It’s important to understand that making mistakes, especially better ones, will drive your practice to a higher level and take a lot of pressure off you. As a CPA, you have the inclination to always want to be right. Building this pressure on yourself to always be right causes you to be afraid of making mistakes. Even though in school, you were taught to always be right, the greatest challenge for CPAs is that when we get into our practice, trying to be right all the time is your biggest handicap.
Honestly, you want to look for how you can make mistakes, make them small and fast, and not cripple yourself emotionally and financially so you can move forward faster and build your practice and attract better clients.
Tom has made his fair share of mistakes. He learned it’s important to get comfortable making smaller mistakes and recognizing they are mistakes. The challenge is admitting you made a mistake. We often fail to admit we made a mistake because we always want to be right.
It’s important to teach your staff to never deny, blame, or justify the mistake. It’s important to develop your workplace culture to admit mistakes. “Fall on your sword” and admit you made a mistake is a value we embrace at TFW Advisors®. In our CPA profession, we need to stop being afraid of making mistakes. You want to learn to minimize your mistakes and make them small. Tom always says, “fail small and fail fast.” You will learn from it.
What if you make a mistake with a client?
CPAs tend to try to cover up or say the mistake is not our fault since we are so worried about it being a liability. Tom has learned that it’s how you deal with the mistake that matters. There are studies that have shown doctors have less chance of being sued when they admit they made a mistake. We know people make mistakes; it takes all the energy out of confrontation. Most clients will be ok with you after you tell them about the mistake, but they obviously don’t want the mistake to happen again. Often, you will be fired over mistakes you don’t admit.
What happens when we are willing to accept our mistakes?
We will have better clients who won’t be mad at us since we are transparent with them. In addition, our staff will be more comfortable making mistakes, and this will lead to more innovation. Don’t be afraid to admit mistakes; we lose face with our clients when we DON’T admit a mistake, even to our staff. When your staff sees you are willing to make a mistake, they are more comfortable.
When you are willing to admit your mistakes and you are willing to look at them and not worry about failing, you won’t be afraid to take a project on out of fear of failure. You might not be perfect at it, but when you admit your mistakes and are willing to allow others to make mistakes, you grow, and this leads to having better clients, a better practice, and a better life.
Want to find out how joining TFW Advisors® can lead to better clients, a better practice, and a better life? Book a call with us today!