You Called Them Rockstars, Then Burned Them Out

Recently, a firm leader shared a story about one of her best managers. The manager was smart, reliable and trusted by clients and staff alike. But she left public accounting entirely, taking a role at a local nonprofit organization and teaching college accounting courses on the side.

She burned out. The firm kept piling work on her because she could handle it. She never complained. Leadership mistook her silence for capacity.

That story isn’t unique. We see it often, and it’s dismantling the management layer in accounting firms across the country.

The manager role has outgrown its definition

Middle managers, or what Boomer Consulting refers to as orchestrators, areinvolved in both strategy and execution. They translate partners’ vision into clients’ reality and carry the professional development of the people below them.

That role has always been demanding, but those demands have compounded in recent years. Today’s manager is expected to lead teams through AI adoption, develop fluency in new tools (seemingly weekly), identify upskilling needs, absorb staff anxiety around firm-wide change initiatives, and manage process improvement, all while maintaining their own client responsibilities.

That’s not a manager role. That’s four jobs with one title and one salary, and data reflects the strain.

According to Simon Sinek’s Optimism Company, 75% of middle managers are experiencing burnout, making them the most stressed level in any organization. And in the 2025 Accounting MOVE Project Report, 63% of firms cite burnout as the top reason for talent leaving a firm.

In a profession already facing a talent pipeline crisis, losing managers at this rate compounds the problem.

Firms need to own the structural failures

The burnout problem has structural roots. Most firms have a consistent divide between how they define the middle manager role and what it actually requires. In firms with talent retention problems at the five-to-10-years-of-experience level, we see the following failures pretty consistently.

Promotion without preparation

Technical excellence is the primary path to career advancement in accounting. But the skills that earned the promotion are deep technical knowledge, high utilization rates and the ability to complete client engagements accurately. These are all essential skills for individual contributors. They’re not the most important skills for managers. Leading people, managing change and developing talent are learned capabilities. Most firms hand someone a team and assume those skills will follow.

Accountability without authority

Firm leaders hold managers responsible for outcomes they don’t fully control, such as team performance, tool adoption and staff engagement. Usually, the manager doesn’t have the budget, resources or decision-making power to actually influence those outcomes. Accountability without authority is a fast path to burnout.

Recognition without relief

When a manager performs well, the reward is more clients, more staff and more internal initiatives. Firm leaders treat capability as an invitation to overload rather than an asset to be protected.

What leadership owes the middle

If firm leaders are serious about solving this problem, the path forward requires investment. Here are four places to start.

Define the role before you fill it. If you can’t clearly articulate what managers own versus what partners own versus what senior staff own, your managers are operating in ambiguity. Ambiguity is exhausting. Clarity is a resource.
Develop them like you develop clients. Most firms have a rigorous client development strategy. Fewer apply that same rigor to manager development. If you expect managers to lead through AI adoption and workforce change, book recommendations aren’t enough.
Ask what they’re carrying (and mean it). People who are burning out often look fine from the outside. Make it safe to tell the truth, then act on what you hear. Don’t wait for a performance review to have this conversation.
Match workload to capacity, not capability. Piling work on your best people is a slow exit plan.

The real cost

When that manager left the profession, her clients lost a trusted advisor, her team lost a leader and the firm lost someone genuinely hard to replace.

We won’t solve the middle manager crisis with a new initiative. We’ll solve it when firm leaders decide the people holding everything together deserve as much strategic attention as the clients they serve.

The decision is yours to make. Will you make it before your next rockstar does the math?

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Jacqueline Lombardo, MHR, SHRM-SCP, is the Operations Manager at Boomer Consulting, Inc., where she facilitates the Boomer Talent and CAAS Circles and contributes to developing the Boomer Knowledge Network.