While the accounting profession has always come with the pressures of deadlines, client expectations, long hours, and constant change, some CPAs say today’s pressures feel more intense.

And they’re not imagining it. Doug Slaybaugh, CPA, founder of The CPA Coach and a retired firm partner and professional coach with more than 25 years’ experience in the profession, says accounting has entered a period of concentrated change.

“The industry remained mostly unchanged for a very long time. Then in the last five years we’ve had COVID, private equity coming into the profession, pipeline issues, a retiring workforce, artificial intelligence, and the shift to advisory services. Everything is happening faster than ever.”

The fast-paced changes are affecting professionals at every level as they seek to manage growing workloads while protecting their time, energy, and personal lives. For some CPAs, professional coaching is becoming part of the solution.

Enter the COCPA Coaching Collaborative

The COCPA Coaching Collaborative (CCC) connects CPA coaches who understand the profession firsthand with participants seeking to work through the operational, leadership, and personal challenges that often lead to stress and burnout. The Collaborative launched its first cohorts in fall 2025, with a new set launching July 24, 2026.

In the summer 2026 issue of NewsAccount, now available digitally, Slaybaugh and fellow CCC coach Carla Greenan, a former CPA who spent more than two decades in corporate leadership roles before becoming a coach, share the benefits of coaching, noting its value for those who want to perform at a higher level. 

“We’re not fixing people,” Greenan says. “We believe our clients already have the answers that work for them. Coaching helps them strengthen performance, better manage time and energy, and move toward the kind of life and career they want.”

Concrete Strategies

While some challenges facing the profession require organizational change, both coaches say that individuals can take practical, immediate steps to reduce stress and create more capacity.

Among the myriad issues that the CCC coaches address with concrete strategies and mental shifts are managing distractions, reducing decision fatigue, setting priorities, and establishing and maintaining boundaries.

For Erin Moore, CPA, founder of Affinity CPA, the CCC arrived at just the right time.

After beginning her career in public accounting and later launching her own outsourced accounting firm, Moore found herself struggling with many of the same challenges other firm owners face.

“Growing my firm has been a real trial-and-error process,” Moore says. “Trying to scale revenue, figure out capacity, hire people, train them, and build systems – everything.”

When she learned about the CCC, she decided to join Slaybaugh’s CPA Practice Strategies cohort. She joined the program with a list of practical business questions, but the coaching conversations quickly became more strategic.

“Doug asked questions that really made me think about what my vision is for my firm,” she says. “He helped me identify patterns that were making me unhappy.”

Moore says the accountability and follow-up after each session helped her put ideas into action. “After each session, he’d send notes, takeaways, and homework. Knowing I’d have to report back gave me the push to actually try things without putting them off or coming up with reasons why they wouldn’t work.”

While one of the biggest shifts involved pricing and valuing her services, the coaching also helped Moore rethink her firm’s long-term direction.

“In the first session, Doug asked me what kind of firm I would actually want to work in,” she says. “That concept has stayed with me. Now when I bring on a new client, the goal isn’t just adding to my own workload. It’s about building a firm.”

Helping CPAs Thrive

The CCC currently includes cohorts focused on CPA practice strategies, retirement planning, and work-life planning. The program is designed to create small-group environments where accounting professionals can discuss challenges openly while learning practical strategies from coaches who understand the realities of the profession.

For Greenan, the broader goal is to help professionals move beyond survival mode. “I talk a lot about moving from surviving to thriving,” she says. “No one thrives every moment of every day. That’s unrealistic. But coaching can help create more moments where people feel like they’re living and working in a way that aligns with what they really want.”

Check out the newly-released summer 2026 issue of NewsAccount to learn more about the COCPA Coaching Collaborative, launching its next cohorts July 24, 2026.

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