An accountant, a single mother, and The Apprentice contestant—your 3-in-1 success story for becoming a CPA
In 2021, she competed in The Apprentice: One Championship Edition in Singapore. Two years later, she competed for a place in the list of passers for the May 2023 Certified Public Accountant Licensure Examinations (CPALE). After seeing her success story post on social media, I reached out to Lara Pearl Alvarez to get her story featured via Accountinsolutions.
If you’re a working accountant who has already lost motivation for the licensure exams for CPAs, may Lara’s story rekindle that hope. May her story inspire you to aim for a CPA license despite the usual struggles. And, may you find the renewed strength and discipline to prepare for the next stage of your career journey as a CPA.
3 Reasons Why Working Accountants Stop Themselves from Becoming a CPA
“If you’re working as an accountant, they would always ask. Are you a CPA? If you say yes, there’s nothing else to explain. The license talks for itself. But if you’re not, you have lots of reasons. But the point is, you are not a CPA.”
Lara’s words echo the common internal musing of a non-CPA already working as an accounting professional in my home country. I recall when I was a student, I had an assignment to interview an accountant to get insights into the profession. One of the things that the person told me? Make sure I get the CPA title because she didn’t get hers, and she regretted it.
When I prepared for the exams back in 2014, I met a working accountant who reviewed for the exams on top of juggling a day job. From her, I also understood the struggles of a working accountant preparing to become a CPA. She belonged to the minority. Most accounting students take the CPA exams soon after graduation, and work only once they have the title. It’s for good reason too, because the CPALE is one of the tough exams in our country.
When I worked outside my country, I observed a different practice. In the US and most European countries, those who aim to take US CPA, or their local certifications would gain years of experience first before attempting the exams. Even so, not all people whom I’ve worked with in an audit firm would aspire for certification unless it aligns with their long-term goals.
Meanwhile, in my country, the declining popularity of accounting and the CPA exams leads to worrying concerns within the profession. Among those who needed convincing that a CPA title is worth it are accountants who dove straight into the corporate world without getting their certifications.
From talking with working accountants who hesitate to take the licensure exams in my home country, I often hear three main objections:
- I’m already working and earning money. Why would I stop working and lose money for six months or more while preparing for the board exams?
- I already have lots of family obligations. I don’t have enough time to prepare and review for the board exams.
- The licensure exam coverage for CPA is quite broad. I can’t keep up with all of the updates and new standards.
Lara has to deal with all three struggles while preparing for the CPA board exams. She is a single mother to a 3-year-old son nine months before taking the May 2023 CPALE. She’s already working as an accountant for 5 years since finishing her major courses at the university in 2017. Her entire experience covered being a freelance accountant, sales, and marketing, training with the National Team for kickboxing, and starting her own business to figure out what she’s passionate about.
Lara’s already busy life got busier when she decided to take a shot at the CPA title. That means refreshing the updates in the standards between her last year in the academe and the CPA exam dates.
How did she overcome the obstacles?
Lara’s Journey Toward the Licensure Exam for CPA
To fans of the reality show The Apprentice, you will remember Lara as one of the contestants.
Daughter of a farmer and a professional teacher/sari-sari store owner, born and raised in the mountainous region of Cordilleras, Lara used to be a student-athlete. She was a varsity for taekwondo and wushu-sanshou. The same passion for martial arts and entrepreneurship, and her desire to give her family a better life encouraged her to enter as a contestant for The Apprentice: One Championship Edition in 2020. But, during that time, Lara admits that she was not professionally prepared for the competition. The competition’s ultimate prize eventually went to Jessica Ramella.
For Lara, a different challenge and prize were waiting.
“Kaya ko ba?” (“Can I do it?”)
Asking herself this question prompted Lara to begin the path toward becoming a CPA. She was aware of all the challenges.
Back then, one of her excuses was the potential loss of income if she stopped working to focus full-time on the review. She also considered working part-time and studying part-time. Then, there was her son to take care of. At the start, she thought she would be able to handle everything. She worked a 9-6 job, cared for her son until 10 or 11 in the evening, then woke up at 4 am to study. The schedule proved unsustainable. Soon, she suffered from burnout.
She was supposed to take the October 2022 exam, but a few months before, she was both heartbroken and exhausted. Her mental fortitude caused her to miss out on the exam application period.
