The ROI of Learning: Why Accountants Should Care About More Than Just CPE

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.

EPISODE 1: The ROI of Learning: Why Accountants Should Care About More Than Just CPE

Sean Bilodeau: 85%. That’s how many organizations say adaptability is critical to their success. 7%.

That’s how many say they’re actually making real progress on it. And that gap is where today’s conversation lies. Welcome to the very first episode of 20-20 Insights | Conversations, the podcast for modern accounting professionals.

I’m Sean Bilodeau. And every episode, we’ll sit down with the people shaping this industry and talk about what’s changing, why it matters, and what you can do about it starting tomorrow. For episode one, there really was only one choice for the guest.

Jessica Sacchetti, President of 20-20 Services. Jessica went from the big Four audit to leading learning for CPA firms across the country. Today, we’re digging in to the ROI of learning.

Why it’s more than just a formula and what it really means to learn, to learn, and how firms and individuals can close the adaptability gap. Let’s get into it. And I am excited today to be joined by the President of 20-20 Services, Jessica Sacchetti.

Jessica, thank you very much for joining us.

Jessica Sacchetti: Hey, Sean. Great to see you today.

Sean: So you are an illustrious grad of Stonehill College. I have actually not been to on my college basketball journeys, but if you before the episode, can you go ahead and tell us just a little bit about your journey to get to where you are today?

Jessica: Well, Stonehill is newly D1, so you got to make a trip up there. They’re building a new ice rink and basketball stadium, so it’s worth the trip. I grew up in Massachusetts, and Stonehill is a nice regional college here in New England, and, graduated there and started my career in public accounting and worked for a big four firm in the audit practice. And I really enjoyed my time there.

From a learning perspective, I think those were just such foundational, years of my career where you learned so much in a short amount of time. And while I was there, I got exposed to leading learning and development programs for interns and new hires. And I just started to feel this spark of sort of excitement for my role in that part of the program, and wanted to explore that as sort of a track of my professional career as a CPA certified at that time.

And, and started to think about how could I make learning a bigger part of my day to day life. And so after I left the big four firm, I joined a kind of boutique training and consulting firm. We worked with CPA firms all across the country to help them improve their audit practices.

And it was a combination of consulting and training, and I really there gained a lot of experience in seeing the broader perspective outside of what was happening in the Big four, but to a much wider range of firms and what their challenges were, and really learning about the business of learning. And that company was acquired by Thomson Reuters. So I, I was with Thomson Reuters for some time and had a, had a few kids and decided to go back to school to get a graduate degree, got a master’s degree, and then came back into the learning world with some teaching adjunct back at Stonehill and also joining 20-20 Services back in 2014.

So I’ve been here for 12 years, and I started as the EVP of learning and and now the president.

Sean: It’s an amazing journey and how you got here. And as we started thinking about, hey, what what do we want to start this podcast with?

What do we want to be the inaugural episode? And as I started thinking about it a little bit more and I started having conversations. The ROI of learning was one that just stuck out.

And having you as a guest really was like, this is like the perfect fit. So one of the things I like to start with in these episodes is this idea of two minutes that matter to you. So two minutes that matter to the listener.

So if you could just give me an overview, like a two minute overview of why the listener should care about the return on investment for learning.

Jessica: Yeah. I think when we think of ROI, we’re thinking about a formula, right?

If you have an accounting background, you or any kind of financial background, you know, there’s a mathematical equation that can calculate the benefits minus the cost. And think about what your return on the spend that we put into learning. And while there are a lot of metrics that we can calculate to define and calculate ROI in a financial way, I really think that ROI is much more complex than that when we think about learning and professional growth.

And today. While there are many factors we can consider today, there is one factor that is really rising, I think above the rest, and it’s adaptability and the ability to learn quickly and efficiently and to be comfortable with learning. And so to me, that’s a qualitative intangible of learning that I think firms cannot ignore.

They need to that it is rising as one of the biggest challenges that we all face as professionals is to keep up with a rapidly changing environment around us. And so that’s how I kind of classify the ROI. There’s there’s certainly financial and business benefits that are both tangible and quantitative, and also a number of important intangibles to consider when you think about ROI in the in the whole picture.

