Expanding Our Insights, Audiences, and Impact

This essay closely follows my American Accounting Association (AAA) Presidential Scholar Lecture delivered at the Annual Meeting in Chicago on August 5, 2025. In this essay, I discuss my approach to research: developing insights of various types, sharing those insights with diverse audiences, and trying to have a range of different impacts. Along the way, I discuss two “elephants in the room”: (1) our very cautious and conservative research culture, which constrains the insights we can offer; and (2) the emergence of a “Top 6 journals only” decision rule, which constrains the audiences we can reach. I hope that this essay will inspire readers to expand their insights, audiences, and impact, thereby increasing the enjoyment that they derive from an academic accounting career. I also hope that we can work together to address the two elephants in the room.