By Vincent Howard, CPA | Managing Partner, Howard, Howard and Hodges | SkillAbility for Accounting Firms
Last updated: July 10, 2026 | 16-minute read
- What an accounting employee development plan is
- Why most employee development plans fail
- What the plan should include
- Copy-and-use development plan template
- Role-based pathway for CPA firms
- Completed staff-to-senior example
- 90-day and annual review cadence
- How to measure whether development is working
Most CPA firms say they want to develop their people.
But when you ask to see the development plan, one of three things usually appears:
- A list of CPE courses
- A performance review form
- A few vague goals such as “improve communication” or “take on more responsibility”
None of those is a complete employee development plan.
A course list tells someone what to attend.
A performance review tells someone how they performed.
A real development plan tells someone how they will become capable of doing more valuable work.
That difference matters inside a CPA firm.
A new hire needs a path toward productive work.
A staff accountant needs a path toward review readiness.
A senior needs a path toward coaching, delegation, and client confidence.
A manager needs a path toward leverage, advisory leadership, and firm economics.
A future partner needs a path toward ownership thinking, succession, client transition, and firm growth.
An employee development plan should not document where someone is today. It should build the person the firm needs next.
Who I Am and Why You Should Listen
I’ve worked in public accounting since 1990. I founded my firm in 1993, merged it in 2001 to form Howard, Howard and Hodges, and helped grow the organization from three people to approximately 50 staff across four locations and multiple states. Our firm was named PASBA Firm of the Year.
Over those years, I have watched technically capable people stall because they could not see the path ahead.
I have seen staff members promoted before they were ready to review or delegate.
I have seen managers become bottlenecks because they were never taught how to develop people.
I have seen future leaders leave because they could not see how to become more valuable inside the firm.
I have also seen what happens when a firm makes development visible.
People ask better questions.
Managers coach toward defined outcomes.
Promotions become less subjective.
Training becomes connected to actual work.
The firm creates a deeper bench instead of hoping qualified people appear in the labor market.
Since 2020, I’ve built and run a structured accounting workforce development platform that more than a thousand accounting professionals across dozens of PASBA member firms have moved through.
The lesson is clear:
People do not need another vague conversation about professional growth. They need a practical plan.
What Is an Accounting Employee Development Plan?
An accounting employee development plan is a written, role-based roadmap that identifies an accountant’s current capabilities, next-role expectations, skill gaps, real-work development assignments, manager support, success measures, and review dates.
The plan should connect three things:
- What the employee can do now
- What the next level requires
- What experiences will close the gap
That third part is where most development plans become too weak.
They assign courses but not practice.
They name skills but not behaviors.
They create goals but not evidence.
An accountant does not become review-ready because “review skills” appeared on a form.
They become review-ready by studying strong examples, reviewing controlled work, identifying planted errors, comparing conclusions to support, receiving feedback, and demonstrating better judgment over time.
An employee development plan should make those experiences visible.
Why CPA Firms Need Individual Development Plans Now
The profession is under too much pressure to leave staff development to chance.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects approximately 124,200 openings for accountants and auditors per year from 2024 through 2034. BLS also expects automation to make accountants’ analytical and advisory responsibilities more prominent.
That means firms need to do two things at the same time:
- Build more capable people in a constrained talent market
- Prepare those people for work that requires more judgment, communication, review, and interpretation
The profession itself is moving toward a more explicit competency model.
The AICPA PCPS CPA Firm Competency Model identifies six core competency areas:
- Productivity
- Technical knowledge
- Client service
- People development and teamwork
- Business development
- Culture and inclusion
It maps those competencies across five firm roles: associate, senior, manager, senior manager or director, and partner.
In January 2026, AICPA also launched its Profession Ready Initiative to identify the skills early-career CPAs need now and through 2030.
The message is becoming clearer:
CPA firms cannot manage development with job titles, annual reviews, and CPE hours alone. They need visible capability pathways.
Employees are asking for clearer growth too
LinkedIn’s 2025 Workplace Learning Report found that career progress is people’s number-one motivation to learn.
Gallup reported in 2025 that one in four U.S. employees said they lacked advancement opportunities. Gallup also found that 45% had received employer-supported training to develop new skills and only 28% had participated in mentorship focused on advancement.
