[FAKE NEWS]: All accountants are Introverts

All Accountants are introverted and find it hard to build relationships in organisations

Around 80% of accountants are introverted so its hard for them to get out into the business and make connections.

I’m calling “fake news” on this.

And I have the facts to prove it.

But before we get there let’s talk about how I managed to disprove this “stereotype” or “assumption” that most non finance people have about accountants.

All accountants are introverts?

Even accountants think this about accountants.

And if its true, what hope have we got if we want to influence the organisation.

We have our data and our facts, but unfortunately that only gets you so far. And it gets you nowhere if you are introverted and people can’t hear or see you.

So how could I test this theory?

2 years ago, while working with the senior leadership of a client I was introduced to the personality profiling tool Insights Discovery.

I will be honest I had not heard a lot about it previously, as it was big in Europe but not so much Australia. But this was being delivered by one of the regional HR practitioners of one of the world’s leading global brands for their Australian leadership team, and I was invited to attend. So I thought it must have some form of backing and authority.

I had previously had exposure to all of the usual suspects of preference tools that are out there. MBTI? (Myers-Briggs), DiSC?, HBDI?, etc. I had seen them all in my corporate career, and although I got something out of all of them, I also very quickly forgot what I learnt and didn’t really enjoy being pigeon holed as a particular “type” of personality.

Those profiles are a bit narrow I thought. I think I can be all of them depending on the situation is what I thought.

I also found I couldn’t remember what I was

The letters I was given for Myers Briggs were hard to remember. Was it ISTJ or was it ENFP. Who knows, and the fact I could do it free I did it several times and got a different answer every time. Sometimes I was “I” sometimes an “E”. Was I Introverted or Extroverted? I was none the wiser.

Then I used DiSC? and couldn’t even remember what the individual letters stood for and kept being told I was a D or a C or perhaps a DC. Which was an abbreviated form of an insult where I came from where D stood for dumb and C …..)

Anyway, D’s are extroverts, C’s are introverts…..WTF?

And then HBDI, I got lumped as having a preference for Blue because I was in finance and had a background in it, and was being ridiculed because I wasn’t triple dominant or whole brained like some of my colleagues in the senior roles.

After that I was triple dominant in frustration.

And then I was introduced to Insights Discovery.

I found the colour energies and the words a lot easier to relate to:

-       Cool Blue (Introverted Thinker), yep got that you like to take you time and consider things and will think before you speak. Cool Blue is a good descriptor I can remember.

-       Fiery Red (Extroverted Thinker), yes make sense you are probably wanting to be in charge and have an opinion about everything. Fiery Red is a good descriptor I can remember.

-       Sunshine Yellow (Extroverted Feeling) sounds exciting, I bet you like the sound of your own voice and to be the centre of attention. Sunshine Yellow is a good descriptor I can remember.

-       Earth Green (Introverted Feeling), yes a lot more connected to people’s feelings and a values based individual who prefers the one on one chats. Earth Green is a good descriptor I can remember.

I got it, made sense even if, again, I tended to stereotype everyone.

Even the team I worked with stereotyped each other.

“Oh, Andrew you are definitely Cool Blue”. Until the facilitator handed us our profiles and said “And Andrew, you are not Cool Blue”.

Now he had my attention.

What was then explained to me is that every person has a mixture of all of the colour energies and that you as an individual have a preference for some, and a lack of preference for others. Not an avoidance, just a lack of preference.

And you dial these up and down as you see fit. Some are easy to dial up and down. Some not so much.

You can do this consciously or less consciously. You can have a persona that is one type at work, and another at home when you are sitting there watching Netflix in your pyjamas with a glass of red in hand, not thinking about it.

What dawned on me with Insights Discovery was that everyone has a preference and can tap into certain colour energies quite easily, and other colour energies require a little bit more effort.

It’s not that you can’t access them, its more that you have to put in a little more effort to access those energies.

And everyone may have a preference for 1,2 or 3 energies.

For me I have a preference for Cool Blue and Fiery Red energy over Sunshine Yellow and Earth Green.

