Industry · Accounting
Independently administered upward reviews, 360s and engagement surveys for US accounting firms, built on a method developed over 35 years in law firms, where the same reporting relationship makes honest feedback hard to collect.
The instrument was designed around one relationship. A reviewer is asked to assess somebody who controls their work allocation, their chargeable hours and their progression. In an accounting firm that describes a senior or manager assessing the engagement partner who staffs them, which is the same asymmetry the legal version was built for.
The surrounding incentives match too. Partner compensation and admission to the partnership are decided by other partners, so an upward review touches the decisions the reviewee cares most about. Up-or-out progression raises the cost of being identified, which is the cost that produces a diplomatic answer.
None of that is specific to legal subject matter. It follows from how a partnership allocates work and decides who advances, so the response is the same: move custody of the responses outside the firm and make the arrangement legible to the people being asked to answer.
The method holds. The design around it does not transfer untouched, and these are the four things we would expect to change.
An engagement survey fielded in March, or an upward review run in the final weeks before a filing deadline, measures the season rather than the firm. Programs field in the shoulder months, and the cycle is planned backwards from the firm's own deadline calendar rather than from a standard eight-week window.
A senior may sit with the same partner for most of a year. That makes an author easier to infer from the content of a comment than at a law firm, where matter teams turn over more often. The reporting threshold has to be set tighter here, and comment review removes more.
Review note quality, technical judgment under deadline, client handling and staff development are the behaviors that separate a strong engagement partner from a weak one. The legal competency framework does not describe any of that, so it would be designed with the firm rather than adapted.
A firm that already documents independence and engages external parties as a matter of routine tends to find an external administrator a familiar arrangement. In law firms this is often the part that needs explaining first.
Thirty-five years of designing and administering confidential review programs, and more than 100,000 confidential responses collected. All of it in US law firms. The method carries over: independent custody, thresholds set before fielding, comment review for identifiability, and certified handling.
The benchmark does not carry over. The law firm benchmark is built from law firm responses, and comparing an accounting firm against it would produce a number that looks like context and is not. A first accounting client gets its own baseline and, from the second cycle, year-on-year movement. Comparative benchmarking becomes available once there is a cohort of accounting firms to compare against.
We would rather say that at the outset than imply a benchmark exists. If market comparison is the main thing you are buying, we are not the right choice in this sector yet.
Each of these runs as it does for a law firm client, with the instrument rebuilt against your competencies and the calendar planned around your deadlines.
This part does not vary by sector. It is the reason participation holds and the reason the findings are worth acting on.
Response data never enters your firm's systems in an identifying way. SRA holds and processes it as an independent party, under a data processing agreement in which your firm remains the controller.
The reporting threshold is set for your firm before the cycle opens, against the size of each population being surveyed. Below it, a cut is reported in aggregate or withheld entirely rather than estimated.
Free-text responses are reviewed for identifiability, so no one can be recognized by role, matter or phrasing.
ISO 27001 certified. SOC 2 Type I available under NDA. GDPR Article 28 and CCPA aligned, with SRA as processor and your firm as controller.
Disclosure required by law. SRA does not identify a respondent to your firm. Identity is disclosed only where the law requires it. Where the law permits, SRA gives notice before disclosing, and discloses only what is legally required.