U.S. Employees Reporting Development Experiences
57%
45%
28%
CPA firms can turn that gap into an advantage.
A small or midsized firm may not be able to match every national firm’s recruiting budget.
But it can offer something valuable:
A visible pathway showing employees how they will become more capable, trusted, and valuable.
Why Most Accounting Employee Development Plans Fail
Most development plans fail for one of five reasons.
1. The goals are vague
“Improve communication” is not a usable development goal.
What type of communication?
With whom?
In what situation?
What would improvement look like?
A better goal would be:
Draft clear client open-item requests that identify the missing information, explain why it is needed, consolidate questions, and require only minor manager editing.
2. The plan lists learning instead of performance
“Complete a tax course” may be an action.
It is not the outcome.
The outcome should describe what the employee can do after the training.
3. The employee receives no real-work practice
People need controlled opportunities to apply what they are learning.
Courses introduce concepts.
Practice builds capability.
4. The manager is not assigned a role
Development plans often place every action on the employee.
But managers control access to assignments, feedback, review opportunities, client exposure, and coaching.
The manager’s responsibilities must be written into the plan.
5. Progress is reviewed only once a year
A development plan reviewed annually is usually a forgotten document.
The plan should operate through shorter cycles with visible milestones.
Development Plan vs. Performance Review vs. Performance Improvement Plan
| Document | Primary Purpose | Core Question |
|---|---|---|
| Performance review | Evaluate past and current performance | How has the employee performed? |
| Employee development plan | Build future capability and readiness | What should the employee become capable of doing next? |
| Performance improvement plan | Correct defined performance deficiencies | What must improve for the employee to meet the role’s current requirements? |
These documents can inform one another, but they should not be treated as the same thing.
A development plan is forward-looking.
It should be used with solid performers, new hires, high-potential employees, future managers, and anyone moving toward a more valuable role.
What an Accounting Employee Development Plan Should Include
A useful accounting employee development plan has eleven parts.
From Current Capability to Next-Role Readiness
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Define what the person is currently responsible for delivering.
Identify the level or expanded responsibility the employee is developing toward.
Document capabilities the employee can leverage while developing.
Define the specific gap between current performance and next-role expectations.
Assign targeted instruction, examples, scenarios, and resources.
Give the employee real or simulated work that builds the required capability.
Define the feedback, access, coaching, and assignments the manager will provide.
Specify the operational evidence that will show capability is improving.
Break the development goal into manageable 30-, 60-, and 90-day outcomes.
Schedule progress conversations before the plan disappears into a file.
Determine whether to expand responsibility, continue practice, change support, or revise the target.
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Accounting Employee Development Plan Template for CPA Firms
The following template can be copied into a Word document, employee file, performance-management system, spreadsheet, or workforce development platform.
Accounting Employee Development Plan
| Employee | |
| Current role | |
| Manager or coach | |
| Plan period | Start: __________ End: __________ |
| Next-role target |
1. Current responsibilities and expected outcomes
What work is this employee responsible for now? What does successful performance look like?
2. Strengths to leverage
Which technical, workflow, communication, analytical, or leadership strengths can support development?
3. Next-role capability requirements
What must the employee be able to do consistently at the next level?
4. Priority capability gaps
Identify no more than three high-value gaps for the current development cycle.
| Priority | Capability Gap | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ||
| 2 | ||
| 3 |
5. Learning and practice plan
| Capability | Instruction or Resource | Practice Assignment | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|
6. Manager support commitments
What assignments, feedback, review access, observation, coaching, or client exposure will the manager provide?
7. Success measures
| Measure | Current Baseline | Target | Evidence Source |
|---|---|---|---|
8. Development milestones
| Checkpoint | Expected Progress | Review Date |
|---|---|---|
| 30 days | ||
| 60 days | ||
| 90 days |
9. End-of-cycle decision
☐ Continue current practice cycle
☐ Add manager or mentor support
☐ Revise development target
☐ Begin promotion-readiness assessment
☐ Address current-role performance gap separately
Role-Based Employee Development Pathway for CPA Firms
The employee plan should connect to a firmwide role model.
