Certified Public Accountant

A certified public accountant, abbreviated CPA, is a licensed accounting professional who has passed the Uniform CPA Exam and met the specific education and work experience requirements set by the particular board of accountancy that granted the license. It is the most widely recognized credential in the US accounting profession, and in most states, only a licensed CPA may legally sign an auditor's report on a company's financial statements.

Anyone can informally call themselves an accountant or bookkeeper without any particular credential, but the title “CPA” and the right to perform certain regulated services, most notably signing audit opinions, are legally restricted to individuals who hold an active CPA license from a state board. This legal restriction is what gives the CPA credential its particular weight with employers, clients, and the public, since it represents a state-enforced professional standard rather than a purely voluntary certification.

Candidates generally need roughly 150 semester hours of college education, commonly requiring a fifth year of study beyond a standard bachelor's degree, before sitting the CPA Exam, which covers auditing, financial accounting and reporting, taxation, and business environment and concepts. After passing the exam, most states also require one to two years of supervised work experience under a licensed CPA before the license is actually granted.

While auditing is the service most closely associated with the credential, CPAs work across a much broader range of roles: tax preparation and planning, forensic accounting, business valuation, financial planning, and senior financial management positions within companies of every size. A CPA working in industry rather than public accounting practice may never perform an audit at all, relying instead on the credential as a general mark of accounting expertise and professional standing.

Maintaining an active CPA license requires completing continuing professional education each renewal period and adhering to the profession's code of ethics, with violations subject to discipline, suspension, or revocation by the issuing state board. This ongoing accountability, enforced by a government licensing body rather than a purely voluntary association, is central to why the CPA credential carries the legal and professional weight it does.

A newly licensed CPA working at a public accounting firm might spend several years performing audits of client companies, eventually moving into a corporate controller or CFO role at one of those same clients, bringing the audit perspective and the CPA credential's credibility directly into a company-side financial leadership position, a common and well-established career path within the profession.

Only a licensed CPA, or an accounting firm in which CPAs hold a controlling interest, is legally permitted to sign an audit opinion attesting that a company's financial statements fairly present its results under GAAP. This restriction exists because the public, investors, and lenders all rely on that signature as an independent check on management's own numbers, and licensure through a state board of accountancy is the mechanism that lets the public trust the signature carries real accountability — a CPA who signs a materially misleading opinion risks losing the license itself, not merely facing a private employer's discipline.

Maintaining an active CPA license also requires ongoing continuing professional education, typically a set number of hours every one to three years depending on the state, which exists specifically to keep practicing CPAs current on evolving accounting standards, tax law changes, and auditing requirements over the course of a long career.