Coworking is a weekly segment where we talk to CFOs and other leaders in the finance space about their experiences, their companies, and the larger economy. This week, we’re featuring one of our own! Let us know if you are—or you know—a CFO we should interview.
We’re mixing things up a little for this week’s Coworking, because we’re crazy silly like that at CFO Brew. This week we’re talking to Courtney Vien, who joined us as CFO Brew’s new senior reporter last month.
Courtney spent over eight years at the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA & CIMA) as a writer and editor, covering topics including personal financial planning, accounting practice management, and career development. Her last role there was as editor-in-chief of The Journal of Accountancy, where she directed the magazine’s coverage of all things finance and accounting.
Feel free to contact her with story ideas or tips at [email protected]
What’s your background as an accounting and finance reporter?
I did not know much about accounting or finance before I came to the AICPA in 2014. I was an English major. I learned very quickly on the job. I went to a lot of conferences, talked to a lot of accountants, and just picked it up from there. The AICPA also had many in-house subject-matter experts we reporters could learn from.
I was at the AICPA for eight years before I came here. I focused on the personal financial planning and practice management beats. But when I became editor-in-chief of The Journal of Accountancy, I had to learn very quickly about the areas of accounting I hadn’t focused on that much before.
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In your work with The Journal of Accountancy and as you start reporting for CFO Brew, what do you see as the most pressing issues facing finance professionals and accountants right now?
Basically, the pace of change, keeping up with technology, keeping up with macroeconomic trends. Just dealing with global shocks like the pandemic, [or] the war in Ukraine. They’ve got to make high-stakes predictions about how these changes are going to affect their organizations. It’s a lot to take in, and it’s ever-changing on top of the day-to-day work that they already have to do.
When you talk to finance and accounting professionals, what are they saying are their top concerns?
Technology: keeping up with it and implementing it. They say that it helps them a lot but that it also makes their jobs different. They have to be analysts now—more analytical and less programmatic. Talent is always a concern: finding and keeping the right staff, especially accounting staff. And keeping up with the pace of change, being nimble, and adapting to new things that are thrown their way all the time.
What’s the biggest misconception that people might have about being a CFO Brew reporter?
When I told people I was going to work at Morning Brew, a couple of them asked if it was a coffee company! I can see why they’d think that, as I love coffee. I got them signed up for our newsletters.
Aside from that, the biggest misconception might be that you only deal with numbers and hard facts and technical accounting stuff all the time. And that it’s boring. It’s not boring.—DA