If not, try this exercise from Mark Keener, president of San Francisco-based International Associates and active member of the National Association of Black Accountants.

"Think of the world in a film negative," said Keener, an Oakland native who has been a CPA for 20 years. "Imagine yourself in a profession where everybody you worked with was non-white, and you were the only white."

Or pretend you are Ida Yarbrough, and it is your first day on the job as vice president and manager at First Interstate. You are sitting at your desk, minding your own business, when an elderly woman peeks her head into your office and, her eyes widened in an expression of wonder, says, "I just had to see it for myself." That is, in the case of Yarbrough, an African American in management.

How did she handle it?

"I just walked around my desk and introduced myself," said Yarbrough, whose subsequent interactions with the woman convinced her that though a touch naive, she meant well. But imagine the sheer self-control of smiling and shaking hands instead of, say, shooting a verbal barb across the room. Yarbrough can tell the story with a healthy laugh. Could you?

But why even engage in this exercise? Because if you can do that - just imagine - you are taking a small step toward bridging the gap between minorities and "majorities" in the workplace.

"If you can stretch that far," said Keener, "even entertain the idea, it might help you understand what people of other ethnicities deal with every day."

A lot of people, white mostly, imagine things are getting a lot better for CPAs who are not white. And it is true that there is reason to take heart: The number of minority CPAs in the pipeline is increasing.

According to the AICPA's Report on Minority Accounting Graduates, Enrollment and Public Accounting Professionals - 1997, of the total 24,800 new graduates hired by CPA firms in 1996, 16 percent were non-white, up from 12 percent in 1992.

It is good news, reflecting the success of programs like the Accounting Career Awareness Program (ACAP), which receives contributions toward its funding from CalCPA. ACAP's goal is to reach minority high school students and encourage them to go into the CPA profession. If accounting can be seen as the cornerstone of successful business operations, it certainly represents a step forward for a society trying to create racial harmony and equality to encourage non-whites in the CPA ranks.

But how many of these minority professionals will stick around? Looking at 1996's CPA firm attrition rate, it is easy to conclude that more non-whites than whites will be bidding adios, sayonara, goodbye, or aloha, either of their own volition, or someone else's.

In 1996, while non-white professional staff (defined as CPAs, CPAs in training, and others with a similar amount of academic training in a field that is part of the practice of public accounting) made up nine percent of all those employed by CPA firms, they made up 14 percent of the total professional staff who either resigned or were terminated. For that same year, of the 90 percent white professional staff, whites made up 86 percent of those terminated or resigning.

At a time when America's rich cultural diversity is being touted by business analysts as its greatest strength in the global marketplace, recruiting and retaining talented minority CPAs should be at the top of everyone's to-do list. And it is not just important in terms of the global economy. Domestically, there is a growing number of minority-owned enterprises (the California Board of Accountancy reports that between 1987 and 1992, the numbers grew from 8.8 percent to 12.5 percent of total firms) whose business will be easier to capture by CPAs who can speak their own language, cultural or otherwise.

Walk a Mile in Their Shoes
A good place to start is by learning about the experiences of those minority CPAs who have succeeded. What are they doing now? How did they get there?

It is nice to know that the CPAs interviewed for this article are all happy with their decisions to become CPAs: Most say they did it because they were good at math. While each feels that their race had nothing to do with their initial career choice, all feel that their career trajectory, and decisions they made along the way, reflect their race.

Thomas Lino is partner in charge of Deloitte, Touche & Tohmatsu's international practice, western region. To understand how being Japanese American affected his upward mobility, you eed to go back a generation in his family to his father Sho, the country's first Japanese American CPA, and the founder of Sho Lino Accountants.

Back in 1942, after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor swept America into World War II, Japanese Americans fell victim to anti-Japanese hysteria. A San Francisco Examiner headline blared: "Ouster of all Japs in California near!" And Sho Lino, a graduate of UCLA, had two choices: either leave California, where he was born, or stay and live in a Japanese internment camp.

