The Effective Accountant 2025
Registering for The Effective Accountant at CPD Fest 2025 couldn’t be more straightforward. We have three packages for you to choose from – 8 hours, 16 hours and 24 hours of CPD – allowing you to customise the event to your own specific needs. Once purchased, pick ‘n’ mix the topics of most interest and relevance to you from any of the sessions running across the week of CPD Fest 2025.
CPD Fest Packages:
The 12 Gifts Of CPD Fest
Over the coming weeks we are going to give you advance access to hugely valuable extracts from the note packs The CPD Fest & The Essential Advisors’ Mix.
With The 12 Gifts of CPD Fest you will get guides, financial statements, checklists, tools, tax papers, letters of engagement and reports all the way up to and including the kitchen sink!
Registration for The 12 Gifts Of CPD Fest is free, quick and straight forward and you can do so here:
Event Details:
Session 1: Time Management 2.0 – How Accountants Can Win Back 180 Minutes a Week (in the Age of AI)
Time: 09:00 – 10:40
Speaker: Des O’Neill – OmniPro
Time Management is still the source of — and the solution to — all of our problems.
But in 2025, the tools, the challenges, and the opportunities have changed.
Time Management 2.0 builds on Des’s Time Management 101 session to help accountants, bookkeepers, and firm owners take control of their focus, energy, and effectiveness — while intelligently leveraging the capabilities of AI to create time, not just save it.
This is not an AI training session — it’s a practical workshop on how to be more effective in an AI-enabled world. You’ll rediscover the timeless principles of productivity and personal mastery while exploring new ways that technology can lighten your load, enhance your focus, and help you reclaim 180 minutes a week.
No matter how busy you are, you can win back a half day a week — and in doing so, create more space to think, lead, and live.
This session will be of particular interest to:
- Firm owners and partners who want more time and better leverage.
- Senior accountants and managers who feel stuck in constant busyness.
- Bookkeepers and advisors who want to regain focus and control.
- Any professional who wants to save at least 3 hours a week — and find the headspace to do their best work.
Des O’Neill will cover the following topics during this session:
Part 1 – Changing Your Time Paradigm in 2025
- The New Time Reality: Why busy is no longer a badge of honour — and how attention, not time, is the new currency.
- Identifying the Real Problem: Time isn’t one-dimensional — balancing priorities, energy, and impact.
- Focus, Flow, and Frequency: The modern accountant’s guide to staying in control in a world of distraction.
- Energy vs. Time: How to manage your energy cycles, not your hours.
- Think WHO, Not HOW — with a Twist: How AI now fits into the WHO equation as your digital assistant.
- Habits, Accountability & The Power of 1%: How small, consistent improvements compound into massive time gains.
Part 2 – Practical Tactics & Strategies to Win Back 180 Minutes a Week
- Taking Stock: Mapping where your time actually goes — and where it should.
- Working in Your Unique Ability: Focus on the work only you can do — and delegate or automate the rest.
- The NOT-To-Do List: The most powerful productivity tool you’re not using.
- Diary Zoning & Time Blocking 2.0: How to use AI scheduling tools without surrendering control.
- Systemising Your Success: One-touch principles, workflows, and smart automations that free up your brain.
- The Power of Sprints: How to get more done in 90 focused minutes than in a distracted day.
- AI as a Time Partner: Practical examples of how to use AI for research, summarisation, and repetitive admin tasks.
- One Thing, One Quarter: Applying the 90-day sprint model to build momentum and progress sustainably.
By attending this session, participants will:
- Understand the mindset shifts required to manage time and attention in 2025.
- Identify their personal and professional time leaks — and fix them with structure and systems.
- Learn practical tools and tactics to save at least 180 minutes per week.
- Gain insights into how AI can simplify and support everyday workflows.
- Develop new habits and routines that enhance focus, energy, and execution.
- Walk away with templates and checklists that can be applied immediately.
Course Level: Need to Know
Session 2: Beyond the Numbers: The Accountant’s Guide to Smarter Thinking and Better Results
Time: 11:00 – 12:40
Speaker: Des O’Neill – OmniPro
Success in accounting has always been about more than technical skill — it’s about how you think.
In this powerful 100-minute session, Des O’Neill challenges accountants and bookkeepers to step back from the day-to-day and rethink the way they approach problems, strategy, and performance.
In this session Des explores how world-class performers — including rugby legend Tadhg Furlong — use awareness, reflection, and feedback to achieve excellence.
You’ll discover how to apply these same principles in your practice, and how AI can act as a powerful thinking partner, helping you analyse, simulate, and challenge your own assumptions. This is not an AI workshop but we cannot talk about Critical Thinking in 2025 without considering and exploring the potential AI has in thinking smarter to get better results.
Walk away with your own 7 Steps to Smarter Thinking and Better Results in 2026 — a practical framework for better decisions, better leadership, and better outcomes.
This session will be of particular interest to:
- Firm owners and partners who want to build a better and more profitable and rewarding business.
- Senior accountants and managers who want to optimise their performance from amateur to professional.
- Bookkeepers and advisors who face critical decisions every day.
- Any professional who wants to think smarter, get a better result and realise their through potential.
Des O’Neill will cover the following topics during this session:
Introduction – Thinking Beyond the Numbers
Setting the scene: Why “thinking” is the accountant’s true superpower. The mindset shift from compliance to curiosity. Des introduces critical thinking and black-box thinking, and shares Tadhg Furlong’s disciplined approach to learning and reflection.
