American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA)

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, almost always referred to by its acronym AICPA, is the national professional organization representing certified public accountants in the United States. It sets ethical standards for the profession, develops significant portions of the Uniform CPA Exam in coordination with state boards, and produces a substantial body of guidance that shapes how accountants in public practice actually do their work.

Beyond setting its own Code of Professional Conduct, which CPAs are bound to follow regardless of which state licensed them, the AICPA historically issued auditing standards for private-company audits and continues to do so through its Auditing Standards Board, even though standards for audits of public companies have since moved to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. It also publishes guidance on accounting and review services, tax practice, forensic accounting, and personal financial planning, and offers specialized credentials beyond the base CPA license.

The AICPA itself does not license anyone; actual CPA licensure is granted separately by each state's board of accountancy. The AICPA's role is closer to that of a professional association and standard-setter operating alongside the licensing system, which is why a CPA can lose AICPA membership for an ethics violation without automatically losing the underlying state license, and vice versa, though the two systems generally work in close coordination.

Before the Financial Accounting Standards Board existed, US accounting standards were set first by the AICPA's Committee on Accounting Procedure, which issued the Accounting Research Bulletins, and later by its Accounting Principles Board, which issued numbered Opinions. Some of those older pronouncements technically remain part of US GAAP today, to the extent the FASB has not superseded them, which is why historical accounting research sometimes still has to reach back into AICPA-era standards rather than relying on FASB material alone.

AICPA membership is not legally required to practice as a CPA, but it remains the dominant professional network in US accounting, and many of its specialized credentials — in areas such as forensic accounting, personal financial specialist work, and information technology assurance — are widely recognized by employers and clients as a mark of additional expertise layered on top of the base CPA license. For students and early-career accountants, the organization is also usually the first point of contact for CPA Exam preparation resources and continuing professional education requirements.

As accounting has become more globalized, the AICPA has also worked alongside bodies such as the International Accounting Standards Board on convergence efforts between US GAAP and international standards, and it offers credentials recognizing CPAs who also demonstrate proficiency in international financial reporting. For a US-trained accountant working with multinational clients, AICPA resources are often the first stop for guidance on how domestic and international standards diverge on a given issue.

In 2017 the AICPA combined forces with the UK-based Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) to form the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants, a joint operating structure intended to give the two bodies more weight globally while each kept issuing its own separate credentials — the CPA from the AICPA side and the Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA) designation jointly. The arrangement is sometimes a source of confusion, since the Association is the umbrella organization while the AICPA itself continues to exist underneath it as the body actually tied to US CPA licensure, state boards of accountancy, and the Uniform CPA Exam.