Black Accountants Climbing to Partnership: Navigating the Journey
Recent AICPA surveys (2019, 2021) report the disproportionate dropout of Black professionals from partnership tracks in U.S. public accounting firms, highlighting the need to better understand their experiences. Despite calls for examination, our understanding of how Black professionals attain partnership remains limited, partly due to the difficulty of accessing the few Black partners in public accounting. To address this gap in the literature, we interview 26 Black professionals (20 partners and 6 aspirants) to uncover their experiences in reaching partnership in predominantly non-Black firms. Guided by field theory, we identify key milestones (e.g., obtaining honest feedback), the race-driven challenges they face in achieving each milestone (e.g., due to the prevailing field conditions where White supervisors are fearful to offer critical feedback to them), and practices they use to succeed (e.g., phrasing requests for critical feedback in an approachable way). We discuss implications and outline important questions for future research.
Dr. Eldar Maksymov - Bio
Professor Maksymov grew up in Ukraine—part of the Soviet Union until 1991. This background gave him a deep appreciation for the importance of strong capital markets and mechanisms that ensure their proper functioning. After working as an auditor at Deloitte from 2004 to 2009, he earned his Ph.D. in Accounting at Cornell University and joined ASU in 2014, where he teaches ACC450, "Principles of Auditing," both in-person and online, using his solo-authored textbook that has been adopted by major universities. His research focuses on the mechanisms that shape the quality of financial reporting and auditing. Utilizing qualitative and survey methods, Professor Maksymov has published his work in the accounting field’s premier journals, including the Journal of Accounting and Economics; Journal of Accounting Research; The Accounting Review; Contemporary Accounting Research; and Accounting, Organizations, and Society.