To Our Clients, Referral Partners, Peers, and Our People —
Six months ago, Sweeney Conrad joined Ascend — a growing national network of independent accounting and advisory firms. This letter is the explanation behind why we did it, and what we genuinely believe this partnership means for the future of our firm, and everyone connected to it.
I'll start with a story.
The Bus Ride that Started it All
In May 2024, I was at an industry conference with a couple of our partners. We were boarding a bus to an evening event when someone I hadn't met previously sat down next to me and introduced himself. His name was David Wurtzbacher — co-founder of Ascend.
We talked for about 45 minutes. David asked about Sweeney Conrad — our vision, our people, the work we were doing to grow. I asked him about what he was building. He was thoughtful, direct, and clearly onto something. But when I got off that bus, my honest reaction was something close to: there's no way we're ever doing that. I'm pretty sure I told him as much.
I didn't intend to be dismissive of David or Ascend. I was protective of what we'd built — 45 years of independence, a firm culture we'd earned, a name that meant something in this market. The idea of joining anything felt like giving something up. I wasn't ready to hear the story.
What Changed
The industry kept moving. And we kept watching.
Over the following year, I heard conversations from peers at other firms in our area and from peers at firms in our accounting association about capital, about capacity, about how they were thinking through the pressures mounting on independent practices. Talent. Technology. Succession. The pace of change that clients now expect us to keep up with.
Then came the moment that crystallized it for me: two billion-dollar accounting firms in our market announced a merger. When firms of that size say they need access to capital to handle the transformation happening in this industry, you pay attention.
If a billion-dollar firm needs more firepower to compete and adapt, what does that mean for us? It wasn't a reason to panic; however, it was an honest question about our competitive position. Was continuing to go it alone the best choice, or even the safe one?
When I ran into David again at the same conference a year later, I told him we were ready to learn more.
We Had Options. We Chose Carefully.
I want to address something directly, because you deserve to hear it: anyone in a leadership role at an accounting firm right now is fielding a significant volume of calls and outreach from people looking to put capital into this profession. Private equity firms seeking platform acquisitions. Investment firms looking to build integrated service models. Family offices and other capital sources looking for partners. The interest is real and it is relentless.
We looked at all of it. And we said no — deliberately, and for specific reasons.
The national firm path. We had watched several firms in this region join large national brands. In some cases, the results were hard to watch. Clients who had been well-served for years found themselves reclassified as no longer the ideal client for a firm now operating at a different scale and with different priorities. People who had built careers at these firms found themselves reporting to national standards and practices rather than local leadership. The formality and distance of a large organization replaced the relationships that had made those firms what they were. There was real turmoil: client transitions, staff turnover, disruption to the continuity that clients depend on. We weren't willing to accept that outcome.
The investment firm path. Investment firms are some of our best referral partners, and we value those relationships deeply. Joining one would have put that at risk — and with it, access to great people and great clients we'd otherwise never meet. That wasn't a trade we were willing to make.
Other capital sources. Capital without genuine support in deploying it effectively isn't really a solution. Money alone doesn't solve the technology challenge, the talent challenge, or the operational complexity of running a modern accounting firm. We needed a partner, not just a check.
Why Ascend
Ascend offered something the other options didn't: we retain our name, remain independently managed, and stay locally led. We determine our own strategy and vision for the future of Sweeney Conrad. That wasn't a small thing to us. It was the condition.
Ascend‘s motto is: Stay Independent, Ascend Together. We've lived it for six months now, and we can tell you that it’s true.
We know what the skeptics assume. The moment you join a national structure, the independence is window dressing — eventually the mothership takes over, the local identity fades, and you become a branch office with a legacy name on the door. And we have watched it play out at other firms that made different choices. We heard that concern. We asked hard questions about it.
That is not what has happened here. We haven't lost anything by joining Ascend. What we've gained is a set of growth tools and a depth of collaboration that no independent firm operating alone could access. Our strategy is ours. Our vision is ours. Our clients are ours. Our culture is ours. What Ascend adds is the infrastructure, the network, and the resources to pursue that vision at a scale we couldn't have reached on our own.
Ascend is built on a simple premise: great local firms, with deep community roots and strong client relationships, become even better when they have access to shared resources, technology infrastructure, and a national peer network. They don't become generic. They don't get absorbed into a brand that erases their identity. They stay themselves — and get stronger.
We met with the Ascend leadership. We talked to partner firms. We asked the hard questions — including the ones about what happens when interests diverge. And we liked what we found, including David and his team at Ascend, who turned out to be exactly the kind of people you want to build something with.
One thing stood out above the rest. Ascend describes their commitment to their partner firms and the people within them as People First. We've used that exact phrase at Sweeney Conrad for over a decade. It is our first value — the one that sits above everything else and shapes how we make decisions about our team. To find it reflected back in the language of the organization we were considering joining wasn't a small thing. Values stated on a website are easy. Values that show up in how an organization actually operates are rare. In Ascend, we found both.
What We Didn't Expect and What Has Surprised Us Most
I can tell you what we hoped for when we joined Ascend. What I can't fully describe is what we actually found — because it exceeded what I imagined was possible.
The community within Ascend is unlike anything I've seen in this profession. At the CEO level, we have regular meetings with firm leaders across the network — not ceremonial check-ins, but real working sessions. We encourage each other. We work through problems together. We give direct feedback to Ascend on what needs to improve. And it matters, because the feedback gets heard.
