The document provides questions to ask when looking to hire a certified public accountant (CPA). Key questions include verifying they are a legitimate CPA with the proper licensing and qualifications, understanding their availability and ability to meet emergency needs, learning about their client experience and areas of tax specialty, and ensuring they have measures in place to securely protect financial data and documents. Asking these questions helps evaluate a potential CPA's suitability and credentials for the specific business needs.

1. What Questions To Ask When Looking For A CPA?
Having a close, strong relationship with your Accounting firm is
fundamental to small business owners. Accounting plays an important
role in running a business as it helps with tracking income and
expenditures, ensuring compliance, and providing owners with the
financial information that is vital for making business decisions.
The right accounting firm means the difference between success and
failure in your business. Not only it will save money and keep you
compliant, but it will also provide focus and professional responsiveness
from an advisor who is on your team all year long.
Hence it is essential to carefully question, do a background check, and
set up an appointment before hiring a CPA. But before you meet your
next CPA face to face, you need to make a list of questions that you
should ask when you meet them.
These questions will help you evaluate and understand the possible CPA
you intend to hire. Besides, you will have a clear picture of their work and
will they be able to help you when you are stuck in a situation.
Let’s take a look at these questions.
Are you a legitimate CPA?
This should be your first question for them. Ask them whether they are
licensed and have a Tax Identification Number. Also, ask them how long
have they been certified as a CPA.

2. You should also enquire about their education, qualification, and
experience. This will give you a good idea of whether they are
professional or not.
Will they be available readily to serve you?
Even though in the era of the internet it is not essential to hire a local
CPA, hiring one will have an added advantage. You can ask your
accountant whether he will be able to come up to your place if you need
to get some paperwork or speak to you virtually online.
Can he set up a meeting in urgency and provide any necessary
documentation you need in the case of an emergency.
Make sure to consult a CPA who already has a good reputation in your
area and is known for working legally.
How many and what types of clients do you work with?
This question will help you get an insight into their client base and the
types of industry they have experienced in. You will know whether they
are qualified enough to handle your business or not.
If you are not satisfied with the superficial answer you get. You can ask
them to dive deeper into their client base. You can also ask them
whether they have clients of the service sector, product base, or
manufacturers.
These questions will help you analyze the experience and the industry
type they are more experienced in handling.

3. Tell me about your tax background and specialty?
Similar to the question listed above, this question is also very probing.
This question when coupled with the previous one gives you a clear
picture of the working background and specialty of the Certified Public
Accountant.
Keep in mind that all the situation of every client’s tax is different and not
all CPAs are the same and follow the same working procedure.
Some of the CPAs out there only specialize in simple W-2 taxation, some
are proficient in international and foreign tax while others do well in co-
corporate taxation.
This question will help you determine whether this CPA will be the right
choice for your business. For instance, if you want to hire an accountant
with experience in corporate tax, you will know that a CPA with
experience only in W-2 Individuals will not be a good choice.
How will you ensure the security of my data and documents?
This is another important question to ask your accountant. Nowadays
when security threats are looming everywhere, whether online or offline;
it is essential to know what effects they will take to ensure the safety of
your documents and other stats so that they do not get leaked
accidentally.
All the data right from the one collected to pay the taxes to the
employee’s payroll details should be in the safest of hands.
These are some of the most essential questions that will help you see a
clearer picture of the CPA you are willing to hire. Once you’re done with

4. the interview, you should ask yourself how the interview went and was to
truly satisfied with the answers. Also, look at the bigger picture so that
you do not run into any issues later on.
Know more: https://bit.ly/3kY9lIO
Source: https://medium.com/@pasfirm11/what-questions-to-ask-when-
looking-for-a-cpa-c53199ed8b4e