Hello everyone, and welcome to The Upstream Leader. My name’s Jeremy Clopton. We are going to be talking about the power of questions today, and I’ve always been intrigued by this topic. I’ve read several books on it—A More Beautiful Question is probably my favorite. But I don’t know that I’ve ever sat down and just talked with anyone about the power of questions, and even more importantly, how do we teach people to actually ask good questions? So for that, I have a guest with me today that I’ve worked with for quite a while here at Upstream: Larissa Bunker. She’s the COO and EOS integrator at Nichols Accounting Group. Larissa, glad to have you on the show.
Thank you, Jeremy, I’m glad to be here today.
Yeah! I am looking forward to this. And before we jump into questions and the power of them, I’m going to ask you the same question that I ask everyone, which is probably not a surprise, but how did you become the leader that you are today?
Jeremy, this is a great question, and it really did make me think a little bit. It’s really so much more than a résumé. When I think about being the leader that I am today, two words really surfaced for me, it was really about this concept of grace and this concept of gratitude. To put some framework around that, I think about when I was young in my career, the grace that was given to me when somebody saw something in me and gave me an opportunity—gave me an opportunity to grow. Even though I was a hot mess sometimes and made mistakes, and I didn’t know all the things I should know, somebody saw something more than that, more than I saw in me, and gave me a chance. And as I’ve developed into being a good leader, it’s for me about the opportunity to extend that grace and to see people beyond what’s right in the moment and be able to really invest in them, and try to find the big picture as often as I can. There’s a lot of learning and stretching along our careers, and we all have had them—we’ve all had those stretch moments and those times when we fall down. So, grace is just a big deal to me, and it’s really been a big part of defining my career.
The same thing with gratitude: the difference that happens when you show up being open and thankful and humble versus when I show up with my ego and I show up that I know the answers, and I’m here to make something happen—and I’ve lived in both worlds. But those pivotal points of good leadership happen when I just remember to be thankful for who I’m in the room with, and the problems we get to solve, and the things we get to work on together. In my current role as the COO at Nichols Accounting, I have the opportunity to focus on people, to focus on process, to focus on systems that make a difference, and when I show up in a way that brings grace and brings gratitude into the equation, I can move the needle. I can really make things happen because of the people around me and how I’m showing up. Maybe a little unconventional, Jeremy, but that’s where my mind went, and I just think those two things are the most important to me. It doesn’t matter what seat I’m sitting in. If I can remember those two things, I’m the leader that I want to be.
And that’s so important, not just being the leader that you are, but being the leader that you want to be and owning the choice to show up in a way that is that leader. Grace and gratitude, I’ve, what, 95 episodes, 96 episodes in, that is, I think, the first time that I’ve heard that, but I absolutely love it. When I think about some of the things going on in the profession, our need to develop people, our need to really connect with people, grace and gratitude seem like they both have the ability to move the needle as it relates to people. Before we get into questions, I want to ask a follow-up question here, which is: With the speed that our profession is moving right now—everybody’s wanting to go faster, faster, faster, do more, do more, do more, billable work, billable work, billable work—and it’s almost a dead sprint, I hear from a lot of folks. How do you make the time for yourself, and how do you help others figure out a way to make the time to have grace and gratitude because in a profession that’s right now focused on speed, that seems really hard?
It takes intention. There’s no doubt about it. The intentionality behind that has to be in staying rooted in the fact that we’re in the people business. As a CPA firm, we are in the business of relationships. When it turns into the business of numbers, and it turns into the business of compliance, we’re missing the boat, because we are in the people business. When we can pause and we can relate to each other, and we can pause and we can listen to our clients, and we can pause and we can hear past the noise to really understand some problems, we have an opportunity. We have the opportunity to help people in ways that will change their world for our clients, but we have to know them—we have to know them to do that work. It’s not a matter of just, if we’re going to crank out tax returns, we can do that all day, but so can AI. We have to be in the people business.
I think that’s the pivotal difference between success and failure in the coming years with the technology shift is that filing a tax return is part of who we are, it’s part of what we’ll always do, I’m sure—well, probably. But way more than that, our clients depend on us and our clients need us, and they need us to hear them and to know them and to be partners along their journey. You have to be intentional about it. We literally just had this conversation this morning in our leadership team about our clients that need more of us. There’s all kinds of work still to be done, there’s extension work to be done, there are letters coming in—it’s the work of a CPA firm—but how do we change the narrative of that and become intentional, to really connect with our great clients that need more of us? So, I think that’s the pivotal difference, being in the people business.