What makes it genuinely different from a traditional accounting association is that we are economically tied to each other's success. When a partner firm wins, we all win. That shared stake changes the nature of every conversation. In a traditional association, member firms are often operating independently and, in many cases, in direct competition with each other. The incentive to hold back, to protect your own edge, is real. In this model, that incentive is inverted. We have every reason to help each other get better.
The result is a level of openness and genuine collaboration I didn't think was possible between accounting firm leaders. Real solutions to real problems. Honest conversations about what's working and what isn't. A network of people who are invested — not just philosophically, but economically — in each other's futures.
I came into Ascend feeling good about the strategic rationale. I feel something different now — something closer to genuine optimism. Every firm leader in this network is working to improve their own firm’s results and is eager to help every other firm do the same. That combination of individual drive and collective investment in each other is rare. I'm proud to be part of it.
The Firm We're Building
Here is what Sweeney Conrad looks like in the years ahead: revitalized.
The combination of Ascend's resources, a national peer network, and the technology transformation now reshaping this profession gives us the opportunity to build something meaningfully better than what existed before — for our clients, for our people, and for this community.
Artificial intelligence is changing accounting. Not eventually — now. The firms that will lead this profession in five years are the ones making serious investments in AI today: in how they deliver work, how they surface insights for clients, how they free their people from low-value tasks so they can focus on high-value judgment. We are one of those firms. Through Ascend, we have access to technology infrastructure and peer learning that no independent firm could build alone. We are moving faster on AI adoption than we could have on our own — deploying tools that change what it means to serve a client, that give our team capabilities that didn't exist in this profession two years ago, and that allow us to deliver advice at a speed and depth that raises the bar for what clients should expect from their accounting firm.
What does this mean in practice? It means our people spend less time on work that can be automated and more time on the work that requires human expertise, relationships, and judgment — the work that actually moves the needle for clients. It means we can synthesize more information, identify more opportunities, and flag more risks than before. It means a more capable, more responsive, more forward-thinking Sweeney Conrad. We are not standing at the edge of this transition watching it happen. We are in it — and we intend to lead.
What This Means for Our Clients
The short answer: the same people, the same commitment, and more capability behind them.
Your relationship is with us — with the partners and team members you've worked with, in some cases for decades. That doesn't change. Your calls still go to the same people. Your work is still done by our team, with the judgment and care you've come to expect from Sweeney Conrad.
What changes is what we can bring to bear on your behalf. Deeper technical resources. More sophisticated tools and technology. The ability to serve clients whose needs have grown beyond what a single independent firm could comfortably handle. For clients with complex, multi-state, or rapidly scaling needs — this is directly good news for you.
And critically: the things we watched happen to other firms when they made different choices — the client reclassifications, the staff turnover, the loss of continuity — those were outcomes we specifically worked to avoid. That deliberateness was not accidental.
What This Means for Our People
This one matters a lot to us personally.
One of the hardest things about running an independent firm is answering the question every talented person eventually asks: what does my future here look like? For years, the honest answer involved some complicated math about partnership tracks, firm size, and whether the opportunity would ever match the ambition.
Ascend changes that equation. Our people now have unlimited opportunity. We want Sweeney Conrad to be a place where exceptional people build their careers, not just their early ones. This helps us make that case.
One change stands out above the rest. In the traditional accounting firm partnership model, equity is something you wait for — often for a decade or more, contingent on a partnership track that not everyone reaches and not everyone wants to wait for. We can now offer equity to high-performing managers, senior managers, and directors earlier in their careers. That is a genuine game changer. It means the people who are driving results at Sweeney Conrad can share in the firm's success while they're building it.
For the right people — ambitious, talented, invested in this firm's future — that changes what it means to build a career here. We believe it changes the conversation entirely.
What This Means for Our Referral Partners and Peers
Our referral relationships are built on trust — trust that we'll take care of the clients you send us, and that we'll send business back when it's right to do so. None of that changes.
To our peers in the profession watching the landscape and wondering what their own path looks like — we're happy to share what we've learned. This was a big decision and we made it carefully. If you want to talk it through, reach out. We want to be open about our experience.
The Honest Version
Every major decision has things you know going in, and things you learn along the way. Six months in, here's our honest read:
The integration work is real. Moving systems, aligning processes, and building new rhythms takes energy and time. Our team has handled it with the same professionalism they bring to everything, and we're proud of that.
The benefits are also real. We're already seeing what access to a national network looks like in practice such as the resources we can call on, the talent conversations we can have, the engagements we can take on with confidence.
And the most important thing hasn't changed at all: Sweeney Conrad is still Sweeney Conrad. Same name. Same people. Same values. Same commitment to the Pacific Northwest.
I got off that bus in 2024 thinking we'd never join a network like Ascend. Two years later, I am so glad we did!
We are genuinely grateful for the trust you've placed in us over the years. That trust is the foundation of everything we've built, and it's exactly why we made this decision with as much care as we did.
The best years of Sweeney Conrad are ahead. We're glad you're part of them.
With appreciation and optimism,
Sam North
CEO, Sweeney Conrad
On behalf of the Partners and Team
425-629-1944 | snorth@sweeneyconrad.com