What Gen Z Brings to Your Firm
With Chayton Farlee
Recorded live at Bridging the Gap 2025, Terrell Turner sits down with Chayton Farlee, a Gen Z accountant whose first-ever conference was Bridging the Gap itself, on Episode 266 of The Unique CPA. What started as a LinkedIn ad turned into a career-defining experience, and Chayton has been vocal about BTG ever since. He makes a pointed case to Terrell for why accounting firm owners should stop sleeping on Gen Z talent, not just for their comfort with AI and automation, but for the energy and outside-in perspective they bring to firms that have been doing things the same way for decades. Chayton moderated a “Gen Z Effect” panel at BTG 2025, where he gave firm owners a frank look at what it’s actually like to be a young person entering the profession right now, and why the opportunity to tap into that talent pool is bigger than most realize.
Show Transcript Hide Transcript
Hello and welcome to The Unique CPA with your host, Terrell Turner. Bridging the Gap 2026 is coming soon, so we’re bringing you conversations from last year’s event. Stay tuned for the thoughts of top voices in the profession as we look forward to BTG Charlotte. The Unique CPA is brought to you by RandyCrabtree.com. Log on to learn more.
Welcome back to another episode of The Unique CPA Podcast. We are at Bridging the Gap 2025, and I have the pleasure of sitting down with one of our amazing speakers. Jayton, welcome to the show, man.
So excited, man. Bridging the Gap is the place to be every year, so.
Now, I guess you are a bit newer to the accounting community and I would say, you know, you bring a fresh face, fresh perspective, so I want to know, what was your first conference that you went to?
Bridging the Gap actually!
What made you want to go to Bridging the Gap that first year?
So I actually saw an ad for Bridging the Gap on LinkedIn early—no—I think it was late 2023, and I’m like super into networking, right? If you’ve seen me on LinkedIn. I just love getting to know people and seeing their interesting takes on the profession, and that seemed like the perfect place to be. I think they were marketing it as there was a scholarship for students to go, like there was a cheaper rate. I had heard it was a very like, intimate conference, like, you know, less people, more one-on-one interactions instead of just being part of like a 10,000 person mass of people like you get at some of the bigger conferences. And I just, I wanted to go, I wanted to get to know the amazing people I had, you know, met on LinkedIn, you know, actually meet them in person.
Now, I guess with the bar set so high from like you said, the people you met online and all the things you heard about it when you showed up, like did the conference live up to your expectations or like, what was your reaction after, you know, being at your first one?
10 times better than being online. If seeing all this stuff about cloud accounting and the future of the profession was like cool on LinkedIn, meeting the people in person, and getting to see it in action was like 10 times cooler than LinkedIn. And then, you know, you’ve made connections and chatted with people online, but it’s just so much different actually getting to like look them in the eye and talk to them face to face. And I made friends that, you know, I call them on the phone all the time now from that conference. So the accounting field is like such a special space. I wish the students could see that there’s this connection and this excitement for the future, because I feel like in the classroom and you know, just through the mundane, you know, studying for the CPA or nothing against the Big Four, but just like working at such a big firm that you’re just another number? I don’t think you see the excitement that we get to feel here at Bridging the Gap.
You know, I think that’s a really good point. And it’s something that many people in the profession who’s been around for a long time, and I know it’s a really big deal for Randy, is how do we really communicate that the accounting industry is, hey, it’s a great profession to get into. So I’m very curious about like when you’re having conversations with other people who you know are students on their journey, what are some of the things that you’re saying to them about like when they ask about like, hey, what is accounting really like?
Well, I think one of the first things is there’s a lot of remote firms here, right? So that’s something that cloud accounting firms do different than a lot of the profession, the use of technology. So like, I mean, the content you put out on like technology and how you’re leveraging it at your firm, there’s none of that in the classroom, you know, it’s just straight debits and credits and you know, we all love debits and credits. We chose accounting. But there’s something different when you get to like tie AI and automation and Xero and Ramp and you know, all your different software vendors, there’s just such a different, like, excitement, right? Like my generation grew up with technology at our fingertips, right? It’s not something new to us. So to be able to apply, you know, the ancient practice of debits and credits to technology is just, to me, that’s so exciting. So I like to tell people about that.
And then, you know, the people. I think that’s the most important thing. You come to a place like Bridging the Gap and it’s real people that want to make real connections. It’s not superficial or just work-based. I think that was one of the biggest things that I’ve tried to pass on to other students and like, tell them after leaving Bridging the Gap last year, was this sense of community and connection that we all felt at Bridging the Gap. Much bigger crowd this year than last year, which is a great thing. You know, we’re so excited for it, but last year I just left with this like amazing feeling that I got to know so many different people in such a short amount of time, and I don’t think most students are like getting to feel that or like be a part of that. And that community is just, I mean, it’s so special. Everybody who’s at Bridging the Gap, they talk about that community.
And that’s a great thing because I’ve been telling a couple people, like I’ve seen a lot of new faces and when I was talking to the team behind the scenes, they told me like, yeah, we’ve had 50% growth year over year for the conference. I’m like, okay, that’s why I’m seeing so many new faces. But I think to what you’re saying, I mean, it is so cool to really see that and, like this year you have a talk this year. You’re on stage with a couple people, and you guys are talking about the “Gen Z effect.” So give us a little bit of a context on what is that conversation going to be about, or what it’s going to be like.