Yeah, we really are, and I don’t know that AI necessarily cares about our grace or our gratitude. I’ve had some people tell me I need to stop telling ChatGPT thank you, because that’s just causing more energy consumption, and it really doesn’t care. I’m just inherently trying to be polite, I guess, even with technology, I do. To your point, I don’t know that tech needs our grace and our gratitude, but our people do, our clients do, and it’s important that we don’t remember that it’s both our people and our clients, not just our clients. Because without our people, we won’t have clients because nobody’s going to be able to take care of them.
I’m going to use that to pivot off: You posted something on LinkedIn about three months ago. I know that because luckily it tells me, because I was going back thinking, man, when did we talk about this the first time? Because we’ve been working to get this recording going, and we’ve both had just different things coming up. It was a great post about questions and what you said as a leader and as a firm of advisors, our job isn’t always to provide answers and data; our job is to ask the questions that spark growth. I find that to be true for both working with our people and working with our clients. But we’re trained, when we get our accounting degree, to have answers and data. We’re not trained to ask questions and talk to people—unfortunately, despite being one of the most important skills, it’s one of the least developed when we get our degrees. So we have a degree that tells us that it’s all about answers and data, and I love what you said, that our job is actually to ask questions to spark growth. I’m just going to start with a very open-ended question: How do we do that? How do we get people past answers and data and get them thinking even about asking questions versus racing to have the first right answer?
I think it all starts, Jeremy, with just the core understanding that as humans, we love to write stories in our head. We see one data point and we make a judgment about it. We see one data point, and we make a judgment about it. We hear one piece of information about a person, and we decide what we think the story is with that person. We’re wired that way, it’s just human nature. It’s not good or bad, it’s just human nature. Recognizing the power of a question is really recognizing that it’s easy for us to take a look at a financial statement and write a story about a company. There may be some very true, good points about that company, but it’s only a piece of the story. It’s only part of the story. When you sit across the table from a business owner, and they begin to tell you the reasoning behind some of the data that you’re seeing, and they begin to tell you some of the challenges they’re having, or some of the successes that they’re having, it begins to fill in the gaps. It begins to fill in the blanks. And all of a sudden, we can see things and we can provide feedback in a way that is so much richer and so much more accurate to their state because we filled in the blanks, because we understand the story.
So to answer your question: How do we start? How do we teach that? I think it really comes from the position of recognizing that data is one part of a story. It’s an important piece, and anybody in my firm that listens to this is going to be like, wait, Larissa said the data’s not that, no, don’t misunderstand. We all, we love our data. We need our data. We know it’s just one part of a story. So I think that’s the biggest thing, recognizing that even though we think we have the story and we think we have the answers, we probably don’t. There’s some humility that comes into that, that I don’t know everything, and when I approach every part of my work and every part of my day with the thinking that I don’t know, maybe I don’t see it all, what am I missing, where are the gaps? That constantly is reminding me to ask more questions, to lead with those questions.
I really like that, and I like what you said at the beginning, which is that telling stories isn’t good or bad, it’s human nature. It seems to me that our risk is when we take those stories as truth, and we’re not willing to ask the questions, that it can become bad. Or at least it can become not bad, but maybe detrimental to how we work with our people, how we work with our clients, how we just interact with one another as human beings, to your point. What do you believe is necessary to get somebody to pause and recognize, “Wait, I’m telling a story? I need to go ask questions.” Because it sounds like that may be one of our first most important steps is the recognition that we’re storytelling rather than actually going off information that we know to be true.
I think that it all starts with leading by example. I think it starts with, as leaders, pausing to ask good questions, and recognizing the power of the question, and then teaching about why we do that, and why we did that, and what the outcome was. Jeremy, I can give you just a fantastic example: This past week, the division managers of our firm, so our audit, our tax manager, our CAS manager, our client experience manager, we all sat in a room, and we talked through our rocks for next quarter. We’re a rock-setting company, we believe in setting rocks. Rather than just looking down our issues list and saying, “Okay, what of these feel big, how do we add them to the rock list, who’s going to take them?” We didn’t do that. Instead, we started with a list of questions. If we get to December, and December is the best year we’ve ever had, what happened that makes you look back and go, “Wow, that was the best it’s ever been?”