Without defined role expectations, development becomes subjective.
| Role | Primary Development Outcome | Capabilities to Build | Evidence of Readiness |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Hire | Learn firm standards and basic workflows | Software use, source documents, basic execution, documentation, escalation | Completes sample and controlled work with improving accuracy |
| Staff Accountant | Become productive with less manager rescue | Workflow fluency, documentation, review-note response, question quality | Cleaner work, fewer repeated errors, better escalation |
| Senior Accountant | Produce review-ready work and support others | Issue spotting, professional skepticism, client context, coaching, delegation | Catches issues before manager review and improves junior output |
| Manager | Create leverage across people, work, and clients | Review leadership, coaching, delegation, capacity planning, advisory communication | Develops people and protects quality without becoming the bottleneck |
| Future Partner | Build and protect firm value | Firm economics, client leadership, business development, succession, ownership thinking | Leads relationships, people, growth, transitions, and firm direction |
For the full firmwide pathway, see Accounting Firm Training Plan Template: A Role-Based Development Pathway for CPA Firms.
For the broader system behind the pathway, see Accounting Workforce Development: How CPA Firms Build Capacity From Within.
Completed Example: Staff Accountant Developing Toward Senior
A template becomes more useful when managers can see what a completed plan looks like.
Staff Accountant → Review-Ready Senior
| Current strength | Reliable task completion, strong software navigation, responds quickly to feedback |
| Primary gap | Submits technically completed work without anticipating reviewer questions or documenting conclusions clearly |
| Development outcome | Submit review-ready work that includes organized support, documented assumptions, identified open items, and an explanation of unusual changes |
| Learning actions | Study three review-ready files; complete professional skepticism scenarios; compare completed and review-ready workpapers |
| Practice assignments | Prepare five controlled files with a reviewer summary; review two junior sample files with planted errors |
| Manager commitment | Provide examples, hold a 20-minute biweekly review debrief, explain the reason behind material review notes |
| Success measures | Fewer repeated documentation notes; open items clearly flagged; unusual variances addressed; less manager time spent decoding the file |
| 90-day decision | Begin limited first-level review assignments if documentation and issue-spotting targets are met |
This plan is stronger than “improve review skills” because it defines the behavior, the practice, the manager’s role, and the evidence.
For more on the underlying capability, see How to Reduce Review Notes in Accounting Without Turning Managers Into Editors.
To build skepticism and AI-output validation into the plan, see Professional Skepticism Training for Junior Accountants.
Use 90-Day Development Cycles Instead of Annual Promises
The employee may have a one-year career goal, but the working plan should operate in shorter cycles.
Ninety days is long enough to practice meaningful work and short enough to maintain focus.
| Checkpoint | Development Focus | Manager Question |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Agree on target, gaps, assignments, and measures | What will this employee become better able to do? |
| Day 30 | Confirm understanding and initial practice | Are the employee’s questions and work habits improving? |
| Day 60 | Evaluate repeated application and feedback response | Is feedback becoming capability? |
| Day 90 | Decide whether to expand responsibility or continue development | What can this employee now do more independently? |
At the end of the cycle, the employee does not simply receive a score.
The employee and manager make a development decision.
Expand the work.
Continue practice.
Adjust the support.
Change the target.
Or address a separate performance issue.
The Manager’s Role in an Employee Development Plan
Managers cannot be the entire training system.
But they must be active participants in development.
A manager should provide:
- Clear role expectations
- Access to appropriate assignments
- Examples of strong work
- Specific feedback tied to the target capability
- Opportunities to observe client and review conversations
- Regular progress discussions
- A decision about when responsibility should expand
The manager should not simply ask, “How is your development plan going?”
Use questions that create evidence:
- What work can you now complete with less assistance?
- Which review notes are no longer repeating?
- What patterns are you beginning to recognize?
- Which assignment challenged your judgment?
- What did you escalate, and why?
- Where are you still guessing?
- What assignment would help you practice the next capability?
- What support do you need less of now?
Those questions move the conversation from training activity to professional growth.
How to Measure Whether Employee Development Is Working
Development should be visible in the work.
The exact measures will depend on the person’s role, but CPA firms can use a consistent set of categories.
