Running the Modern Firm
Firms are investing in offshore capacity to expand their teams and technology to improve efficiency. But the value of those investments depends on what happens to the workflow around them, including how work is staffed, handed off, reviewed and delivered.
Chelsea Summers and Rob Brown examine the gap between adopting new resources and redesigning the workflow around them. About half of participating firms use offshore FTEs, and 56% of firms already offshoring plan to increase that capacity next year. Yet offshore staff still account for only 2.6% of total personnel across all firms.
Chelsea explains why firms can add cost and complexity when technology and offshore teams are treated as separate initiatives. The firms positioned to capture more of the margin benefit redesign how work is staffed, handed off and reviewed, with technology and offshore capacity built around the same process.
The episode closes with a practical starting point for firm leaders: choose one workflow this quarter, map it from start to finish and identify whether new technology or offshore capacity actually changes the work.
Earn free CPE with Earmark! Listen, take a short quiz and download your certificate on the IPA channel in the Earmark app: https://www.earmark.app/channels/c5717392-a994-407c-9f27-7f09a08a4b7c (https://www.earmark.app/channels/c5717392-a994-407c-9f27-7f09a08a4b7c)
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