Some of the answers were data, some of the answers were good profit, high realization. A lot more of them were, we retained our best people, we had really positive employee survey feedback, we had employees that experienced growth. All of those things were on the list. So being able to pause and just take a step back and take a step back to that 30,000-foot view and really say, what are we trying to accomplish? What needs to happen? It’s a very powerful moment. My hope is that the leaders that were part of the discussion we had last week, that when they go and they take their rocks, and they take their big initiatives down to their staff, that they don’t just say, oh, here’s the key things, here’s the key initiatives. This is what we’re doing. But they say, what does December look like? What does December look like? What does it look like? And spark that thought and that conversation, like through the layers of our organization. I think the more that we teach the power of the question and the more we talk about it, and then the more that we do it as leaders—we actually pause and do it ourselves—it becomes natural to our culture: That’s how we operate. That’s where my mind and my heart is at, to drive something different, and to teach something different, you show something different.
That’s a hard skill for leaders, because so many leaders have been brought up in the belief that once you get to leadership, everybody comes to you for the answers, not for questions. But I’m 100 percent on board with you that the most effective leaders, they don’t have all the answers. Or they might, but they don’t see themselves as the answer key. Instead, they see themselves as guides to help others arrive at the answers through growth and development. One of my favorite questions—I did it in 2024, I haven’t done it in 2025—but I had a question of the year. It was, “What would have to be true?” I loved the question because it, much like you’re going to December, says let’s stop worrying about why we can’t. Let’s stop worrying about why we haven’t. I’m done with all that. Let’s use a question to explore the future and say, “Okay, well, if that was successful, what would have to be true?” Because what it does, in my mind, is it frees people up to stop thinking about the barriers of reality, or their current moment, and start to say, “Okay, well, if it was successful, it’d look like this.” And what I find is that a lot of times, then you look at it and you say, great, if that’s where you want to be, that’s what would have to be true. Where are you at today and where are the gaps? And it leads to more discovery than it does directive, and I find that it’s easier to get people engaged through discovery than directives. Would you say that’s true in your experience?
That’s completely true. I mean, we all have moments as leaders when we have to be directive. It’s part of the accountability of our roles. Those are not my favorite places to live. If I can live in discovery and live in creative thinking with the stakeholders, the people that really matter, our solutions generally are so much better. It doesn’t take away the moments when you just make a decision or there’s a leadership decision that maybe isn’t the most loved by everybody. That happens. It’s part of life, and it’s part of the responsibility as a leader. You can’t dismiss that under the idea of, “Well, I’m just trying to lead with questions and connect with people.” There are times when that is appropriate and that’s really what we’re called to do, and we need to do that with courage and with strength.
But when we’re able to not be in that mode and we have the ability, and it’s the right time to really be able to dive in and to ask questions, so many times the solutions are so much more creative than what we come up with on our own. I think there’s a lot of power—I’ll use our firm as an example: There is so much creativity and genius in our staff and in our seniors, and they don’t sit around the tables all day in management meetings. They are smart, and they work with these clients, and they work on problems. I’m always amazed when I talk with somebody and they say, “I wonder why we don’t think about doing this,” and it’s some brilliant idea that I never would have thought of, and it’s like “What? Why am I just hearing about this right now? That is so smart.” It just makes me pause and say, I need to ask more. I need to ask more often, what do you see that we could do better or do different?
So if somebody is listening in—and we talked about it from the leader standpoint. Leaders, it’s learning to pause and ask the questions, rather than trying to be the hero. Again, focusing more on leadership through discovery than directive, when possible, with the recognition, I always use the example, April 14th in the States, April 29th in Canada, no offense, I’m not in discovery mode, I’m in directive mode. We have deadlines, we’ve got to get stuff done. We can discover in three days’ time, but today is not that day, so we’re going to have to be direct. We talked about it from the leader standpoint.
But let’s go to the opposite end of the spectrum. Brand new hires straight out of college. They’ve got these brilliant ideas. They’re in a firm, or they’re in an organization, because I’m sure we have some folks that maybe aren’t in our profession, I think most are. And they so very wish that people would ask them questions, that would inquire of them like you just talked about, where they could share these ideas that are probably brilliant. But they’re in a culture where nobody asks questions, everybody just goes with directive. What can they do to create a culture that is more leading with questions, rather than leading with directives?
