PwC Vice Chair Wesley Bricker, Co-Leader of the firm’s U.S. Trust Solutions, spoke to a standing-room-only crowd at the Dolan School’s most recent Dean’s Executive Forum this month. His talk, “Leadership, the Accounting Profession and its Future” focused on a pivotal concept in accounting: Trust.

“Trust is critical to business. It’s the currency of business,” said Bricker. “Whenever PwC provides assurance that a set of financial statements can be used and relied upon to make decisions about pricing or evaluating a board, it involves trust.”  At the same time, whenever someone prepares a tax return and it’s filed with the IRS or a taxing authority, that information also has to be trusted. “The company that hires us to do the audit of their financial statements, they already know the details. They need us…to convey assurance that the numbers are right.”

The market is thirsting for trust, he continued. “With trust, we get investors to the table.” He reminded students that when a company’s financials are trusted, their capital is less costly. Conversely, “in markets where you don’t have well developed assurance, the cost of capital is higher.”

Dean Zhan Li and Assistant Professor Kara Hunter, CPA, PhD, who teaches accounting and taxation, hosted the forum.

Bricker took an accounting class in college and became fascinated by the idea that one could convey information about value, performance, and progress through numbers, knowing that others would use that information to make important decisions.

“When I started, I had no idea where I would end up,” he said. “This is a team sport.  The only way I got there was spending time with other people. I had to be intensely curious about the world, because the world is never static.”

After earning a law degree, Bricker was tapped in 2016 to work at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).  “I had the experience in balance sheets. I had the experience in public policy and the way information would get incorporated into decisions about whether banks were safe and stable or unsound and toppling over.” He left the SEC in 2019 to rejoin PwC.

Dr. Hunter asked Bricker his thoughts on the impact of AI on the profession, and he encouraged students to become familiar with ChatGPT if they haven’t already.

“There’s a place for large language models. Using a computer to enable you to focus on critical areas like what’s missing in a company’s business model allows us to spend our time on higher order issues. AI will unlock the next wave of innovation for all of us.” PwC has put a billion dollars into AI, he added.

During the conversation, Dean Li highlighted that Fairfield Dolan ranks second in the nation in its percentage of graduates recruited by the Big Four accounting firms. That came as no surprise to Bricker.

“That’s why I’m here,” he replied. “We recruit the very best.”