Measure Capability, Not Just Learning Activity
- Accuracy by work type
- Time to complete assigned work
- Workflow completion without rescue
- Documentation quality
- Review notes per file
- Repeated review notes
“`
- Question quality
- Escalation judgment
- Issues caught before review
- Client communication readiness
- Coaching and delegation readiness
- Manager time required
“`
A simple five-level capability scale
| Level | Capability Description |
|---|---|
| 1 — Awareness | Understands the concept but cannot yet apply it without direct guidance. |
| 2 — Assisted | Can perform parts of the work with examples, prompts, and frequent assistance. |
| 3 — Working | Can perform standard work with normal review and appropriate questions. |
| 4 — Independent | Can apply the capability consistently, identify issues, and require limited support. |
| 5 — Develops Others | Can review, explain, coach, and help others build the same capability. |
This scale gives managers and employees a shared language.
It also prevents a common mistake: assuming that attending training means the employee has reached independence.
How AI Changes Accounting Employee Development Plans
Automation is changing what early-career accountants need to develop.
Routine preparation work may be accelerated, assisted, or completed by software.
But the employee still needs to understand the underlying work well enough to evaluate the output.
Development plans should now include capabilities such as:
- Validating AI-assisted workpapers
- Comparing outputs to source documents
- Identifying unsupported assumptions
- Spotting unusual changes and missing context
- Documenting what was reviewed
- Escalating risk appropriately
- Explaining automated work to clients and reviewers
The development question is no longer only:
“Can the employee prepare the work?”
It is also:
“Can the employee tell whether the work is right?”
For the full role-shift framework, see Accountants Are Shifting From Preparers to Reviewers. Is Your Training Keeping Up?
Common Development Plan Mistakes CPA Firms Should Avoid
| Mistake | Better Approach |
|---|---|
| Trying to develop too many skills at once | Choose one to three high-value capability gaps per cycle. |
| Using vague goals | Describe observable work behaviors and outcomes. |
| Assigning courses without practice | Pair every learning action with a real or simulated assignment. |
| Making the employee solely responsible | Document what the manager will provide. |
| Measuring course completion | Measure accuracy, independence, review readiness, judgment, and client capability. |
| Reviewing the plan annually | Use regular manager conversations and 90-day development cycles. |
How Employee Development Supports Retention and Succession
A development plan will not fix every retention problem.
People also care about compensation, workload, flexibility, leadership, recognition, and wellbeing.
But a lack of visible growth creates a preventable reason to leave.
When employees cannot see a path, they may assume the path does not exist.
A structured plan gives them evidence that the firm is investing in their future.
It also gives the firm better succession information.
Leadership can see:
- Who is building review readiness
- Who can begin developing others
- Who is gaining client confidence
- Who is ready for expanded responsibility
- Where the future manager pipeline is weak
- Which capabilities are concentrated in too few people
That makes employee development part of capacity planning.
It is also part of knowledge transfer.
For more on the retention cost, see Cost of Accountant Turnover in Public Accounting.
For the knowledge-transfer system behind development, see How to Build a Knowledge Transfer System in a CPA Firm.
How SkillAbility Supports Accounting Employee Development Plans
SkillAbility was built around a simple reality:
A development plan cannot succeed if the employee has no structured way to build the capabilities listed in the plan.
That is why SkillAbility is not positioned as a generic LMS, a course library, or a place to track training activity.
It is an accounting workforce development and knowledge-transfer platform.
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The SkillAbility Employee Development Pathway
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“`
Builds technical execution, software workflow fluency, documentation habits, workpaper standards, and review-ready preparation.
Builds client communication, financial interpretation, professional presence, advisory thinking, and professional judgment.
Builds review leadership, delegation, ownership thinking, firm economics, client transition, succession, and future partner readiness.
“`
BASE supports early-career development plans
BASE gives employees structured practice in the execution capabilities that most firms otherwise try to teach through shadowing and live review notes.
MAPS supports senior and advisor development plans
MAPS helps employees build the communication, interpretation, advisory, and judgment capabilities that become more important as they move beyond task completion.
Summit supports manager and future-partner plans
Summit helps firms develop reviewers, coaches, client leaders, and future owners before the promotion exposes the capability gap.
A development plan names the destination. SkillAbility gives the employee a structured path to build the capability.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an accounting employee development plan?
