Adopting a sustainability mindset is a practical approach to risk management, operational resilience, and long-term value creation. But in a quickly evolving landscape, it can be hard for clients to know how and where to start. As a CPA firm, you are uniquely positioned to guide clients who need assistance, helping them manage risk and unlock new opportunities for resilience and long-term growth.
What is a sustainability mindset?
Let’s start at the beginning. A sustainability mindset is a way of thinking and acting that places environmental, social, and long-term economic considerations at the heart of your decision-making. It’s a commitment to making business decisions today that don’t compromise the needs of future generations.
Why Should CPA Firms Encourage a Sustainability Mindset?
- Mitigate Climate Risks: By planning for climate-related disruptions such as flooding or severe storms, your clients can minimize operational downtime and protect their assets.
- Ensure Resource Security: Strategic resource planning helps avoid shortages of critical inputs like minerals or water, safeguarding production, and profitability.
- Unlock Green Tax Incentives: Governments offer a wide range of green tax credits, deductions, and grants to businesses that adopt environmentally friendly practices which can directly reduce your clients’ tax burden, offset the costs of sustainable investments, and improve cash flow.
- Avoid Financial Penalties: Staying ahead of environmental regulations and compliance requirements reduces the risk of costly fines and legal issues.
- Manage Social Risks: Addressing labor practices, human rights, and community impact can help your clients maintain a positive reputation and avoid social backlash.
- Strengthen Risk Management: A sustainability focus leads to more robust risk management practices that reduce your clients’ exposure to unforeseen challenges.
- Control Costs: As prices for non-renewable resources rise, sustainable practices help your clients manage expenses and maintain competitiveness.
How CPA Firms Can Help Clients Develop a Sustainability Mindset
Embrace a Strategic Approach to Outsourcing
- Integrate Sustainability into the Client’s Financial Strategy: Many organizations struggle to connect their sustainability initiatives with their financial strategy. As CPAs, you can help your clients repurpose valuable data collected by their Sustainability team. With the right approach, your clients can integrate data on energy use, emissions, resource consumption, and social impact into financial planning, risk management, and strategic decision-making. This helps clients see sustainability as a core part of their business strategy, not just a compliance exercise. You can also advise on investments in energy-efficient assets and renewable resources and work with R&D, procurement, and operations teams to identify sustainable alternatives for products, suppliers, and processes.
- Educate and Communicate the Value: Resistance to change is common, but you can help clients overcome it by leading training sessions and workshops. Draw on success stories highlighting tangible cost-saving or risk-reduction benefits to make the case more compelling. You can help finance teams understand how to interpret sustainability data, assess its impact on business risks and opportunities, and incorporate it into financial reporting. To build bridges between teams, you can also educate Sustainability professionals on the standards and controls needed for reliable, auditable data and how to align sustainability reporting with financial reporting frameworks.
- Identify and Manage Risks Proactively: With your expertise in risk assessment, you can help clients identify and address risks related to climate change, resource scarcity, and social responsibility and develop internal controls and processes that support sustainable practices and reporting.
- Enhance Reporting and Compliance: Your expertise in data and reporting is invaluable for helping clients implement accounting practices that seamlessly track financial and environmental performance while ensuring that clients are prepared for evolving regulations, so they reduce the risk of non-compliance.
Opportunities for CPA Firms
- Expanded Advisory and Consulting Services: Clients pursuing sustainable business models like circular economy strategies or new product-as-a-service offerings need expert guidance. Your firm can provide financial modeling, cost-benefit analysis, and compliance support, positioning you as a strategic advisor as their needs evolve.
- Tax Incentives and Credits: Your firm can help clients identify, claim, and maximize green tax benefits. Strategic tax planning for investments in renewable energy or energy-efficient assets can also deliver direct savings for clients and demonstrate your firm’s value as a forward-thinking partner.
- Sustainability Reporting: As sustainability reporting becomes a priority for businesses, your firm can help clients choose the right reporting standards ( such as ESRS, GRI or SASB) and offer ESG reporting, assurance, and help integrate environmental data into financial statements.
- Sustainability Assurance and Attestation: Demand for independent assurance for sustainability disclosures is growing, as having a third party validate ESG disclosures significantly boosts their credibility with investors, customers, and regulators. The assurance process can also help identify gaps or weaknesses in data collection, leading to more robust controls. CPA firms are well qualified to provide these services.
- Establishing Internal Controls on Sustainability Reporting: Your firm can help clients design and implement controls over sustainability information to ensure accuracy, reliability, and compliance with evolving standards. This builds trust in sustainability disclosures and reduces risk.
Stakeholder Engagement: Effective sustainability strategies require engaging a broad range of stakeholders, from investors and customers to employees and communities. Your clients will need help with stakeholder mapping, materiality assessments, and transparent communication to help them build trust and manage expectations. - Materiality Assessments (Single vs Double): Materiality assessments are foundational to sustainability reporting. Your firm can help clients conduct single materiality (focusing on financial impacts) and double materiality (considering both financial and broader societal/environmental impacts) assessments to support compliance with global standards like the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the accompanying European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS).
- Cost Savings and Risk Mitigation: You can help your clients achieve long-term cost savings and reduce exposure to regulatory or reputational risks by advising them on resource efficiency and sustainable asset choices.
- Access to Capital: Sustainable businesses often enjoy better access to green investments and loans, sometimes at more favorable rates. CPA firms can help clients prepare the necessary documentation and sustainability disclosures to attract this capital.
Ongoing Client Engagement: Sustainability initiatives often require ongoing advisory, risk assessment, and training. You can deepen client relationships and create recurring revenue opportunities while helping clients future-proof their businesses.
Pay Attention to Client Experience and Retention
Happy clients drive referrals and long-term growth. To improve your client satisfaction and strengthen relationships, try more proactive communication, value-added reporting, or add-ons like annual business reviews. Incorporate client feedback loops—such as NPS and satisfaction surveys—into your strategy to continually refine your services. A well-defined client onboarding process can also set the tone for a successful long-term partnership.
BryMar CPAs and Advisors took this approach and found that by delegating routine tasks to Scrubbed, their team had more time to provide the strategic advisory services that their clients valued. Strengthening their relationships with existing clients also positioned BryMar to attract new clients and grow their business.
For more information on how outsourcing can help you put these strategies into practice and scale your firm, check out our Guide to Outsourced Accounting and Finance for CPA Firms.
How Scrubbed Can Help
Adding sustainability offerings into your advisory and assurance services allows your CPA firm to unlock new opportunities for growth while helping clients reduce risk and control costs.
If you are interested in expanding into this area but your team lacks the time or expertise to manage complex ESG requirements, outsourced accounting can be a powerful solution. Our CPA-focused services provide specialized knowledge and up-to-date training that you want to offer clients in a scalable and cost-effective way. Scrubbed’s outsourced ESG accounting services can help you expand your client service offerings, including implementing internal controls, green energy tax advisory, sustainability preparedness, and reporting.
