ISSUE № 9 · TUESDAY, JUNE 30, 2026
Right now the thing everyone's scared of is 7216.
The AI guidance dropped and suddenly people are staring at a consent form they're supposed to get every client to sign, and the panic isn't really about the form. It's about what they think the form will cost them. "If I make everyone sign this, some of them will leave."
Maybe. A few probably will. And here's the thing I keep coming back to. It's the exact same sentence I hear about pricing.
If I raise my fees, everyone will leave. If I require this, everyone will leave. If I hold this line, everyone will leave.
It's always “everyone.” And yet, it's never actually everyone.
This is the whole reason I built the Client Analyzer. When you run the real numbers, you find out how many clients would actually have to walk before it dents your bottom line, and it is almost never the number you're afraid of. You can lose the bottom slice of your list and come out ahead, because the bottom slice is usually the part costing you the most to keep in the first place! Fear says half of them… but the math says a handful, and you'd be fine, and honestly you'd probably be better.
Maybe I should add a 7216 column to the Client Analyzer. A "what if they leave over our AI usage" version, because it's the same analysis. Run it before you decide you can't afford your own boundary.
But here's what gets me. When you actually dig in, the fear is almost never financial.
I've watched firm owners run the numbers, see in black and white that they'd be fine, and still not do it. So it was never really about the money. It's about not wanting to upset people. The relationship is the thing that makes it hard, not the spreadsheet. If you didn't know these clients, didn't like them, hadn't been doing their return for nine years, you'd raise the fee tomorrow. You'd send the consent form without blinking. The closeness is exactly what's holding you hostage.
We're afraid of our own clients. We don't say it that way, but that's what it is.
Which brings me to the thing I will apparently die on. The boundary is the service. Boundaries first, everything else second. Not your tech stack, not your workflow. If the boundary is "everyone signs the consent form," then accept that you can't serve everyone, and go find the people who will. That's not the cost of running your firm. That IS running your firm.
Now let me tell you the story that made me want to write all this down.
Someone told me about a conversation they had last week with a couple of CPAs at a 50-person firm. They told her they desperately need to change how they work. They want to start holding boundaries with clients. But they're worried some of the partners won't get on board.
This firm pays bonuses based on hours worked per week. Some people have hit 100 hours in a single week chasing that bonus. Two people have had heart attacks in the office.
Two. Heart attacks. In the office.
So I keep asking myself the same question. How is that not enough? If two people collapsing at their desks doesn't move you to change how the firm runs, what would? What are we actually protecting when we refuse to hold the line?
It's the same fear every time. 7216, the price increase, the schedule. We dress it up as a revenue problem because that feels rational and defensible. Underneath it's just the fear of upsetting people, and apparently we'd rather work ourselves into a hospital than sit with a few clients being a little unhappy with us. And I’m included, I don’t have this all figured out! I just know that this is so important and we need to talk about it.
The boundary is the service. Hold it first. Everything else is downstream.
— Rebecca
Got a boundary you wish you could hold?
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More from Rebecca: rdriscollcpa.com · AI Lab for Accountants · The Collaboration Room · Fix Your Firm