In fact, accountants and other professionals too.
The other day I was talking to someone who was disgruntled with their accountant. The biggest trigger for it was a conversation they'd had about their tax return. The client was told by the accountant that they had to make a small tax payment for the year. Normally, the client received a refund, so quite reasonably asked - why is it a payment this year, rather than a refund? The answer they were given was - because that's what our software says.
Lots of professionals think that the only thing that matters is that work is technically accurate - and in this case, it turns out that the return was right, and because of an erroneous PAYE code during the year a small payment was due. But whether the return is right is not the only thing that matters. It's equally important that you can explain why things are the way they are, and make sure your customers feel comfortable and confident. A client who feels like they understand and are comfortable with a return that's actually inaccurate is going to be miles happier than one who is confused by a return that's absolutely accurate. Of course, the aim is for the return to be accurate AND for it to be understood by the client! But from a purely business perspective, the explanation of the thing is more important than the thing itself.
One of the checks that we make sure is done on every tax return is that, if a payment or refund is due, the person who prepared the return knows exactly why and can explain it to the customer (and it does get explained to them, as a matter of course). That's where lots of the value in the process lies - perhaps most of it. It seems like such a basic thing, but we so often come across cases where people are unhappy with the excellent work that their accountant has done because they don't understand it. It's probably the single biggest issue we hear about from people who move to us from another firm. It's such a shame that the accountant has gone 95% of the way to doing an excellent job, but hasn't done that last little bit.
I do have sympathy with accountants and other professionals who do good work and then present it for approval by the customer without explaining it properly in a way that the customer can undestand (or, in the case described above, without even being able to explain it in any way at all). If you're not careful you can become quite nonchalant about telling people to pay large amounts of tax, because you see big tax payments all the time. But it's so important to consider how things look from the client's end of things.
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