This tells me I have a preference for Thinking over Feeling, but im ambivalent between Introversion and Extroversion and can cross between them easily enough.

It doesn’t mean I am no good at the Sunshine Yellow type stuff it just means it requires more effort.

For instance, I do a lot of keynote speaking. Something perfect for someone who has a preference for Sunshine Yellow energy, which isn’t me. But it doesn’t mean I am not good at it. All it means is that when I do it, I have to prepare, get myself ready, focus on it, and afterwards all I really want to do is relax as I am exhausted. But I usually do a great job at it (or so the feedback forms say).

As I discovered this about myself I decided, I wanted to be an Insights Discovery Practitioner and I wanted to apply the concepts to the Finance Business Partner Training I do with finance and accounting individuals and teams.

So, are Finance people introverted?

Finance “People” are stereotyped as Introverted and I was preaching that if they couldn’t build strong relationships with non finance people, they would never be good finance business partners.

They had to engage their Extroversion qualities.

So I became accredited as an Insights Discovery Practitioner.

And for the last twelve months have been training and developing Finance Business Partners and utilising the profiling tool of Insights Discovery to help them become more aware of their own preferences and the preferences of others.

Over that time I have profiled hundreds of finance staff.

Enough to get a large enough sample of their preferences for Cool Blue, Fiery Red, Sunshine Yellow and Earth Green energies. And by default Introversion / Extroversion / Thinking / Feeling.

And determine once and for all, are Accountants and Finance staff Introverted or not?

Are 80% of Accountants introverted and its holding us back?

And the results are in!

This first graph is a summary of all profiles, and their dominant preference.

So the colour energy that is strongest with those tested.

The type of pigeon holing you might get with other profiling tools.

By looking at this, you could conclude that it is fair to say Accountants and Finance staff do have a preference for Introversion (the Cool Blue and Earth Green energies). They are slightly more Thinking types than Feeling, and a 60/40 preference to Introversion may actually infer the stereotype is true. One and a half times as many introverts and extroverts.

Not as large as we get told at 80%, but still a large enough variance to suggest it may be valid.

Thankfully, Insights Discovery goes a little deeper than that.

Some people have a preference for more than one energy (actually a lot do). And once you layer over all of the preferred colour energies you get a different answer.

If you are lost, consider this.

I have a dominant preference for Fiery Red but I also have a second preference for Cool Blue. Its not as high as Fiery Red but I can access Cool Blue easily with not a lot of effort.

I would fall into Fiery Red in the above graphs but into both Fiery Red and Cool Blue in the below graphs.

So this is how Finance and Accountants look once we graph all of their preferred energies.

Similar shape, but not as polarising.

Only 54% of Accountants and Finance staff have a preference for Introversion. This tells us that although Introversion may be our Dominant preference, there are other preferences that we can tap into quite easily and the extroversion skills and behaviours we need to engage other functions isn’t that big of a stretch to access.

In fact 46% of us can access it quite easily without much effort.

And the best bit about Insights Discovery.

Once you know your preferences, you then learn how to recognise the preferences of other people, and then adapt your style accordingly so that you are more effective with them – and that is useful.

So are Accountant and Finance staff introverted?

My conclusion is we have a marginal preference for it, but its not overwhelming.

Its almost a 50/50 split, and is nowhere near the 80% number that’s bandied around in stereotype land.

What is important, is that even if we have a preference for it, we can access those extroversion skills we need to be more influential a little easier than we think.

How do we do that, unfortunately that is for another post.

About the Author 

Andrew Jepson is one of Australia's leading authorities on Finance Business Partnering. He is the lead facilitator on the Development Program "Compliance to Commercial" and author of the book "Compliance to Commercial: The QUIET Approach to Finance Business Partnering.

Andrew has a strong passion for developing up and coming CAs and CPAs and seeing the profession excel as trusted business partners to industry. He is the APAC Partner for The Finance Business Partner, a leading global consultancy firm dedicated to training Finance teams and helping them become better finance business partners.

?