Sean: It’s it’s inherent for us as accountants in this industry that we want to think about the quantitative factors and the data behind it. But I really like how you bring up that there’s these qualitative factors that we have to consider as part of it. So I want to delve a little bit more deeply into the ROI.

In terms of you talked about both of the factors. What does ROI really mean for you? And I wouldn’t mind if you actually might take us down that qualitative path a little bit more.

Jessica: Yeah, absolutely. So when I think about ROI for learning, we immediately jumped to how does how does a firm or an organization benefit from investments in learning. And so costs can be captured and measured.

It can be difficult to measure some of the performance related outcomes. Not impossible, but a little bit more challenging than just how much did I spend? How much time do we spend in this classroom?

But looking at what has changed about about performance of employees. But there are metrics you can use in that, in that capacity. In the qualitative aspect, we’re really thinking about how do people approach their job and how do they take what they’ve learned and use it as a catalyst for more learning.

So this idea of adaptability in learning is all about, I call it learning to learn. Learning to be a learner over your entire career, a lifelong learner. And I think today in accounting, it’s imperative that you are comfortable with things adapting and changing and being able to tackle new challenges in an efficient way and in a way that doesn’t burn you out personally.

It has to become sort of an underlying expectation that what I learned today is going to evolve and it’s going to continue to challenge me. And so there’s a lot of mindset adjustment in that perspective. But I think continuing education is an amazing, opportunity or playground for exploring that, for getting comfortable with things that you don’t know already and diving into challenges to explore them.

Sean: I love the idea you brought up Learning to Learn, and that that phrase sticks out to me, and it’s accompanied by the words that you’ve mentioned a couple of times already, that adaptability and dealing with change. So when we see folks in the industry right now, where are they? Where are they almost on that spectrum, right.

We want them to be fully learning to learn and thinking about themselves. And then there’s the compliance aspect and the data on it. So where where are they at right now. And kind of where is some opportunities for people that are out there to really think about that learner mindset?

Jessica: Yeah. I was your question makes me think of Deloitte issues a global human capital trends report each year.

So earlier this year they came out with the 2026 report. And one of the questions in that survey that stood out to me was a question around the importance of adaptiveness. And I think I’ve got to look at my my stats here to get the numbers right.

But 85% of the respondents said adaptiveness was critical to their organizations success. Only 7% of those respondents felt they were making great progress towards improving the adaptiveness of their workforce. So that indicates a pretty huge gap of what we think is important versus what we’re making happen, or what we think we’re seeing some change towards.

And so that’s a I think that’s a pretty good summary that that doesn’t surprise. I think that’s a those are that’s a big gap. But it doesn’t really surprise me.

I think the accounting profession as a whole has been really challenged by the rapid change, especially in technology. There’s other changes affecting the profession as well. But the rapid change in technology is probably one that stands out.

That brings a lot of a lot of challenge to our profession. In a stable environment, when you’re a learner, you’re learning to do the job that is in front of you, or maybe even the job of the person who directly supervises you, so that you can look ahead to a promotion that was well defined and tracked. And today, there’s a lot more blurry lines.

The job that you have in front of you is evolving. Before you even start to think about what the next role is going to be. So I think that can feel really overwhelming to folks to say, I’m not even sure what I learned today is going to apply tomorrow.

So part of it is a mindset to say, how do I learn? How do I learn a framework and a structure to be a learner so that every time I approach a new challenge, I can feel like I understand how to tackle those challenges even when I don’t know the underlying context. I’ll make the analogy to a case study in a training program or a classroom or anything.

That’s kind of a simulation that you’ll do when we when we design simulations for our classroom, we don’t expect the exact facts set is going to show up in someone’s real practice. I mean, that would have to be a a really unique coincidence that we could design the exact FactSet to be repeated. But what we’re trying to do with that is to show our our learners how to tackle a problem, how to analyze what the factors are that important, where the sources of information and resources they can access, and how to go through a thoughtful framework for solving problems.

And it’s that piece that we really want to take away from a learning environment so that they can say, okay, the facts of this situation are different, but I can follow this process in another situation and come to a solution for that problem. That’s what we’re hoping to to really achieve through learning sessions.

