How Third-Party Accountants Can Earn Your Trust
Trust is an element that strengthens any close relationship. You can’t trust someone you don’t know, and you don’t know someone until their character has been tested. This is a universal truth, so naturally, it applies to your accountant. An element of trust is involved in the relationship you share with your accountant that cannot be understated.
As a business owner, you want to protect your production company from anyone who could jeopardize it financially. But fully trusting your accountant can take time; trust isn’t built instantaneously. So, how do you close that gap? There are some growing pains, to be sure, but luckily, this is an exciting stage and the newness is incredibly similar to onboarding any new hire.
To help you gain your footing with this new relationship, here are several guideposts to help you in the early stages of onboarding a new third-party accountant.
Cover Your Back
What are your accountant’s best practices to avoid theft and fraud? What are their control points to ensure that work is being reviewed? Is that answer satisfying to you? Establishing a system of checks and balances means you are protected, and your business will avoid exposure to potentially compromising activity.
Furthermore, your accountant should be able to explain these processes to you in a way you understand. Otherwise, how can you be expected to make informed decisions? Being forthright is a key component of trust in any relationship. The same goes for your accountant. Suppose they’ve thought through and established several systems that mitigate these concerns - that’s a green flag, indicating that you’re dealing with a firm that understands the weight of their responsibility and takes it seriously.
Make Your Boundaries Clear
Another way to establish trust is through boundary setting. This allows your accountant to meet these boundaries, demonstrate how they can meet your needs, and, more importantly, it’s a sign of care and compassion. They may ask questions about boundaries, but you must take the initiative here. This isn’t wholly unlike telling a server how you’d like your steak cooked - it’s a common boundary we all feel fine communicating.
Your accountant is responsible for releasing payments and managing cash flow, so proactively developing a process you’re both comfortable with should be one of the first things you establish. How much access do you need to give you peace of mind? Don’t confuse boundary setting with micromanaging or controlling the behavior of others. If you’d like to approve all payments before they’re sent, you can and should communicate that you’d like to be the final checkpoint in this process.
Let Them Repair Their Wrongs
How someone repairs a problem is almost more important than the solution itself. Even the best accounting teams can get it wrong at some point, and when they do, note how your third-party accountant handles the situation. Are they standoffish? Do they make excuses? Or are they honest and forthright? Relationships are often stronger after navigating through these rough patches - Why? Because repairing rifts is an integral part of establishing trust.
Let’s say a check gets mailed to the wrong address, or an invoice was accidentally paid twice. How does your accounting firm respond? Are they proactive in correcting mistakes and honest about where they went wrong? In catching this mistake, are they committed to ensuring it doesn’t happen again? The only real apology is changed behavior; a friend who double-books their calendar, owns their mistake, apologizes, and makes time for you later is different from a friend who pretends to be sick and hides the truth from you.
When this happens, it will inevitably inspire tricky feelings and anxiety, but when it does, it’s important to let your accountant take the lead on mending the problem. Let them demonstrate how much they value your relationship as a client and prioritize this fix. Your relationship could be stronger for it.
Allow Them To Earn Your Trust
There is no one set way to establish trust over time. It can be established quickly or slowly, after many course corrections, or after a blissful run of smooth sailing. The process of earning trust can feel uncomfortable, but in the end, it will be worth it. The beginning phase of any relationship is weird. Yet, most of us have navigated this relationship stage with others in a non-professional setting with varying degrees of ease. You should give yourself and your accountant the same grace and commitment to seeing this through. Trust isn’t automatic; it has to be earned, so let your accountant earn it.
Everything would be easier if you could treat your accountant like a magical and faultless automaton, but unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Your accountant is a human and liable to have quirks and eccentricities of their own, just like everyone else. The good news is that you likely already have trusted relationships with other people, which can serve as an apt template for navigating this new relationship. Like any other close relationship, it has a beginning phase, which is prone to awkwardness, but it’s important to remember the excitement of this stage. If you’re hiring a third-party accountant, it’s likely because you’ve entered a new phase of your business and require higher-level support. Your accountant is your latest team member. Let them make themselves at home and show you what they can do – you may be pleasantly surprised by how much you treasure this relationship once it's firmly established.