CPB IGNITE2025 Takeaways
CPB Ignite is my favourite industry conference of the year. It is an annual conference organized by the Certified Professional Bookkeepers of Canada. It attracts Canadian bookkeepers from coast to coast, from industry, from firms, and it also attracts many bookkeeping and accounting firm owners.
It is software-agnostic, which means you can explore new opportunities with software partners and get real feedback from peers who use those software packages that you don’t. In addition to being a fantastic learning opportunity, there is also a great social program with a lot of opportunities to network with other industry professionals.
This year was quite a bit different for KATA as we brought most of the team together for our first-ever in-person corporate retreat for 3 days in Calgary ahead of the conference. Since we are a virtual firm, this was the first opportunity for several people to meet in real life!
As the principal accountant at KATA, I am extremely proud that our team got along wonderfully in the house and, though we lived together for a week, we had no conflicts, and everybody pitched in when we needed to get things done.
Our few days working together ahead of #IGNITE2025 were focused on reviewing our values, our mission, and our vision, and coming up with plans about how we can make KATA a great place to work and a great company to partner with.
A special shout-out to Julia, who organized and coordinated the big undertaking of getting accommodations, flights, and planning out our retreat activities.
As I like to do after any major conference, this article goes through the biggest takeaways from the conference. However, this year, we get to include the opinions of the whole team!
Make Yourself Obsolete
This may sound counterintuitive, but it is sound advice and a great aspiration. By mastering your tasks and assignments and applying automation wherever possible, you free up your time to work on higher-value items. This is a sure way of advancing in your role, company, and career.
For business owners, this is key to building a business that is capable of running without you – a true business asset as opposed to a job.
Lead with Curiosity and Assume Positive Intent
Communication is our top value. It allows us to go deeper into client files and really find ways to support them and help them stay educated on upcoming changes or potential challenges. It’s really about building relationships instead of being driven by more clients and more volume of transactions (AKA, more revenue).
I’ve seen a lot of firms value money and growth, and eventually implode because they can’t deliver what they promised. Though bookkeeping can be a challenging career, communication helps our clients understand that bookkeeping is a vital part of their business that can lead to success, allow them to make informed decisions for the future, and, most importantly, free up their time.
Some of the practices we undertake were espoused at the conference, including: Collaborating to come up with solutions that work for all parties; Education, both internal and external, leads to more empowerment and success; And asking questions is the best way to pursue relationships and personal and professional growth.
Take a People-First Approach
This applies to all stakeholders of the business, including clients, teammates and ownership. A healthy, hopeful and empowered team can become highly efficient when people share values and motivations and are well-led.
Although we implement automation and leverage technology whenever we can, our focus is still about building people first. Build people up and they can build each other up, and help your clients build strong businesses.
Succession Planning is Vital
Admittedly, for KATA, this is a work in progress. We are currently working on succession planning and “what if” scenarios. Rest assured that from a client perspective, most work should continue uninterrupted should there be a serious issue.
However, we need to expand our succession plan to ensure those clients that need CPA services are covered. This was one of the sessions with the most takeaways for me as the founder of KATA.
The ideas include:
- Ensure that the team and clients know where to find what they need and make sure data is backed up to the cloud. This is something that we’ve been doing for a decade, so we’re still a bit ahead of the game there, but we need to do a better job of teaching less tech-savvy clients where to find their data and ensuring that teammates can find the information they need easily.
- Empower the team to understand their specific roles, document their processes and the idiosyncrasies of the clients they serve, and ensure they have support. Everyone deserves to take time off, and when there are strong workflows and policies in place, it’s easier for another teammate to step in to help.
- Ensure that there is a succession plan for the business. This includes who inherits the shares, but also, who will succeed in duties and take the mantle of leadership should something terrible happen. Don’t leave your family a mess to clean up.
- Everyone needs wills and powers of attorney – this is especially important for business owners. You need to have some kind of plan in place for someone to step into your shoes to ensure that the employment of your team and the delivery of services to your clients continue uninterrupted.
- Insurance is a key part of estate planning, and, especially as a business owner, having appropriate insurance will help your team and your family should the worst happen.
- Succession plans need to be reviewed and updated at least annually, and should be updated whenever there is a material change in your life or business.
This is something that I plan on investing significant time in this autumn.
Collaboration is a Necessity
Collaboration among the team helps bring challenges to the surface so they can help each other find solutions.
Collaboration among firms and firm owners builds stronger businesses that serve clients better. It also builds business opportunities.
Collaboration with clients helps create an understanding of their businesses and helps us identify ways we can support their decision-making processes and give them time back to focus on building their businesses. It also helps them understand what we do and why it’s important.
One item that was noted is that there needs to be more collaboration between bookkeepers and accountants. This is especially true at the governing organizational level. It’s disappointing that there are no representatives from CPA Canada or any of the governing accounting bodies who are interacting with CPB Canada on a regular basis.
Being close to many senior people at CPB Canada, I know they want to start a dialogue.
Quality bookkeeping performed by qualified bookkeepers is vital to providing quality data to CPAs so they can undertake their duties with confidence that their deliverables are built on a strong foundation.
Unfortunately, since being a “Bookkeeper” is not a regulated market, anyone can enter the industry, and if they aren’t good at what they do, they can create disastrous problems for clients.
For any CPA who reads this, please communicate this concern to your CPA governing body. CPA and CPB are not in competition, but are complementary organizations that need to lead the way together when it comes to collaboration.
AI and Automation are Here to Stay
Whether it’s AI, Machine Learning, Robotic Process Automation, leveraging APIs, or a combination of these, automation and AI are here to stay. Most major accounting-related software companies are implementing AI into their products, so you’re going to be using it whether you realize it or not.
With the advancement of LLMs (Large Language Models), individuals can use AI for research, automation and even as agents that make decisions.
The important thing to remember is that AI models are probabilistic. This means that they deliver results that are highly probable to be correct based on the data they have learned from. This means that if the data isn’t good, neither is the AI output. That’s why our AI policy includes the caveat, “Trust, but verify.” (Auditors will totally get this).
AI has no ethics, so it’s vital for the human element to be involved to ensure that proper, vetted information is being provided to clients, and the application of AI remains ethical. (We recently had Gemini draft a blog post that suggested something that is no longer allowed – this was caught on review before publication).
The distinguishing factor will be how AI is implemented and used in businesses. Too much reliance on AI will create customer service challenges, especially if agentic AI gets things wrong (Agentic AI makes decisions and takes action on them). Given the uncertain legal environment surrounding AI training, inadvertent legal exposure is a real risk.
KATA is on the Right Track!
The most gratifying part of the entire conference was that KATA is on the right track when it comes to the technologies we’re adopting, the policies, processes, and practices we’ve implemented, and how we are building the company.
Keynote and plenary speakers repeatedly brought forth topics that have not only been considered, but implemented in the way we’re building KATA.
Human-centric leadership and team empowerment are two of the key areas we’ve been building for years. I had the opportunity to present about Human-Centric Leadership in a Remote Work Environment, and the session was very well received.
It’s nice to see that this is a subject that business owners care about and want to implement.
It’s nice to know we’re on the right track.
What’s Your Biggest Takeaway?
Now that we’ve shared our biggest takeaways, what’s yours?
Were there any sessions, speakers, or subjects that you really enjoyed or found valuable?
Were there any topics that weren’t covered that you’d like to see next year?
Speaking of which, the next three years CPB Ignite locations have been released. I look forward to seeing you in September 2026 in Montreal!