The biggest thing we want to do is answer firm owners’ questions about Gen Z. You know, there’s quite a bit of an age gap between today’s accounting firm owners and you know, the people coming right out of school. And granted, I’m a little bit on the older side from Gen Z, but I want to show firm owners that they can leverage the skillset, the unique skillset that Gen Z has in their firms. We live in an age of a lot of different ways to do kind of the entry level work right now, right? Like we’re on the cusp of like AI being able to reconcile QuickBooks and Xero accounts, right? And outsourcing is a huge thing, right? That a lot of firms are leveraging. It’s cheaper and you know, faster to streamline and get people who are experienced like in and going faster.
But I think there’s a unique opportunity for firms to embrace U.S. interns and people who are just graduating college and leverage their skillset in their firm. These students know AI probably better than a lot of the firm owners, right? They’ve had to use AI in school, they have grown up on technology like I said before, a lot of them are really innovative and they want to help firms grow and they bring this different type of growth mindset. Not that previous generations before didn’t have it, but it’s just different. And so I’ve seen a lot of negativity on LinkedIn around like hiring US interns or like even, you know, hiring entry level staff here in the U.S., and I kind of want to give a perspective of like what it looks like for students looking at these cloud-based firms, and then also show firm owners that like there’s a huge opportunity here that they can tap into.
Yeah, I think that’s really good because I’ll just be very honest with you, as you kind of go through your accounting career, like some of the excitement that people had when they first started, you know it through the process, it kind of dies down. So having the younger generation bringing that excitement, that knowledge, that eagerness back into a firm, I think keeps it alive because in my firm we got several Gen Z employees. And I will say it has brought a new sense of life to the firm that I didn’t expect when we hired them, but I was like, hey, they have a skillset, and what I didn’t know is they were going to bring their skillset plus their energy, and it’s really made a very big difference. So I guess, how has that been for you, as with the firm that you work for, you work with, how has that environment welcomed you?
Yeah. So the firm I work for is very unique, so I got to hired on as an intern, and then we hired three U.S. interns right after I got hired. It’s just such a unique feeling, like working with a lot of Gen Z, right? We get the amazing opportunity to learn from CPAs who have worked, you know, been in the field for 20 years, and have all of those years of experience and all of that. You know, they’ve seen everything now. But then also adding that on to the excitement that Gen Z feels now, and also the innovation that’s coming into the profession, right? Like there’s a few of us Gen Z’ers who listen to Jason Staats and The Unique CPA podcast and The Accounting Podcast, and we’re dialed into, you know, what’s happening every day in the profession. Bringing that excitement combined with higher level experience, I think it just, it makes like a superpower firm. ’Cause you know, Gen Z doesn’t have the experience that a CPA with 20 years has. They haven’t seen that stuff. They haven’t been a CFO or a controller or gone through the hundreds of audits that experienced CPAs have. But they bring the excitement like you talked about, and then also these new perspectives from all these different sources that are coming into the profession right now. I mean, I don’t think ten years ago we had all this accounting content like we have now.
That is absolutely true. So I would say as we wrap up, you know, one of the questions I’ve been asking everyone that I’ve sat down with is, let’s say you and I are sitting now having a conversation with someone who’s never been to Bridging the Gap. And we’re talking about Bridging the Gap 2026, what would you say to them about why they should come to Bridging the Gap 2026?
One word: relationships. I was going to say connections, but I think it goes deeper than that. It’s one thing to make a connection on LinkedIn, it’s another thing to, you know, have a few calls with someone or, you know, shake their hand here in person, but the relationships you’re going to build here at Bridging the Gap with the amazing CPAs and EAs and accountants and bookkeepers and tax preparers that are here is just amazing. So if you want to build real relationships that are going to last like your career in accounting, then you have to be at Bridging the Gap.
Awesome. I love it. Well, Chayton, thank you so much for coming on, man. It’s been a pleasure. I appreciate it.
Let’s go, rest of the week. Here we go!
About the Guest
Chayton Farlee is an accounting professional currently working as an Assurance Associate at CliftonLarsonAllen, based out of their Sacramento, California office. He is recognized within the accounting community as an advocate for student success, networking, and modernizing the profession. With a passion for the “golden age of accounting,” Chayton advocates for lowered barriers to entry, improved technology integration, and cultural changes to benefit early-career professionals.
Meet the Host
Randy Crabtree, co-founder and partner of Tri-Merit Specialty Tax Professionals, is a widely followed author, lecturer and podcast host for the accounting profession. Since 2019, he has hosted the The Unique CPA podcast, which ranks among the world’s 5% most popular programs (Source: Listen Notes). You can find articles from Randy in Accounting Today’s “Voices” column and the AICPA Tax Advisor, and he is a regular presenter at conferences and virtual training events hosted by CPAmerica, Prime Global, Leading Edge Alliance (LEA), Allinial Global and several state CPA societies. Randy also provides continuing professional education to Top 100 CPA firms across the country.