Building Memories & New Adventures

by Tom Sulewski, CPA

While some of those events happened multiple decades ago, the memories are still crisp like yesterday. They make me pause, reflect, and smile.

Such is the case for the memories I have of the WSCPA building in Bellevue. If you are a “vintage” CPA, like me, you probably remember attending staff training seminars in the large learning center rooms with bright-eyed staff accountants from a variety of firms from across the entire state. Those trainings were a launching site for happy hours at the Lake Bellevue Café and other watering holes in the area after a long day of learning. I met peers at those sessions that I have kept in touch with my entire career. I learned to cross reference, write tick marks, and address audit assertions—all by hand!

In the years that followed, I remember Saturday morning review courses being packed to the walls with soon to be CPAs who had recently completed their exams but were focused now on the ethics exam as their final hurdle to licensure.

As a licensed CPA, I then came to realize the importance of continuing education requirements and the value of specialization and planning. Registering for a variety of WSCPA courses expanded my vision of what a CPA can be and sharpened my technical focus. And in some cases (usually in late December), my course selection was more of a reflection of last-minute heroics to accumulate my hours just before the reporting deadline.

The WSCPA building was a gathering place. It was a place for scholarship receptions for up-and-coming recruits. It was a destination for past chair socials for those that built our profession. It was a venue for board meetings and committee collaborations. It was a homebase for a dedicated staff to serve the membership. There were meals and snacks and laughs and cheers in those rooms over many years.

But times change. And one thing we know about our profession and our leadership is that we are committed to changing with them.

Tremendous work has been done by board members and staff to position the society for the future—work that started years ago by building and executing on a strategic plan purposefully designed to evolve us forward. How we learn and the way education is delivered has changed. The WSCPA was in front of those changes and has built remote learning platforms that are effective and pioneering amongst the rest of the country. Those efforts paid off during the pandemic and continue to do so in a new normal of remote learning and collaboration.

Those hallowed halls of the WSCPA building that trigger those great memories for so many of us are no longer buzzing with activity. That buzzing has shifted to Zoom and Teams and electronic engagement with a broader scale and more efficient reach. With an aging structure and a real estate market at a peak, the time was right to take a new step forward for the membership and to leverage an otherwise under-utilized asset to build new memories for future generations of professionals. (Read more about the decision to sell the building here.)

I have toured the new home for the WSCPA and I could not be more excited for our future. It is an appropriate reflection of the modern image, services, and collaborative interactions our profession delivers, and our members deserve.

During the next few months, we will say goodbye to a building. We will pause, reflect, and smile about the memories it triggers. And then we will jump forward to new adventures ahead and look forward to gathering again to celebrate a bright future.

This article appears in the spring 2022 issue of the Washington CPA magazine. Read more here.

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WSCPA Building Sells Quickly: What's Next? 
WSCPA to Sell Building