New research from the Illinois CPA Society (ICPAS) reveals a readiness divide between early-career professionals and managers, with growing skills gaps fueling generational friction.
Based on insights gathered from senior leaders across public accounting, corporate finance and academia, along with feedback from emerging leaders managing new hires, ICPAS developed and launched a survey in early 2025 to measure how prepared early careerists felt in their first full-time roles and how prepared managers felt their early-career employees were.
Utilizing a survey covering 37 skills among six distinct categories — in addition to measuring perceptions around support for skills development, feedback, motivation to build new skills, and more related to workforce readiness — ICPAS fielded 470 responses comprised of 185 early careerists with less than five years of experience in the accounting and finance profession, and 285 managers who supervise employees with less than five years of experience.
The findings reveal wide divides and consistent disconnects between early-career professionals and those who manage them. Learn more about these findings in the ICPAS’s report, “The Readiness Divide: How Next-Gen Accounting Talent Measures Up.”