Sean: There’s a there’s a really a couple of things that stood out in that response.

And I want to start by going back to the beginning. 85% says we have to be adaptable and then 7% actually think we are. And then so there’s that 78% gap there.

That’s just amazing to see. It’s such a stark number that it sticks out. And if we think about just the changes in the industry, I think we had a conversation the other night where we talked about there was always kind of this linear path of how you progressed in the industry.

It was, hey, you know what? You go in as you know, you pay your dues as an associate. You work up to a senior associate and other the, you know, things like moving to paperless and things, you know, that we’ve seen along the way.

They were much slower and integration to now with AI, with offshoring, with everything else in there, it’s a lot faster and your job is going to change consistently. So I want to tie that back into the envy response, which is the concept of learning to learn. And really this idea of focusing on frameworks.

And how should a person go about thinking, okay, I need to change my mindset to think about these frameworks and the concept of I’m not going to deal with this exact same issue I had in the training that I have in real life, but at least I’ve given myself the at least the foundation or the process of the framework to be able to do that. How do we start instilling those frameworks into people now?

Jessica: Well, frankly, I actually think it’s a great opportunity for the folks who maybe, you know, don’t find it exciting to memorize sections of code or to have that mental log.

You know, I don’t think most people who major in accounting, or at least in my generation, you know, over 20 years ago majored in accounting because they were excited about change. That wasn’t one of the major driving factors when I chose an accounting career. But I think actually today we can really attract a lot of new professionals who have energy and enthusiasm for that.

So promoting that in some of our, our open roles might be something that that draws individuals who are who are more open to those types of frameworks. But the, the idea that we have resources now that can help us find facts really quickly and easily, and a lot of them are being tailored for our profession specifically. And so they, they can be very reliable.

Not to say that we’re not we’re not checking those things and have our applying our professional skepticism, but we have resources that are a lot more efficient to use today than we have in the past. And so the idea of this framework is really starting with what I call a top down approach towards problem solving, which is, thinking about it, we’re often tempted to jump to what is the rule, what is the application? What is the where do I find this paragraph in this standard or in this guidance?

That’s going to give me the exact answer that I’m looking for. But it’s very important to start before that and not just try to jump to the solution, but to think about what problem I trying to solve, or what is the goal of the scenario that I’m being presented with. Because oftentimes it might lead us in a different track than just the the first thing that we think of, the first place that we go to look.

So it starts with gaining and understanding of all the factors that exist in this scenario and really fully understanding our clients, their situation, the environmental factors, so that we can have a broader perspective and become a better advisor than a research tool. If all we are is a research tool, then we’re going to be replaced pretty quickly. But we bring that understanding of key factors and situations and intangibles like we’ve been talking about that allow us to interpret a situation in several different ways.

And a lot of times there’s multiple paths we could go down to solve a problem. My background is in audit. So when we when we are in auditing we are assessing risk.

We’re looking for things that can go wrong. And there’s oftentimes a lot of different ways you can go about searching or designing procedures that are going to address that risk. And a human is really, well, well suited to thinking, okay, given what I know about this situation and all the information that I’ve pulled together, even though I’ve gotten some guidance on the different opportunities I can choose, here’s why I think this is the best solution applying my professional judgment.

So that’s just an example of this kind of broad starting broad with the problem, and then thinking about the different avenues I could take to solve this solution. And sometimes there’s some trial and error and testing that goes along with that.

Sean: You mentioned trial and error, and you kind of work through this entire process. If I’m thinking as someone who is just an auditor or Tax professional right now, sitting and, you know, maybe I’m a senior, maybe I’m I’m early in that manager career and I hear this and I understand it conceptually, but for me this is this is scary this is out of my comfort zone.

Right. And and I, I’m starting to get the feels that I don’t necessarily like this a whole lot. So if we talk about stepping into this outside of our comfort zone here, how does someone get comfortable with the discomfort about thinking about this process and trying to trying to create a different mindset than maybe they they’ve already had?

Jessica: Sure. I mean, first of all, we’re all a little uncomfortable. I don’t I don’t think there’s there’s anyone who does who’s walking around saying, I know everything that’s happening right now and what’s going to happen in the future.

