Change Your Mindset

Tom Hood, CEO of the Maryland Association of CPAs and the Business Learning Institute, is on a mission to help CPAs make sense of this changing and complex world. Tom and I spoke on the third episode of this podcast, in June of 2016, and a lot has changed in that short period of time. We discuss how technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing are impacting the accounting profession (and the world), and how CPAs can begin transforming themselves into Anticipatory CPAs. What is blockchain? Tom says that blockchain is best described as the Internet of Value. Using secure peer-to-peer data, blockchain basically conveys transactions of value with multiple parties to, effectively, create a public ledger. This is a real example of a supply chain using blockchain technology, which may help you understand how it works in practice: There’s fishermen in a boat off the coast of Malaysia, and they have smartphones. When they catch a tuna, they use their smartphone to take a picture. The pho