From Standard to Stand Out: Paul Dunn on Purpose, Impact and the Future of Accounting

Mark: Welcome to another episode of Accounting Industry Insights. It is my unique pleasure to welcome a good friend today, Paul Dunn. Paul is a four-time TEDx speaker, a senior fellow at the world's leading think tanks, and holds a lifetime service award to the accounting profession in the UK. He was the first of ten people at Hewlett Packard in Australia, went on to create Australia's first computer companies, and then created Results Corporation where he helped develop and grow 23,000 small and medium scale business enterprises.

Paul began to make his long-standing mark on the accounting profession through the Radical Accountants Boot Camp process. Many of our listeners would have attended those events over the years and in fact 17,700 accountants worldwide went to those events and walked away in a much better state. Paul continues to push boundaries, featuring in Forbes magazine alongside Sir Richard Branson in a global piece on disruptors in business. Paul is not just leaving an enormous legacy, he is living it and leveraging it every day as the co-founder of the revolutionary B1G1 Business for Good, enabling businesses to connect in new ways and collectively create over 397 million giving impacts around the world. Welcome, Paul.

Paul: Thank you Mark, and well read too!

Mark: I just made it all up!

Paul: It is about 15 months since you and I have spoken, and in that time you were honoured with your Order of Australia. When I think about people who have influenced not just the profession, but the people the profession serves, businesses around the world, it would be very hard to point to someone who has done that better than you. I am thrilled to be here with you.

Mark: Thank you Paul, I really appreciate that. I suppose we better get on with it!

Paul: We better, otherwise we will spend all our time talking about each other!

Mark: Paul, you have spent years helping businesses, including accounting firms, embed giving into their DNA. What is the biggest misconception leaders still have about driving a purpose-driven business?

Paul: That is a big question. I think the biggest thing is that leaders tend to think it is all about having words that express who they are. For example, you go to any accounting firm online and it will always say somewhere that they are different, and they are absolutely not. They are all the same. They also have tabs on their websites that say "About Us" when they should be saying "About You." It should be about the people they are privileged to serve.

One of the biggest things we used to express at every boot camp was that your job is not to report on history. Your job is to help your selected clients create history. When you talk about purpose in an accounting firm, that purpose has to face outward, not inward. The bigger the purpose, and the more it is about outcomes for the people you serve rather than about yourself, the better off you are.

The way I like to think about it is that we move people from standard, that sea of sameness, to stand out, because they stand for something bigger than themselves. It is a simple progression but such an important one. Purpose is not about the words you use, it is about the impact you create.

We are also seeing governments, including the Australian government, now calling out organisations that simply use words without backing them up with action. In the last two years, companies have been fined $44 million for not doing what they say. We are in an interesting place right now. There is a lot of uncertainty, but sometimes when things break, they open. And there is certainly a lot of breaking happening right now, particularly when you look at the profession and AI.

Mark: I love that line, that we are not in the business of reporting on history, we are in the business of creating history. Paul, I am really focused on strategy with accounting firms. When did you realise that impact was not just a nice to have, but was actually a strategic advantage for a business?

Paul: I was playing with the idea for a while and then it hit me, probably about six years ago. I used to talk about being on purpose and being purpose driven, but now what I talk about is being impact driven. The great thing about being impact driven is that you can measure it and you can set goals around it.

That is really interesting because as long as you and I have been talking to accountants, one of the number one issues they raise is that they cannot get good people. And of course you cannot, because you are not making it attractive for people to be there. Connection is why we are here. It is what gives meaning and purpose to our lives, and that is what people are searching for.

I did an event recently where I referenced Gallup research around a $10 trillion problem in workplaces globally. Think of it like a rowboat. You are the captain rowing forward. The question is, how many people on your team are rowing with you? According to the data, just 20%, one in five, are genuinely rowing in the same direction. Around 64% have their oars in the water but are not really contributing. And the remaining 16% are actively rowing the other way, and their audience is the 64% in the middle.

Once you realise it is about impact, you can set goals for it. Firms are doing this right now. Not goals like donating ten thousand dollars to a charity, but meaningful goals like supporting education systems for 100,000 children by 2030, or providing clean water to communities who do not have it. These are numeric, measurable impact goals and what happens when you set them is you change the feelings of your team. And the moment you change those feelings, you change everything, and given that you keep doing it, you change it forever.

Mark: That is very true. Let us take a step sideways. From your perspective, what is the biggest mindset shift accountants still need to make to stay relevant over the next decade?

Paul: It comes back to what we said before. What did you say when you started your firm? What was the vision you had? And it probably was not to crank out tax returns. If it was, you now have a real problem.

The goal is not to report on numbers. It is to help people create great things in their businesses. Increasingly I am seeing firms that get this. I will share something I have not mentioned on a podcast before. I recently came across an accounting firm website, a firm that niches exclusively in medical practitioners, and they had a four-letter word across the top of their website. Not the one you might be thinking of. The word was LOVE.

When you click on it, it essentially says thank you for being here, we love what we do, and we love making a difference for the people we are privileged to serve. That is so different from what you see everywhere else. And it is backed up with real impact goals.

I was on a web event recently and an accountant I know said to me beforehand that he plays a recording before every session he runs. He said he got it from a B1G1 conference in 2018. It was Hugh Jackman performing The Greatest Showman. That energy, that elevation, that is the choice we get to make. We can wallow in all the uncertainty or we can choose to get to a higher level. And when we elevate the feeling, we change the result, and we change it forever.

Mark: Paul, you have worked with thousands of accounting firms over the years. What do you think separates those who thrive from those who just survive?

Paul: I think it comes from how you think and how you feel. Someone said to me about 18 years ago that where you are right now, personally and professionally, is a result of how you have reacted to the moments in your life. And that led me to this thought: when your vision becomes more powerful than your memory, your future becomes more powerful than your past.

Getting stuck in worry about AI, where the profession is heading, all of that uncertainty, it keeps you in your memory rather than your vision. And there are some really interesting things happening. I was reading recently that every major accounting software player, Xero, QuickBooks and the rest, are now sitting at 52% below where their stock was 12 months ago. The reason is that the moats they built around themselves are no longer holding. Someone recently took an old version of QuickBooks, put it into AI and had it recoded into a modern version. The world is changing fast.

If your firm still has a billing model based on time, that is a significant problem and it is becoming more of one. PWC recently announced that any partner not fully embracing AI will be moved on. It is a very interesting time.

But here is what no algorithm and no AI can do. It cannot do H to H, human to human. And now we have more time to do exactly that. Joe Pine, who wrote The Experience Economy back in 2000, has just released a new book called The Transformation Economy. About eight months before it came out he shared this insight: the purpose of any great company is to foster human flourishing. I took that and added a couple of words with his blessing. The purpose of any great business.