Why Gen Z Is Walking Away from Accounting
Why Gen Z Is Walking Away from Accounting
KPMG’s latest figures show a quarter of under-30s leaving financial services in the past year. That headline matters to accountancy because the drivers are the same across audit, tax and advisory. Younger entrants want autonomy and visible impact. A pay packet and a training contract no longer guarantee patience through three grinding qualification years followed by incremental promotion. The profession has to show why staying makes sense now.
The perception gap and the question of meaning
Many students still picture accountancy as narrow work with long hours and a fixed ladder. Inside most firms the reality is broader. Client work crosses strategy, data, sustainability and transformation. Yet the story told at campus events and on careers pages still skews to compliance and timesheets. If first impressions underplay advisory craft and technology fluency, ambitious graduates will opt for start-ups or product roles where agency is obvious from day one. Closing that narrative gap is the first filter in the funnel.
Flexibility helps but does not settle the question of meaning. Firms have introduced staggered hours, hybrid patterns and wellbeing support. Good. The sticking point is decision-making power. Gen Z wants to see that ideas travel quickly from the team room to the client. That requires fewer hand-offs, slimmer approval chains and a culture where a newly qualified associate can lead a defined workstream with a partner’s backing. This is not about throwing juniors in at the deep end but about designing work so responsibility grows early and visibly.
Rethinking career design and development
The profession still sells progression as a sequence of titles. Younger cohorts want arcs, not ladders. They value rotations that build range, not just seniority. A twelve-month path that moves through audit analytics, ESG assurance and a client secondment will keep curiosity alive and skills current. It also answers the entrepreneurial impulse many Gen Z accountants express. Give people the room to build something within the firm, and the itch to leave to build elsewhere softens.
Training should also move at the speed of the tools. New joiners arrive comfortable with data pipelines, AI prompts and visualisation. Too many programmes teach software in isolation from client outcomes, or treat automation as a bolt-on. A better approach links every module to a real engagement. For example, pair a controls review with an exercise that uses workflow automation to cut cycle time on a live process, then show the saving in the client’s P&L. Technology shouldn’t be a threat to billable hours. It should be the reason clients keep you in the room.
Purpose, sponsorship and culture
Gen Z looks for work that tracks to real-world results. Accountancy firms sit close to the levers that move organisations, and that proximity should be tangible. Teams working on cash forecasting that kept a supplier network afloat through a liquidity crunch should hear that story told internally and externally. Colleagues who shaped a client’s emissions baseline should see how the work guided investment decisions. When people can point to outcomes, the day-to-day grind feels like progress rather than attrition.
Mentoring needs teeth. Most firms offer buddy schemes and coaching sessions, but what retains talent is sponsorship. A sponsor names you for opportunities when you are not in the room and makes the case when allocation is tight. Building sponsorship into utilisation and reward systems changes behaviour quickly. So does transparency around stretch assignments. People stay when they can see the door to high-value work is not locked.
Busy season remains the knot no one wants to pull. The work will spike. The question is how the spike feels. Teams who know they will get genuine recovery time, meaningful say in scheduling and the tools to strip drudge work out of the file are less likely to burn out. A small operational shift can have outsized impact.
A visible promise for the next generation
So what can firms do that feels real within a single quarter, and noticeable to a twenty-three-year-old on a client site? Start small but make it tangible. Redesign one graduate intake around a clear, visible promise. Give every new joiner a live analytics project to work on. Ask them to identify one measurable improvement for a client and present it back with data.
Pair each person with a named sponsor who takes ownership of their early trajectory, setting two milestones from day one: a stretch assignment within six months and a defined pathway into a sector or specialist area by month nine. Publish updates on the intranet, highlight early wins, and act on feedback when the cohort flags barriers. Even removing one recurring blocker sends a stronger message than any new slide deck.
Gen Z is not allergic to professional services. It is allergic to opacity, slow feedback and work that fails to connect to outcomes. Accountancy can offer the opposite when it chooses. The firms that turn that choice into daily practice will keep their youngest people long enough to become their most valuable ones.
This article is sourced from the following link:
https://www.accountancyage.com/2025/10/27/why-gen-z-is-walking-away-from-accounting/