An accounting employee development plan is a written roadmap that identifies an accountant’s current role, next-role target, strengths, capability gaps, learning activities, practice assignments, manager support, success measures, milestones, and review dates.
What should be included in an employee development plan for accountants?
The plan should include current responsibilities, next-role expectations, priority capability gaps, technical and professional development goals, real-work practice, manager commitments, measurable outcomes, and 30-, 60-, and 90-day checkpoints.
How is an employee development plan different from a performance review?
A performance review evaluates how the employee has performed. An employee development plan defines what the employee should become capable of doing next and the experiences required to build that capability.
How is a development plan different from a performance improvement plan?
A development plan prepares an employee for greater capability or future responsibility. A performance improvement plan addresses defined deficiencies in the employee’s current role. The two should not be treated as interchangeable.
What are good development goals for a staff accountant?
Good staff accountant goals include completing standard workflows with less assistance, improving workpaper documentation, reducing repeated review notes, recognizing missing support, asking better questions, escalating appropriately, and preparing clearer client open-item requests.
What are good development goals for a senior accountant?
Senior accountant goals can include producing consistently review-ready work, identifying issues before manager review, understanding client context, reviewing controlled junior work, delivering useful feedback, delegating clearly, and improving client communication.
How often should a CPA firm review employee development plans?
The employee may have a one-year career target, but the active development plan should be reviewed through shorter cycles. Monthly check-ins and formal 30-, 60-, and 90-day milestones help keep the plan connected to real work.
How should CPA firms measure employee development?
CPA firms should measure work accuracy, documentation quality, review notes, repeated errors, manager interruption load, workflow independence, question quality, escalation judgment, client communication readiness, coaching ability, and readiness for expanded responsibility.
Should courses be included in the development plan?
Yes, when they address a defined capability gap. Every course should be paired with practice and a measurable work outcome. Course completion by itself does not prove the employee can apply the skill.
Can employee development plans help CPA firms retain staff?
Development plans cannot solve every retention issue, but they can reduce uncertainty by giving employees a visible path, useful feedback, clearer expectations, and evidence that the firm is investing in their professional growth.
External Research and Authority Sources
- AICPA & CIMA: CPA Firm Competency Model
- AICPA & CIMA: Profession Ready Initiative
- AICPA & CIMA: Learning and Development for CPA Firms
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Accountants and Auditors
- Gallup: Addressing the Barriers Blocking Employee Development
- Gallup: One in Four U.S. Employees Lack Advancement Opportunities
- LinkedIn: Workplace Learning Report 2025
The Bottom Line
An accounting employee development plan should not be a list of courses, a vague annual goal, or a performance review with a different title.
It should be a practical roadmap.
It should identify:
- What the employee can do now
- What the next role requires
- What gaps matter most
- What the employee will learn
- What work they will practice
- What support the manager will provide
- What evidence will prove capability is developing
The best development plans do not exist outside the work.
They show up in cleaner files.
Better questions.
Fewer repeated review notes.
Stronger judgment.
More confident client communication.
Less manager rescue.
A deeper leadership bench.
An employee development plan should not document where someone is today. It should build the person the firm needs next.
Build execution.
Build review readiness.
Build judgment.
Build client confidence.
Build leadership.
Protect knowledge.
Develop people.
Scale the firm.
Want a structured path that helps employees achieve the goals in their development plans?
SkillAbility helps CPA and accounting firms replace vague goals, random courses, and manager-dependent shadowing with a measurable workforce development pathway from new hire to future partner.
Book Your Free 10-Minute Structural Alignment Review →
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To your firm’s capacity,
Vincent Howard, CPA
Managing Partner, Howard, Howard and Hodges
SkillAbility for Accounting Firms
About the Author
Vincent Howard, CPA has practiced public accounting since 1990. He holds a Master’s degree in Taxation from the University of Central Florida, founded his accounting firm in 1993, and helped grow Howard, Howard and Hodges into a multi-office firm with approximately 50 staff. He has participated in PASBA since 1997, led a PASBA Firm of the Year, and built the SkillAbility accounting workforce development platform used by accounting professionals across firms nationwide.
© 2026 SkillAbility for Accounting Firms. 45-Day Out-of-Pocket Performance Guarantee applies to qualifying onboarding engagements. Contact SkillAbility for full terms.