The Foundations of Smarter Thinking
Unpacking how accountants make decisions — the impact of bias, pressure, and assumptions. Participants identify “thinking traps” within their firms. Introduction to black-box thinking: learning loops, debriefs, and feedback culture.
The 7-Step Framework for Better Results
An interactive workbook segment that helps participants explore each area of their professional thinking and leadership.
Step 1: Self-Assessment – What’s working and what’s not in your current thinking?
Step 2: Letting Go – Challenging legacy habits and limiting beliefs.
Step 3: People – Creating thinking partnerships (mentors, peers, even AI tools).
Step 4: Pricing & Value – How curiosity and critical questioning lead to more confident pricing.
Step 5: Technology & AI – Using AI to test scenarios, surface blind spots, and sharpen insight.
Step 6: Personal Development – Strengthening awareness, resilience, and curiosity.
Step 7: Execution – Turning new thinking into daily habits and action plans.
Performance Mindset – Lessons from Tadhg Furlong
What elite athletes can teach accountants: analysing mistakes without blame, staying calm under pressure, and embracing continuous learning. Des shares insights from his interview with Furlong — applying “black-box” review techniques to professional and personal growth.
The AI Advantage – Thinking with a Partner, Not a Replacement
Quick demo and discussion: how to use AI as a “thinking assistant” to clarify assumptions, pressure-test decisions, and generate reflective prompts. Reinforcing the message that human judgement remains central.
Wrap-Up: Your 2026 Thinking Plan
Guided excercise: defining your “One Thinking Shift” for 2026. Participants complete their workbook with three actionable commitments to apply immediately in their firm or leadership role.
By the end of this session, participants will:
- Understand how critical thinking and black-box reflection improve performance and decision quality.
- Learn how to integrate structured reflection and feedback into their firm’s culture.
- Gain insights from elite sports psychology and how to apply it to accounting leadership.
- Explore how AI can enhance (not replace) human thinking, strategy, and creativity.
Session 3: Practical Uses of AI in Sales & Customer Service
Time: 13:40 – 15:20
Speaker: Terry Harmer – NLC Training
Anywhere you look today you will encounter AI whether you’re consciously hearing or reading about it or just going about your daily business AI is all around us,
playing a bigger and bigger apart in our lives, businesses and communication. This session is designed to give you an introduction to and an understanding of where AI has come to date, where it is likely to be moving in the future, the impact it can have on.
Terry Harmer will cover the following topics during this webinar:
- Plain-language explanation of AI
- Sales Applications
- Customer Service Applications
- How to Use AI Effectively – Prompts, Inputs, and Commands
- AI Tips, Shortcuts, and Tools
By the end of the session participants should have a clear understanding of what AI is and how to make use of its potential to enhance and improve the services they provide to their clients, win more business and be more efficient and effective in their work.
This session will be of particular interest to anyone involved in selling or marketing services and communicating with clients and potential clients.
Course Level: Foundation / Intermediate
Session 4: Presentation Skills, Networking, and Connecting With Your Audience
Time: 15:40 – 17:20
Speaker: Terry Harmer – NLC Training
With you part of an internal team, managing a department or presenting to potential clients or a business meeting, your ability to present professionally will either emphasise the value of your content or can significantly or even completely diminish it. more and more today careers on stage managed messages depend more and more on delivery. This short session will highlight the skills and techniques employed by effective presenters with take away tools that will enable you to prepare and deliver persuasive presentations and make the most of networking opportunities.
Terry Harmer will cover the following topics during this webinar:
- Why are you talking? Setting Objectives & Outcomes
- Choosing the right presentation structure
- Connecting with the audience and building rapport
- Telling stories and other professional presentation tips
- How to network effectively
By the end of the session participants should have a clear understanding of how to construct and deliver an
effective presentation and choose the most appropriate approach depending on whether the intention is to
inform, explain, train or sell.
This session will be of particular interest to anyone who is required to, or may have to deliver a presentation in the future, whether that is to an individual a group or a larger audience.
Course Level: Intermediate
CPD Course Speakers
Des O'Neil - OmniPro
Having worked for a number of years in practice, and with one of the profession’s regulatory and support institutes, Des co-founded OmniPro to develop tools, techniques, products and services that make accountancy more profitable and rewarding.
Des is passionate about bringing innovation to the accountancy profession and enabling accountants to achieve what they want from their careers and business. His core belief is that when empowered to achieve their best, accountants can deliver transformative results for clients.
He holds qualifications from the ACCA Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, CPA Institute of Certified Public Accountants and ACIS Association of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators.
Terry Harmer - NLC Training
Terry Harmer is a Member of the Institute of Training & Development (MIITD), a Fellow of the Sales Institute of Ireland, (FSII), a Member of the Marketing Institute of Ireland, (MMII) Member / Qualification, is a Licensed Practitioner of NLP, (NLP
Prac.), holds qualifications in Business Administration, a Certificate in Training & Continuing Education, (1st Class Honours, NUI Maynooth), ROI Impact, Measurement, (training on training evaluation and transfer of skills to the workplace)
Terry delivers City & Guilds and QQI certified courses and a portfolio of training programmes ranging from a half day to over a year in duration. He is on the Enterprise Ireland Mentor panel, and has been working and training with West Offaly Training and Offaly Local Development Company (West Offaly Partnership) since 2001
Terry Harmer has worked with 22 LEO’s (Formerly Enterprise Boards) since their inception around the country, delivering training on Sales, Marketing, Business Development, People and Management Skills. His engagements for those LEO’s have been with new and established businesses delivering training and operating as a mentor.
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