I think there’s a lot of uncertainty about how how our our roles, our day to day responsibilities, even our firm is going to evolve over the next five, ten years. There’s certainly uncertainty there. And that can create anxiety or it can create feelings of, you know, I don’t really want to do this or I’m not excited about it.

And I face that to all the time. But I think I try to know that my investment in myself as a learner is only going to pay off the more I if I face a challenge, and I can work through that, that benefits not only my firm and my team, but also me as a professional. And so sometimes I see there’s a little bit of a lack of accountability towards your own professional growth, and people are expecting a firm to lay out a track or, you know, they didn’t give me the opportunity.

So I didn’t learn that. And I really encourage especially young professionals, but anybody to take ownership of that professional development, because even if the role turns into something that isn’t what you expected, your growth to that point is going to open doors for you that you don’t even know exist yet, whether it’s in with your with your own firm, or maybe it’s something like I pursued by going into learning, which is a really unique track within within accounting to be in the professional development space that I never envisioned or knew existed. So I think taking that personal development and giving yourself accountability to say I’m in charge of my own development, find areas that you feel passionate about, whether you’re passionate about technology, you’re passionate about communications, and and you’re passionate about giving advice to clients.

Where is your niche within our profession? And diving deep and growing in that, I. I truly believe there are opportunities for such a wide range of professionals to find the place that it that they succeed.

But you’ve got to take personal accountability for that. And if you’re waiting around for someone to give you that opportunity, you might get some of what you need, but you might not. So just I think I think owning that is is one of the best things you can do towards getting through that feeling of of uncomfortable with change and just knowing that everyone’s going through it too.

There’s everyone on your team is being challenged in the same way, and I don’t. And this is not specific to the accounting profession. There are a does these changes are hitting every industry.

And so we all have to kind of rise with that.

Sean: One of the things I take away from that response to learning is a lot less passive, I would say, than it used to be. Right?

Where as you kind of stated, hey, here’s your track. You are going to go to this in-person training for three days. You’re going to get your hours, you’re going to maybe take some other self studies.

It’s it’s far more different than that. You know this. The individual should take an active ownership in what that looks like.

I want to think about it too in the sense of outside the classroom. So we talk a lot about inside the classroom and what that looks like. What is an individual taking ownership of their future and ownership of their learning look like when they step outside of the classroom?

Jessica: Yeah, that’s it’s a great question because it really classroom is a small portion of the way we learn. And I’m really passionate about people being together and learning together and sharing ideas and building off of each other. But it’s not the only way we learn.

And we have so many inputs into our our learning culture and our learning system, especially at CPA firms today, there are it’s not hard to fulfill your CPE credits if you’re taking advantage of all the opportunities that are at your firm. So there there’s, self-directed learning opportunities that almost everywhere. There are learning through your work and learning through mentors and and supervisors on the job training.

And there is formal coaching and feedback that you can learn, learn from those kinds of processes. So I would chat with learning leaders at CPA firms really regularly. And I know one of the challenges that they face so much is they provide a pretty robust blended learning opportunity all the way from classroom to self-study and shorter short modules that are within their own workflow.

Then they have formal mentoring and feedback sessions, and they’re constantly having to remind people and ping people and say, you have to take this and and take advantage of this. And, and I think one of the barriers is that we all feel really busy all the time. We feel like, hey, this client work takes precedence.

We learn a lot from client work, so there’s certainly learning input there, but becoming a little bit more structured and planned around, hey, I’m going to take advantage of the learning opportunities that are being given to me so that on June 30th or whatever your reporting deadline is, you’re not trying to cram in more than eight hours of of learning. That’s really not going to work. You know, so, so being a little bit more thoughtful, I guess, proactive and planning how you want to gain experience and learn together is going to be a much more comfortable process.

And and I know that’s a challenge that, that so many learning directors face and get in getting the professionals to just take advantage of the opportunities that they’re they’re providing.

Sean: One of the things you were saying there is that really kind of made me think. So you talked about taking advantage of those opportunities and even going outside the classroom.

