Here's the lowdown
YHB uses 30-, 60-, and 90-day check-ins plus stay interviews so leaders can hear about problems before an employee reaches the exit interview.
WBL CPAs + Advisors gives employees recurring access through department meetings, quarterly managing-partner sessions, and an annual firmwide update.
Mowery & Schoenfeld puts staff and partners on committees for recruiting, retention, CPA exam support, mentoring, and volunteering, giving employee ideas a place to become action.
An exit interview can explain why a good accountant left. A stay interview can give the firm a chance to stop it.
That small timing change runs through some of the 2026 Best Firms to Work For. The strongest firms do not treat listening as a survey that disappears into human resources. They build it into meetings, manager routines, and employee-led work.
Here's why it matters: people rarely quit the first day they feel ignored. They leave after the same small problem survives three busy seasons and nobody owns the fix.
Ask before the resignation arrives
A stay interview is a conversation with an employee who is still on the team.
The questions are simple. What keeps you here? What makes work harder than it should be? When did you last think about leaving? What could the firm change in the next 90 days?
YHB CPAs & Consultants uses stay interviews along with 30-, 60-, and 90-day conversations. The practice reaches every level, including the chief executive.
That rhythm gives the firm more than an annual satisfaction score. A 30-day check can reveal a broken onboarding handoff. A 90-day talk can show whether the fix worked.
YHB's career page describes leadership circles of three to five firm members who share knowledge, feedback, and support. The circle gives a new employee a regular place to ask questions instead of waiting for a formal review.
Access has to be designed
Leaders often say their door is open. Employees still have to decide whether walking through it feels safe, useful, or worth the risk.
WBL CPAs + Advisors creates several routes instead. Employees have frequent department meetings, quarterly sessions with the managing partner, and an annual firmwide meeting that explains how the business is doing.
Each forum solves a different problem. A department meeting can handle workflow. A managing-partner session can surface a firmwide obstacle. The annual meeting gives employees context about the firm's direction.
WBL's career page says its people-and-culture team supports development, well-being, and professional growth. The reported meeting cadence shows how that promise reaches employees in practice.
Give ideas somewhere to go
Listening fails when an employee raises an issue and hears nothing back.
Mowery & Schoenfeld gives staff and partners roles on committees for recruiting, retention, CPA exam success, mentoring, and volunteering. That structure turns feedback into a workstream with members, meetings, and a result to deliver.
Porte Brown makes the other half explicit: communicate expectations and give as much feedback as possible. Employees need to know what good work looks like before a review tells them they missed it.
This does not mean every suggestion becomes policy. It means every serious suggestion gets a clear response: yes, no, not yet, or we need more evidence.
Silence is also an answer. It tells employees the next idea is not worth sharing.
Close the loop like a control
Accounting firms already know how to run a control. Assign an owner. Set a frequency. Keep evidence. Review exceptions. Fix repeat failures.
Employee listening can work the same way.
Record themes without turning a candid conversation into a surveillance file. Give each fix an owner and due date. Tell the team what changed. Then ask again in 30 or 90 days.
The useful measure is not how many surveys were sent. It is whether recurring problems disappear. If three people flag unclear promotion rules and the same complaint returns next quarter, the loop is still open.
Bottom line: a firm does not prove it listens by collecting more comments. It proves it listens when employees can point to something that changed.
The best time to learn why a strong accountant might leave is while there is still time to give them a reason to stay.
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