By Megan Martin

Ten years ago, if your company was looking for an accountant, that often meant someone to do the number-crunching and not much else.

How the times have changed. Corporate scandals, new laws and a booming industry have turned the finance and accounting world on its head, meanwhile creating countless new opportunities for financial professionals—many of which involve much more than being “the numbers guy” in a cramped office with a calculator.

The New Path to CEO

“Historically, accountants were viewed as bookkeepers, not as the people who would lead and guide businesses,” says SALO co-founder John Folkestad. “In the past, I knew many financial professionals who wanted to be President of their corporation someday, and people would laugh because those roles were reserved for people coming from operations or sales. All that has changed. Since Sarbanes-Oxley, you see more and more financial people becoming CEOs.”

One of the biggest changes that has occurred is a shift in employer values. Previously, job security depended on employee loyalty and tenure, regardless of the value that particular employee contributed to a firm. Today, rather than rewarding or promoting longtime employees simply because of their tenure, companies have evolved to focus more on locating and keeping diverse talent.

Why Change?

Outside of academia, the concept of tenure has become a thing of the past. A decade ago, it was common to promote and reward employees who had been with a company the longest, but today, you don’t see it as often. Employees, especially younger generations, are looking for more than just “job security,” and companies are responding.

“In today's high-demand environment of the global marketplace, talented people are so hard to retain and Gen Y-ers have so little tolerance for dues-paying assignments, why would any company put a high-performer through unnecessary paces just to satisfy a bureaucratic requirement?” say Jack and Suzie Welch in their BusinessWeek.com column “High Performers Won’t Wait.” “That uncompetitive practice is a throwback to the days when an employee's time served could, and often did, trump his value added.”

Companies have come to recognize their faulty logic when it comes to tenure—that an employee who has performed a task for 20 years does not necessarily add more value or knowledge than a newer employee. Promoting an employee simply because he’s been there longer often means missing the boat on utilizing newer, more diverse talent.

The Strategic Role of the Financial Professional

Also, as more firms engage in business consulting, accountants are becoming key players in strategic business decisions.

Folkestad notes, “In the last 10 years, more and more companies have been using financial professionals in roles that aren’t financial. CFOs are brought in on sales meetings to discuss customer profitability. Moreover, they’re brought into other departments for their analytical capabilities, marketing, creative abilities, and to help those businesses operate.”

The controls put in place by Sarbanes-Oxley have put accountants at the forefront of strategic discussions, so there is an increasing need for diverse financial professionals who add value in multiple arenas—people who can not only crunch but analyze numbers, evaluate company performance, and make recommendations about how to improve future performance.

“It’s about what you can do.”

“As of right now, tenure is clearly less important—it’s about what you can do. If you’ve got a sales personality and a finance background, you’re a lot more versatile,” says Folkestad. “Employers are asking, ‘What can you do for me today’?”

Companies recognize that they must keep up with the times—and that young employees with fresh ideas and experience can add value that employees who have been at the same position for years often cannot. New and diverse talent promotes change and innovation, so many companies are turning to consultants with knowledge of cutting-edge technology and a range of experiences in the industry to help during times of change.

Folkestad doesn’t see this changing any time soon. “The finance and accounting world is going more and more toward this position flexibility, high contact model. Companies are looking for people who are process-oriented, like driving change and will be able to help the company go from point A to point B.”