I start to think about different firms that are out there and environments within their firm. And, you know, in some ways we’re trying to pull them with we have the rope tied around the waist. We’re trying to pull them along with us to make sure they take the, you know, their appropriate training or do the things necessary from a firm perspective, even an individual perspective.

How can firms build an environment which encourages learning, which encourages that independent thought that you’ve kind of said earlier as crucial to the development of of each individual?

Jessica: Yeah, I mean, this is like this is the $10,000 question, Sean. Right.

How do I get everyone to do what I think they should do in the way I think they should do it in the time frame that I think you should do it. So there’s probably no, no magic response to that. But I think it does start in the in the priorities that are set by leadership and if, if adaptability, if you’re one of the 85% of survey respondents that said, adaptability is very important, but we’re not making great progress, then you need to think about how are we giving people in our in our, at our firm the opportunities to learn how to be adaptable.

And so if your priority is a client deadline and your, not people aren’t getting enough opportunity to be able to, whether it’s go to a formal learning event or even just experiment a little bit in a sandbox with new technology or whatever way that you’re going to do that. That starts at the top. And people feel that, that pressure.

So establishing firm priorities towards where we want our staff to become more adaptable. And here are the ways that we’re going to support that initiative as a leadership team. And then the effective communication of that throughout the ranks.

And so, you know, communication is that that’s really an art in itself, right? How do we get that message outside of an email and into really what’s happening within teams and individuals, in offices and at their homes and all this dispersed workplaces that they are? And there’s so many different ways that I’ve, that I’ve seen firms do that, from formal events to supporting initiatives where supervisors get hours towards training and, and job.

And, you know, on the job training for their staff that they get to, that they get credit for it and are appreciated for and all different all different methods like that. But I really think it has to come not just in messaging from from the top, but also in living the message that we are that we’re writing down and supporting that, throughout all the levels of the firm.

Sean: I know as a lot of accountants, we like to think what what does that tangibly look like? And so kind of circling back around to the qualitative and quantitative data side, if a firm’s looking to say I that is all great and I love it, but how do I measure it in my organization?

What suggestions do you have for them.

Jessica: Yeah. If if we’re talking specifically about adaptability, I think, you know, each each person’s facts at that they face and how they need to adapt might be different, but building it into your performance evaluation structure is one way.

And it doesn’t necessarily need to be a number metric. But knowing that I need to in a in a self-evaluation, talk about a challenge that I faced and how I learned and grew through that challenge, and maybe change something or tried something new can be a really simple, great way to get people to think about what’s important to the firm. So if it’s not just, hey, we want you to take this training or we’ve enrolled you in this training, or it’s important to us that you become adaptable in an email.

But to build that through the metrics that are important to individuals and to have them reflect on that throughout, throughout the period that they’re going to be evaluated, whether it’s an engagement or it’s a semiannual evaluation or an annual evaluation, that’s one way that you can really reinforce that. That’s that’s important. There are other there are other ways we can do it.

We see a lot in this kind of simulation evolving in the simulation space, where you can have, people go through case studies or challenges or mock experiences where you can measure, you know, what did they try or how long did it take them to get through these things? These are all individual inputs to a greater a greater sense. There’s finally there’s also surveys of your staff and understanding what their perspective is.

This this survey I think, is largely done by leadership. But what do the staff people, how do they feel they’re adapting and what challenges are they facing? And I think if you can get multiple inputs to that picture, you start to build a broader perspective of how the opportunities that you’re putting out there are making change.

Sean: We started off by talking about the overview of the ROI of learning. I want to start to close with kind of a fast five here. So what are five things that learners organizations should do tomorrow to really be better at the process of being lifelong learners and thinking about things from that framework perspective, versus just being passive and having it come to them.

Jessica: Yeah. So I think, we can look at it at a firm level and an individual level from the firm level. I would say really thinking about those priorities that you are most important that align with your firm goals.

So I talked about earlier this top down approach. Sometimes we’re thinking, oh, there’s a there’s a new standard we need to roll out of training. And that’s probably that’s probably very important.

But I’m guessing that new standard is not one of your top five strategic goals at your firm. So making sure that the the strategic goals for your firm are really reflected in the learning investment that you’re making. And if adaptability or change management or flexibility or technology aptitude are part of your firm’s goals that make sure you have opportunities that are aligned in various various formats for your for your staff, and then looking at the performance and effectiveness of each of those opportunities that you’re providing.

