How should a tax-practice leader think about staff development when employees may be deciding between the EA path, CPA path, or leaving the field?

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The source thread was titled Staff growth, do you feel your employees want to continue in this career? Do they want to be CPAs or EAs?. The useful source signal was: I don't know if I'm getting older, but it seems that all the recent hires we have are not interested in obtaining a CPA or EA. An employee that's been with us for 5 years started studying about 3 years ago for her CPA exam and I don't think she's studied. I had a talk with her ab. That matters because it exposes the real decision pressure around staffing, client selection, firm choice, pricing, or systems rather than just asking whether a path sounds attractive.

The safe approach is to design the next move as a controlled operating plan. Define the type of work you want, the controls you need around that work, and the metrics that will tell you whether the model is holding. For a new or changing practice, that usually means scoping services narrowly, documenting intake and review steps, and delaying expansion until the workflow is stable.

Use the original source at https://www.reddit.com/r/taxpros/comments/xrb3yp/staff_growth_do_you_feel_your_employees_want_to/ as the anchor. A defensible EA answer is concrete: it names the decision, the control, and the next evidence-based step.

The exam-ready or practice-ready answer is the one that keeps procedure visible and avoids guessing.

How should a tax-practice leader think about staff development when employees may be deciding between the EA path, CPA path, or leaving the field?

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