Generally, accountants are seen as a stable pair of hands. They might even be thought of as a little bit predictable. A truly reductive individual might even go as far to call accountants boring – certainly not creative.
While it’s definitely true that some accountants are boring – and accountants probably know that better than most – creativity is actually one of the most useful skills an accountant can have. No, we don’t mean "creative accounting”, we mean using your imagination for good, not evil. And accountants do this all the time. You’re always spotting a problem, improving a system, identifying new possibilities. Isn’t that creativity? Well, for the purposes of this edition of The Briefcase, it’ll do.
It’s a stereotype that too many accountants accept – being a penpushing shirtwearer who rarely ventures outdoors, when actually you’re doing loads of fun stuff, pretty much all the time. You’re always dealing with wacky customers. Gosh, they should make a sitcom about your life! I’m serious!
🎨 What even is creativity?
When most people hear "creativity”, they think of painting, jazz music, or writing stuff for a website that provides CPD for accountants, but there’s actually more to it than those three things. In terms of your worklife, creativity is about finding something new and useful. That could mean:
- A smarter way of filing client information.
- A better internal process.
- A new service line.
- A more helpful way to present data.
- A different way of solving an old problem.
You’ve probably been involved in at least one of these things, or at least you’ve considered doing something like that, which is half the battle, when you think about it.
🎢 Why it matters to you
Creativity becomes especially valuable when the world stops behaving itself and, as we’ve all noticed, the world has developed quite a habit of doing just that.
Economic shocks, new regulations, AI, remote working – modern accountancy is on a rollercoaster and it can’t get off. If all you can do is repeat yesterday’s process, you’re going to struggle tomorrow, when something zany happens!
And that’s why accountants have been forced into creativity. They’ve had to adapt to all these changes, regularly rethinking their work processes, and trying to imagine what they’ll have to do next month. A client is no longer happy with the basics – they want you to hold their hand (hopefully just figuratively) while you talk about what the future might look like.
🚧 The roadblock
Creativity is difficult, especially if you’re good at your job. The longer you’re there, the easier it is to slip into professional sleepwalking. Sleepworking. You see a problem, and you go straight to the usual answer. This is great, and gives you more time for increasingly regular breaks, but it’s bad for your brain.
Experienced people are often brilliant at reductive thinking – narrowing options, making decisions, setting budgets, and closing things down. This is very useful in accounting, right up until you need a completely different answer.
So, being creative becomes a muscle you need to exercise. Instead of solving something quickly, you need to open it up. This might even mean talking to other people, which is crazy, but sometimes is unfortunately necessary. And if they say something stupid, you’ve got to grin and bear it, because it might be the seed that grows into an answer.
😒 How to not annoy everyone
The good news is that creativity isn’t some mystical gift handed out only to jazz musicians and people who write stuff for websites that provide CPD for accountants, it’s something everyone does, everyday.
Out of the goodness of our heart, here are a few practical ways you can boost your creativity:
- Expose yourself to different perspectives.
- Sit in on meetings outside your usual area.
- Talk to clients about how they actually work.
- Leave time for ideas to breathe before shooting them down.
That last point matters. A lot of people squish their own ideas because they evaluate them the second they appear. Good creative thinking needs a brief suspension of judgement.
Not forever, obviously. Eventually you do have to re-enter the adult world and ask whether the idea is affordable, legal, and likely to get you promoted rather than investigated.
But if you judge everything too quickly, you’ll never get beyond the obvious.
👥 Bringing it in
It’s really hard to be creative without at least thinking about other people. And, as we said earlier, even better to discuss it with them. But empathy is key here – working out how clients and other stakeholders might think, what they might want – and that can be tricky.
But, if you understand what matters to your client, what frustrates your team, or what a user actually needs from a report or process, you’re far more likely to come up with something that works. A surprising amount of innovations are genuinely just someone finally asking, "what is this like from their side?”
🧠 Final thoughts
Despite the stereotype, accountants have never just been beancounters. They count other legumes, too, but more importantly, they solve problems and help people. You are always making decisions, and you’re constantly adapting to changes. Sometimes, the work can get messy, but you push through.
And accountants need to be creative to do this. And while you may not get your due for this, we know how much it actually matters. That’s why we put out a course on creativity, written specifically for accountants. If you feel your creative juices flowing, check it out to see how best to harness it.
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