Are people giving you great feedback? That was really helpful? Are are they dragging their feet to do it?

Do they, do they participate and engage in that learning, or do they have it up on their second screen and they’re doing their emails and their client work while it’s going on? What is the most powerful experience that’s moving the needle towards the goals that you’re setting? On the individual side?

I think it’s really about getting to know yourself and what you’re enjoying in your job and looking for more opportunities to expand that circle in both formal and informal learning. So formal learning means taking advantage of the resources that are already available to you and not just showing up, but being attentive and engaging with that learning there. It’s one thing to log in great.

You know, put in your code words. You got your CPE credit. That’s an important metric that we that we measure.

But it doesn’t really translate into change in behavior unless you as an individual commit to I’m going to pay attention. I’m going to engage with this with this, learning opportunity that I’ve been given. And then outside of the formal resources that your firm has available to you, seeking out informal coaching relationships or mentoring relationships, seeking out challenging assignments that give you experience that you haven’t had before, seeking out new technical or non-technical problems, or asking to shadow with someone to a meeting that you haven’t been able to attend before.

Looking for those ways to just to push your own boundaries a little bit more. You wouldn’t believe how much those small efforts make you stand out as a professional to the people that you work with, and how much insight and experience they bring, how quickly you will realize that you have learned without even really trying. So I’m not sure if that was five.

Sean, I know I was supposed to go through a fast five, but I think it might have been four, but I probably, I probably used up all the time anyway.

Sean: You know, I think the one, if I could summarize in one sentence, being proactive in an age of change is what I take away from this episode. More than anything, stepping in, doing the things that you need to do, being proactive and being able to do it.

And then you’re going to be able to adapt. You’re going to learn the basis of the framework so that you can adapt to that change. Before I close, any closing thoughts that you may have outside of what we’ve already talked about, which I think has been amazing.

Jessica: Think in that theme of proactivity. It can feel overwhelming. It can feel like, yeah, I got to be proactive at everything and and I can’t do that.

And we could get stuck doing the things that we already know how to do, that we can do a little bit more easily or feel a little bit less threatening. This top down idea that always bring back to your goals, what are what are the three most important things I want to gain out of this and really focus your proactivity there. You don’t have to be, you know, you can’t in today’s environment really address everything in advance of it coming across your plate.

But if you keep in mind. Hey, I have three goals for this year and keep checking yourself to see. Am I aligning with that, as an individual?

And then the same thing for our for our learning professional colleagues, what are those big goals that our firm is really wanting us to focus on? And have we achieved those? And then there’s always additional things that we’re bringing in or that are supplemental or realign.

But if we can focus on those those three most important things, I love the rule of three. It helps me kind of bring some sanity to my life. Be proactive at those, and you’re going to move the needle and you’re going to you’re going to feel more adaptive.

You’re going to feel more comfortable with new things as they come across you. Heck, you might even be excited about some a new challenge or a new project that comes your way and say, yeah, I can’t wait to learn about that. I, I’ve been I’ve been eyeing that and I was hoping to get involved with that.

And if you can change to that mindset, then I think you really have so much opportunity in, in this kind of wild environment that we have going on right now.

Sean: Jessica, thank you so much for the amazing conversation. A wonderful way to kick off this podcast.

Jessica: Thanks so much, Sean. I really enjoyed it.

Sean: And that’s a wrap on our very first episode of 20-20, Insights and Conversations.

A big thank you to Jessica Sacchetti for helping us kick things off. If today’s conversation got you thinking about how your firm develops adaptable, future ready professionals, that’s exactly what we here at 20-20 Services do. We partner with accounting and advisory firms across the country, including 25 of the top 100 CPA firms on audit and tax training, leadership development and power skills that set accountants apart.

All of it is built around your firm’s goals. Visit 20-20services.com to explore our programs, see upcoming programs and find every episode of this podcast in one place. And if you got something out of today, subscribe so you don’t miss what’s next?

Then share it with someone on your team who’s navigating all this change too. Until next time, stay curious and stay proactive.