Swinehart CPA, PC celebrates well-earned victory

BY MANDY SOTELO

There's a good chance you'll never meet a more dedicated professional than a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). Consider the brutal ordeal that is the Uniform CPA Examination required for licensure. The pass rate for its four sections bounces around between 45 and 60 percent, according to the American Institute of CPAs website. It requires a powerful amount of knowledge on a huge array of topics, and two Taos natives have now conquered it.

Charlotte Jeantete, CPA, and Sydney Swinehart, CPA, graduated from Taos High School in 2005 and '09 respectively and received degrees from New Mexico universities. Both were already working at Swinehart CPA, PC in July 2018 when they set their sights on licensure and took on the grueling mission of preparing for the exam.

Over the next year and a half, they made it their life's work, studying day and night while working full-time at the firm and, in Charlotte's case, raising a daughter. It was intense, "But it was great that we went through it together," said Sydney. "I don't know if I would have made it without (Charlotte)."

They had each other, and they had the unflinching support of their Swinehart CPA coworkers, who never failed to come through with encouragement and the occasional push through tough times. "We weren't just going to let these guys not succeed," said Doug Swinehart, CPA and founder of the firm. "We cried, we screamed," said Charlotte. "The whole office felt it." They also practiced deep breathing exercises and did jumping jacks. Preparing for such a stressful exam requires more than just understanding the materials it covers. It occupied every waking second of their already busy lives, and they knew what they were getting into.

Doug Swinehart is Sydney's father and has been Charlotte's mentor since 2004 when she came to work for him as a high school junior under an internship program. They had both heard his stories, like the one about how he almost didn't show up for the second day of his own examinations, feeling shot down by the first. "After the first day I said, I blew it. I just wasted two years of my life. I'm not going to pass," he recalled. "I was crushed." At the encouragement of family and friends, however, he did finish, only to be subjected to an agonizing wait for the snail-mailing of his results. In those days, every CPA hopeful knew that a thick envelope meant failure, thin meant "Congratulations!" It traumatized him. "I'm still looking for that letter saying, 'We made a mistake. Here's your thick envelope,'" he joked. He has been a licensed CPA for 30 years.

Sydney received her congratulations notice in September 2019 and became fully certified Nov. 26. Charlotte passed her exam in December 2019 and became fully certified on Dec. 31. "My greatest success is that my daughter has seen what can be accomplished when you don't give up," said Charlotte.

In addition to passing the CPA exam, all potential CPAs must get 90 percent or better on a separate ethics test and maintain a minimum of 40 hours continuing education every year to keep their licenses once they've earned them. Ethics must be renewed every three years. "The industry takes ethics very seriously," said Doug.

These are people you want in your corner. A licensed CPA is held to extremely high standards, and for good reason. The number of possible financial scenarios among a CPA's clientele is infinite and a detailed understanding of all of them is essential to the job. To achieve this, one must be up to date on accounting and tax code, not only in the United States but internationally; economics; finance and the cost of capital; government and legal processes; and all categories of business models and the specific, ever-changing complexities of each. And that's just scratching the surface. "Your body of knowledge is just enormous," said Doug.

It's very personal, too. Swinehart CPA serves hundreds of clients, each with a unique situation, and tailors its services based on each individual's objectives. Services can include litigation support for things like business restructuring or even divorce, guidance in transferring assets from one generation to the next, and helping people manage their business or net worth so that they can achieve their desired financial picture, to name just a few. "We have to make sure all the pieces fit, that we haven't left any out or thrown too many in," said Doug. "We're not accountants; we're financial enigmatologists."