They say that any science that is too complicated to understand becomes magic. Well, sometimes tax feels like magic to me. I know it, I understand it. Yet there’s always a little niggle in the back of my head that even though I know the numbers are right, they could be wrong. So what I need is an accountant I believe in.
My accountant is called Toni Hunter and she is ruthless.
Toni’s not cruel. Not unkind. She’s ruthless in the specific way that means she will tell you exactly what she thinks, at the exact moment you least want to hear it, with no visible concern for whether it is comfortable.
I chose her deliberately.
I don’t want a professional relationship that feels good and does nothing, an advisor who tells you things are looking positive, or a consultant who frames every number optimistically. I don’t need a person who, when you share an idea, says that sounds really interesting.
Those people are not lying. They are being kind. And their kindness is useless.
Because when they eventually say something is good, you have no way of knowing whether they mean it.
Being told the harsh reality is the kindest gift
Toni told me something difficult recently. I am keeping it vague for the usual reasons, but it was the kind of thing that makes you stare at a spreadsheet for longer than is healthy and wonder whether you have been paying attention to the right things.
She was right. A week later, she told me something else. Something positive. A number that was better than expected, a trend that was moving in the right direction, a decision I had made that had worked out. I believed her immediately.
Not because the number was there in black and white. Because I knew she would have told me if it wasn’t working. Because she had already proven, more than once, that the comfort she provides is not a blanket to hide under, but a light to illuminate.
Most optimise for pleasantness. For someone who gets it, who is on their side, who makes the meetings feel good. And those things matter. But they are not enough on their own. What you actually need, from the people closest to your business, is someone whose positive assessment means something. And the only way a positive assessment means something is if you have already experienced their negative ones.
Trust is not built by agreement. It is built by honesty that turns out to be right.
I believe I am like that. And I build teams that work on that same principle (including Toni.) For my teams, I want people who will tell me, privately, when something isn’t working. People who will say I think we’ve got this wrong before the client does. People whose encouragement, when it comes, I can actually use. The working relationships that have served me best are not the ones that felt easiest. They are the ones where the other person cared enough about the outcome to be difficult when it mattered.
Toni will probably read this. She will find something in it to critique. I sure hope so.