“When you’ve already experienced a lot of failures before, your confidence to push through with your plan is not the same.” Lara understood how it feels to lose confidence when you already experienced plenty of rejections and failures. The “single-mother” prejudice she received from other people also added fuel to the fire. It became one of her early motivations to prove people wrong. “I will do this once and I want to do it right,” she asserted.
Lara described herself as a highly-ambitious person who wants to do things simultaneously. But this time, she claimed to have benefited from having a singular focus. She resigned from her job and lived on her savings. After that burnout phase, she spent the next six months reviewing and preparing for the May 2023 CPALE.
For Lara, the test started six months before the actual exam dates. To prepare, she adopted a disciplined athlete’s mindset. She maintained early focus and consistently maintained that focus until the exam dates. (The CPALE happened across various testing sites between May 21-23, 2023.)
“I went there with the mindset [that] when I come out of this room after three days, I will have no regrets.”
Lara’s mindset proved beneficial. With further support from her family and prayers, she passed. On an early dawn, when a typhoon was approaching her hometown, and the results were about to be posted, Lara woke up to a series of missed calls and the confirmation that she’s now a CPA.
Photo by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash
Reaping the Rewards of the CPA License
For people like Lara who took the challenge and succeeded, both the journey and the outcome proved rewarding.
After the exams, Lara started as an accountant in a Singapore-based private company specializing in accounting software. She didn’t have to start with an entry-level salary. She told me that she hated computers and software back in college. But this time, she finds the job enjoyable because of it. “When you’ve started investing into something, dun din pala nabubuild yung love mo for your profession,” she declared to me.
Lara claims to have gained respect for the CPA profession while preparing for the CPALE because she realized how mentally stimulating it was. She looked for the right reasons why she needs the CPA license. Those reasons became her motivation. “There is no right or wrong decision in life. But if you decide on something, and you stand by it, and you take it no matter what happens, that is the right decision.”
If you’re deciding whether to take a CPA license or not, may these two winning reasons provide you insights into why becoming a CPA can be rewarding even if you’re already working as an accountant.
#1 The CPA license unblocks limitations to practice the profession and increases your earning potential.
Accounting operates on a universal set of laws. Even non-CPAS can practice accounting as long as they know basic bookkeeping concepts. But in many countries, limitations exist to what a non-CPA can do. For example, you can’t perform audits or sign an audit report specific to that country if you don’t have your license. Your path toward promotion might also get blocked if you don’t have a license.
Without a CPA license, you belong to the untapped talent pools of accounting professionals who have already gained professional expertise and resilience at work but whose progress gets limited because the society tends to place a premium on titles. With a CPA license, imagine the growth opportunities that might become available to you now or in the future.
A CPA gains a higher premium in the labor market, and potentially higher earning potential through time and experience.
#2 The CPA license gives you a wide access to opportunities, locally and globally.
If you plan to gain international experience, having an equivalent CPA license also makes you more attractive because the license signals to recruiters and hiring companies that you’re technically competent. In form, the local CPA in the Philippines is not internationally recognized, but in substance, the technical accounting and auditing standards which you learned through studies and exam preparations are equally beneficial in a global setting.
Experienced international hires often point out their knowledge of technical accounting plus an exercise of critical thinking from constant problem-solving as an edge over other candidates from non-accounting backgrounds.
If you want to increase credibility in a global environment, you can also use your local license as a foundation when applying for internationally recognized and more widely-known titles such as certification from the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), US CPA, Certified Management Accountant (CMA), and Certified Internal Auditor (CIA) among others.
For a working accountant who has gained maturity in a specific area, industry, or role, the CPA license further substantiates your worth. It validates your hard-earned effort and enables you to expand your credentials and widen opportunities.
Final Thoughts
Even if you decide that the CPA license or any other title is not worth pursuing, you’ll do well as long as you are clear on your goals. Each of us is responsible for defining our path. For some, the path may point toward obtaining titles and further education. Some people prefer to seek meaningful growth opportunities. Some others seek to escape a career that they did not plan for in the first place. What’s important is to have clear aspirations and to aim for something that aligns with your life-long purpose.
Let Lara’s biggest realization from the entire experience also inspire you.
“What matters most is who you are now, what you have now, what are the experiences you have, what are the lessons you’ve taken. You’re gonna make yourself into something from all those things that happened.”
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