Most of you probably have several 1040 clients whom you’ve never met in person, or at least have not seen in a few years. With the process of 1040 work being handled quite fine these days via e-mail, postal mail and maybe a phone call for a lot of people, it’s no longer necessary to sit down face-to-face with their accountant. This certainly isn’t news to you, but perhaps it does make you wonder about your value at times.

Many accountants the last couple of years have voiced to me that they sometimes feel like a commodity to their 1040 clients when they don’t see them and shake their hands. A passage in a recent Joel Stein article brought this to mind during this past weekend’s reading:

“So I’m grateful for my accountant. He’s the accountant my dad has used for three decades, and he’s been doing my taxes since I was in college. And I’ve never met him. I think we’ve talked, in total, three times on the phone. I mail him some forms, he asks me for some more forms, I write some checks, and he e-files for me. I wish all of my relationships were like this.”

Some of you older accountants may pine for the world prior to this crazy e-environment. Does this “I wish all of my relationships were like this” force you to cringe, shake your head in amazement or call Stein a moron?

How about you accountants in your 20’s? Does it seem hard to imagine the “need” to speak to certain clients on the phone, let alone meet with them across a table? I’ll bet it does.

As they say, the one constant is “change.”

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