Well, that’s a really good question. My advice to those staff would be in the firm you’re in to find your person. Find the person. Maybe it’s somebody sitting next to you, maybe it’s a supervisor down the hall that’s open, and connect. That relationship and starting to build trust and starting to share ideas and starting to ask your own questions, that transition can really make a huge difference. But it isn’t for everybody, and we have people in our firm even that they’re not wired necessarily that way, and that’s okay. But for us, we want our staff and seniors to always have their person. We have buddy systems, we have pod leads, we have supervisors, and for the most part, those aren’t our principals. It’s not our people that are burdened with so much managed revenue and such a big client load. So for us, we try really hard to make sure that somebody always has their person that’s close by them. But if that’s not the structure of the firm, there’s always somebody. Finding that somebody that you can talk to and you can share your ideas and you can ask your questions: “What is the vision? What is the big picture? I know we do this. I heard that in a staff meeting last week. Talk to me about why. Tell me the story about how we got here.” Every firm has your people. Finding your person that can pour into you and help you, that would be my biggest counsel, and I think t hat real growth can happen in those relationships.
Yeah, and those relationships, they’re career-long. You find those people, and you continue to build that trust. You continue to build that ability to ask questions, and they’ll probably ask you questions, and you’ll get much more dialogue within those relationships. I’ve got one more question, then I’m gonna go a slightly different direction. So you’re the EOS at your firm, and I know that we have several folks that listen that are running EOS, and I would imagine, or at least I had this thought, so maybe I’m on an island, I’m the only one, but I’m going to speculate maybe somebody else has had this thought: As an integrator, it’s your job to get stuff done, to execute, to make sure that people are accountable. How do you find time for questions and still go execute on all the big things happening within a firm?
Well, it all boils down to relationships, it all boils down to culture. If you think about culture, Jeremy, you think about it’s built on moment-by-moment-by-moment interactions. That’s culture. It’s not what you say it is, it’s not core values that you printed on the wall, it’s how was I treated and what happened right in that immediate moment with the people that are around me. That’s the culture of your firm or of your company. So when I think about being the EOS integrator and I put my integrator hat on—and that encompasses a lot. Other EOS integrators that listen in, they know there’s a big span and a big level of responsibility, and recognizing that as an integrator, I only get things done when people get things done. I can push, I can move, I can lay processes and plans, but I’d better have some relationships, I’d better have some people that catch the vision and say, I’m on board with that, I can do that, I can change how I’m doing what I’m doing, I can make this adjustment. Without that buy-in of people, there are no big needle-moving things happening. So you have to buy in, and you have to buy in from your staff to your principal group. That’s a lot of stakeholders. So it has to be about relationships.
If I don’t pause and stop and say, who are the people and what are the strengths in the room and who’s passionate about this work and who can champion this to help move it forward and take some steps forward? I don’t have very much ability to do much of anything. It has to be in my relationships from the very, very top to the very, very bottom of the firm.
So really, you’re able to be a more successful integrator through the power of questions. It’s not finding time for questions, it’s leading with questions rather than the opposite. I appreciate that; that’s very helpful. Well, Larissa, I have thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Any resources that you would recommend: books, articles, TED talks, videos, anything that comes to mind that if somebody’s trying to figure out, how can I get better at embracing the idea of questions? What would you recommend for them?
Well, I’ll tell you, right now, I’m reading Scaling Up, and there’s a part of Scaling Up that talks about making sure that you have the whole story and really understanding it. So if you’re in a growth phase, Scaling Up is a great resource. It’s similar in a lot of ways to Traction with EOS. It certainly has some really good resources there, so I would recommend that. I will also say, from a questions perspective, sit down across from somebody and just ask questions. What’s working? What’s not working? How are things going for you? What are you loving about what you’re doing, and what’s on the list that you hate? What do you really hate that you’re doing, and can we do something about that? So key questions, those are my favorite questions—I ask them at least quarterly to all of my people, even people that aren’t my people. I ask them, I love those questions.
It’s really just about starting those conversations, and as you learn and grow in those moments of those conversations, you’re teaching others, you’re modeling it for others, and you’re able to share those successes with others about the power of those questions. So that would be my big, like, if there’s a nugget takeaway, it’s to sit down and just don’t come with any answers. Just come with some questions and see what you learn, and you might be surprised.
I absolutely love that, Larissa. I think that’s a great note to end on. We’re going to encourage everyone, if you didn’t write those—don’t worry—go back in the show notes, we’ll have the transcript online. “Go sit down, bring no answers, just bring questions and get to know someone.” I absolutely love it. Larissa, thank you so much for joining me on today’s episode. I have really enjoyed our conversation.
Great, Jeremy. Thank you.
