Ever feel like your day is a blur of pings, context switches, and late-night messages that steal your sleep? We sat down with Brad Hook and Declan Scott to unpack why the profession’s greatest strengths—kindness, curiosity, creativity—can be undermined by hypervigilance and constant multitasking, and how simple, science-backed rhythms can restore focus and energy.

We dig into the data from the inaugural global resilience and well-being report for Chartered Accountants and preview what the next survey aims to measure after practical interventions. Brad explains why “measure, train, measure” beats guesswork, and shares tactical calm tools that create quick wins: one-minute breath resets, bookending the workday, and clear evening boundaries. Declan brings an experienced lens to early-career overwhelm, showing how coaching-led leadership and mentoring across generations can reduce anxiety, build confidence, and connect daily work to real purpose.

You’ll learn how attention is being fragmented by constant digital stimuli and why monotasking outperforms multitasking for quality and speed. We walk through the conditions for flow—clear goals, the right challenge-skill match, protected time, and fewer distractions—and how teams can pilot weekly or daily “flow zones” to unlock meaningful progress. We also dive into sleep as the bedrock of performance, from chronotypes and consistency to practical checks for issues like sleep apnoea, plus everyday habits that recharge your mental battery.

The episode closes on presence—the underrated skill of pausing, widening your view, and asking what matters most right now. If you’re ready to replace false urgency with real effectiveness, this is your playbook for calmer focus, better sleep, and stronger leadership. Enjoy the conversation, then share it with a colleague who needs permission to switch off notifications. If it resonated, subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: what single change will you try this week?

Curiosity isn’t a personality trait—it’s a practice that can shape a career and safeguard public trust. That idea runs through our conversation with Carla S. Vijian, whose path from Malaysia to New Zealand, Sydney, London and now New York traces a throughline from hands‑on audit work to ethics standard setting. We dive into how fieldwork hardens your scepticism—the kind that looks past headlines and asks who funds what, where assumptions hide, and how incentives bend outcomes—and why that habit is essential when claims move markets, pensions and policy.

Carla opens the black box of ethics standards and shows how practical and global the work really is: listening to regulators, investors and firms, and crafting principle‑based guidance that scales across 130+ jurisdictions without losing the self‑awareness professionals need day to day. We test the ideas against live issues: Norway’s Northern Lights CO2 storage milestone and debt‑for‑policy swaps that promise conservation and reconstruction. Both raise the same hard questions—measurement, transparency, accountability—that ethics can answer when applied with rigour. We also tackle AI without the hype: it’s a powerful tool, but not a moral agent. The IESBA’s technology guidance helps identify risks like bias, data integrity and over‑reliance, reminding us to validate models, document judgement and remain accountable for outcomes in the public interest.

Threaded through the technical is the human: marathon training as a blueprint for resilience, discipline and humility. You don’t run 42 kilometres at once; you run one at a time. The same is true for building trust—small consistent choices compound. Carla leaves three anchors for the next generation: make curiosity a daily discipline, choose courage over convenience, and pair purpose with patience. If you care about trustworthy reporting, sustainable finance and responsible AI, this conversation will give you practical ways to strengthen your judgement and your impact.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a colleague, and leave a review with the bravest professional decision you’ve made recently.

The myth that accountancy is just numbers falls apart fast when you hear Nicola Ellam’s story. Trained in the UK, seasoned in Hong Kong, and now a managing principal in New York, Nicola joins us to unpack how a global career can thrive at the intersection of regulation, culture, and bold technology bets. From the maze of US CPA licensing to the daily realities of leading teams in a fast-moving market, she lays out what changes, what doesn’t, and how to stay relevant when the tools of the trade are being rewritten.

We dive into CLA’s decision to invest $500M in AI and a broader solutions master plan, and why the firm insists on staying people-led even as automation accelerates. Nicola walks us through the practical wins: less data entry, faster insights, cleaner visuals, and client conversations that shift from “what happened” to “what should we do.” Inside the firm, connection centres and the CLA Academy create a learning engine—sandboxes, simulations, and persona-based pathways—so interns, associates, and partners can build the skills that matter now: relationship building, project management, and critical evaluation of machine outputs. It’s a training model designed for multi-generational teams that learn in different ways and at different speeds.

Global work brings added nuance. Even when language is shared, culture, compliance, and expectations vary—sometimes state by state. Nicola explains how to bridge those gaps with empathy and structure, helping foreign-owned businesses land and scale in the US without losing momentum. And we tackle the big anxiety head-on: will AI take our jobs? Her answer is simple and sharp—AI will take your job to a whole new level. Roles will evolve, judgment will matter more, and the time we get back can be invested in better advice, better teams, and a better life outside the office.

If you care about the future of accounting, professional growth, and turning technology into real client value, this conversation offers concrete steps and fresh optimism. Subscribe, share with a colleague who needs a nudge toward the future, and leave a quick review to tell us what skill you’re focusing on next.