Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

Listicle of the Day: The Accounting Firms on Fortune’s 25 Best Large Workplaces in Consulting and Professional Services

Posted on by Going Concern News Desk
blocks stacked up to signify a ranking

Yikes that headline was a mouthful, sorry about that. Anyway, Fortune has released its 25 Best Large Workplaces in Consulting and Professional Services list and you might be surprised to learn that only one Big 4 firm cleared the top ten. Actually you might not be surprised by that at all once you learn the methodology:

To determine the Best Workplaces in Consulting & Professional Services list, Fortune partnered with people analytics company Great Place to Work who analyzed the survey responses of over 104,000 employees from Great Place to Work-Certified™ companies in the consulting and professional services industry.

The survey enables employees to share confidential quantitative and qualitative feedback about their organization’s culture by responding to 60 statements on a 5-point scale and answering two open-ended questions. Collectively, these statements describe a great employee experience, defined by high levels of trust, respect, credibility, fairness, pride, and camaraderie. In addition, companies provide organizational data like size, location, industry, demographics, roles, and levels.

Let’s take a look at that Top 10. You’ll note the firms on this list provide a variety of professional services of the consulting variety including legal, staffing, and engineering.

  1. Accenture
  2. Orrick
  3. Protiviti
  4. Alston & Bird LLP
  5. Kimley-Horn and Associates, Inc
  6. Deloitte
  7. Plante & Moran, PLLC
  8. Perkins Coie LLP
  9. Modern Technology Solutions, Inc.
  10. RSM US LLP

KPMG came in #11, EY #14, and PwC lagged behind the pack at #18. A few other familiar faces on the Top 25 include Crowe, Baker Tilly, and WithumSmith+Brown.

This concludes your listicle of the day.

Related Posts

Hiring Watch ’19: Hey Auditors, PwC U.K. Now Has 500 Job Openings For You to Fill

Whoa, if you haven’t seen by now, the Queen’s PwC announced some pretty big news […]

PwC Report: We’re Not Getting Sued for Accounting Issues Nearly as Much

That goes for the rest of you Big 4 and non-Big 4 too! Okay, the report doesn’t come out and state that CPA firms are the ones getting slapped around by plaintiffs but it seems like a logical conclusion since we’re talking about, ya know, accounting.


The PricewaterhouseCoopers report states that of the 155 federal lawsuits in 2009, only 37% of them were related to accounting issues, compared to 41% in 2008. To clarify just a little bit, the decline was because “many of the cases were connected to the financial crisis and tended to focus more on disclosure issues not having to do with whether the defendants followed generally accepted accounting principles.” In other words, the accounting is wrong as much but apparently people are forgetting to bring up certain important details. Like say, repos?

Plus the lawsuits that do involve accounting issues are the most expensive settlements. The reports states that out of the top ten lawsuits, seven of them had an accounting component to them. The total value of settlement in ’09 was $2.3 bil.

So what causes all the problems? Lots of bad guessing for starters. According to the report, 57% of the cases mentioned issues related to estimates, while 43% of the suits cited internal controls. Unfortunately, those two things are right in the wheelhouse of auditors. Bright side is that revenue recognition isn’t citied nearly as much. Don’t let anyone tell you different, screwing up less is a good thing.

Accounting-Related Lawsuits Fall [CFO]