The Pipeline Problem Is Real, But It’s Not the One You’re Thinking Of
- Jacqueline Lombardo
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
What You Need to Know
The talent pipeline problem is really a retention problem. Recruiting alone won't solve workforce challenges if experienced employees continue to leave.
Leadership, career development, and culture determine whether talent stays. Clear growth paths and intentional development are essential to building a sustainable workforce.
Treat talent as a business strategy, not just an HR function. Firms that measure turnover, strengthen the employee experience, and invest in their people will build a stronger pipeline for the future.
Accounting firms tend to treat the pipeline problem as a supply issue. There aren’t enough students choosing accounting, not enough candidates sitting for the CPA exam, not enough people coming in the front door. There’s data behind that story, but it’s only half the story, and it may not even be the more urgent half.
The more pressing crisis is at the other end of the pipe. Firms are losing people they already have to burnout, ambiguity and cultures that never quite got around to developing the talent they recruited so hard to hire.
You can’t fill a leaking pipe by increasing the flow. So before your firm adds another campus recruiting strategy, consider when you last took an honest look at why people are leaving.
The retention problem nobody wants to own
The accounting profession is losing experienced people to other career paths altogether, and not just because industry roles might pay higher salaries.
In the Illinois CPA Society's Righting Retention survey of employers and professionals, salary, burnout, and lack of work-life balance topped the list of reasons people leave, followed closely by workplace culture, cited by 36% of team members, compared with just 10% of employers who saw it as a factor. That difference in perception is itself a data point. Turnover at CPA firms ranged from nearly 12% to almost 16% annually over the last few years, and roughly 84% of it is voluntary. People choose to walk. Firm leaders aren’t showing them the door.
The financial stakes are higher than most firms track. Gallup research puts the cost of replacing a technical professional at roughly 80% of that person's annual salary, and replacing a manager or leader at closer to 200%. The people leaving are often the ones firms can least afford to lose. They’re the mid-career professionals with client relationships, institutional knowledge and leadership potential already in motion.
The development problem hiding in plain sight
Many firms recruit well but fail at the transitions that matter most: getting people from staff accountant to senior, senior to manager and manager to partner. People leave because the path forward isn’t clear or viable.
Development in most firms is informal, inconsistent and depends on which partner happens to be paying attention. That works well for some people, but not at all for others. We keep asking people to grow into more complex and more ambiguous roles without consistently investing in the capabilities those roles require. Instead, we promote for technical excellence, hand someone a leadership title and give them little to no preparation for what leading a team requires.
The cultural problem at the root
Underneath retention and development is something harder to fix: culture. People enter the profession and encounter a huge disparity between what they were told it would be and what it actually is. The hours are longer, the career path is murky and the pace of change gives them whiplash.
Young professionals are making faster, less forgiving decisions about whether a workplace works for them. Firms that haven't honestly examined the day-to-day experience of working there beyond the values on their websites are operating on borrowed time.
The firms winning the talent war are more consistent and more human in how they lead.
What can you do to fix the pipeline in your firm?
Here are four changes you need to make to solve the pipeline problem in your own firm:
Look at your exit data differently. Look at who left, when and why. The pattern tells you where the pipe is leaking. If you don't have that data, start collecting it.
Invest in the middle of the pipeline. We’ve seen firms improve their onboarding and partner track development processes in recent years. That’s great! But the profession loses a lot of people in the transition from staff accountant to manager. Build intentional development for that stage,
Make the path visible. Ambiguity about career progression is one of the top drivers of departure. Define the path, communicate it and revisit it regularly.
Treat culture as an operational priority. Culture isn’t an HR initiative or a values exercise. Ask team members what it's like to work at your firm and where the daily experience falls short of the stated values. Then do something about the answers.
The right problem, finally
The profession can’t solve its talent crisis by recruiting harder at the front end while the middle and back ends stay broken. It’s like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom. Look at the whole system, not just the intake. That focus allows you to build a sustainable talent pipeline.
The pipeline problem is a leadership problem, and it has a leadership solution.
Could your firm’s HR and talent leaders benefit from a peer network?
The Boomer Talent Circle is a community of talent leaders from forward-thinking firms who are committed to aligning human resources and firm strategy at the highest levels. Apply now to start shaping your firm for the future.
Jacqueline Lombardo, SHRM-SCP, is the Operations Manager at Boomer Consulting, Inc., where she helps accounting firms strengthen operations, develop their people and turn strategy into action. She co-facilitates the Boomer Talent Circle and Boomer CAAS Circle and is a frequent contributor on leadership, talent and operational excellence. Jacqueline holds a master's degree in Human Resources and is a SHRM Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP), Kolbe Consultant and Lean Six Sigma Green Belt.
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