He chose to go to work for a Jewish firm in Cincinnati, which agreed to "sponsor" him.

"When he returned to L.A. with me he couldn't find a job because of the emotions of the war," said Lino, who was born in Cincinnati. "He adjusted by starting his own firm and catering and to the Japanese-American community."

As a result, Sho Lino Accountants grew to the largest Asian American accounting firm in the country, enjoying a near-monopoly on Japanese-American business by the time Japan started doing big business in the United States in the '70s and '80s.

"That really catapulted our firm," said Thomas Lino, who by then was a licensed CPA working for his father. It was a market Deloitte & Touche wanted for its ties to Japan. So in 1983 the Big Five firm acquired Sho Lino Accountants.

"Deloitte & Touche wanted access to a large Japanese practice," said Lino, who has no illusions about why Asians have been successful in West Coast firms. "The upward mobility of Asians in CPA firms is directly linked to inbound and outbound Asian commerce."

Hugo Delgado's story is potentially the same song of success, but with a different verse. He began his career in 1983 at Peat Marwick, where he worked for four years as one of the firm's only Hispanics. What did it feel like to be the only one?

"Not very good," said Delgado. "It didn't feel good that they were not doing anything to bring new Hispanics into the arena."

Now he is a partner with Oakland-based Rodriguez, Perez, Delgado & Co., a small regional firm whose clientele is primarily Latino. Delgado figures with the changing business demographics in California as a result of NAFTA, and the booming economies of Latin American countries, Hispanic CPAs are now on the brink of demand similar to that enjoyed by Asians in the 1980s.

"The need for Spanish-speaking bilingual CPAs is going to increase," he said.

Being Latino himself has turned out to be good for business.

"I think there's a certain advantage in my pursuing Hispanic business against non-Hispanic firms," said Delgado, whose parents were born in Central America. "Solidarity is increasing, as you see more and more Hispanic professionals go into mainstream America. You see that those professionals do recognize that there is something to be offered by unity. What's that something? A commonality."

Common Backgrounds
As American business becomes increasingly variegated, it is this commonality that minority CPAs see as a chief strength in competing for business. Keener began his career at Arthur Andersen, whose personnel was so white he says he felt like, "that James Baldwin quote, 'a fly in the buttermilk.'"

Keener eventually sees International Partners, an outsourced telecommunications and energy marketing firm, making strides in Africa, where many countries are in sore need of the telecommunications infrastructure that his clients can provide. And he believes being black will be an advantage.

"There's more to it than a comfort level," said Keener of working with black business people. "We have a kinship there of knowing that our development, our sense of who we are, has been denied because of the same sense of oppression. We both are looking to prosper in that economic glory that others have enjoyed. That we have tragedies in common builds trust."

A native of Hong Kong, Rose Y. C. Huie owns her own firm, Rose Y.C. Huie CPA, in Oakland. Her career as a CPA began 24 years ago when she hired on at Deloitte & Touche. Although she was the only Asian among the 40 new hires (she does not remember any blacks among her fellow recruits), she said her most difficult challenge was the English barrier.

"Was I discriminated against?" she asked, in her now-fluent English. "At the CPA firm, it was just hard because of the language problem. That's why I didn't like it. My English wasn't that good. Going out to audits was very tough. I didn't know what questions to ask, I didn't know if I had gotten the right answers."

Her second job, however, she did leave because she missed out on a promotion she felt she deserved. The man they hired, a Caucasian whom she felt she was more qualified, became her boss.

"I felt I had hit the ceiling," she said, adding that it was, nonetheless, a very comfortable place to work. "That's when I went full time with my own business."

Yarbrough makes no bones about why she left a Big Five firm after six years.

"I absolutely knew that I was not going to make partner," she said, explaining that she had always been a high achiever. She acknowledges that racism is often subtle, and there was no overt proof that she was being held back because of her gender or race, but explained, "My vision is to be at the top, and I knew the opportunity was not there."

After that experience, Yarbrough went to an international petroleum company and then to a national bank. After a while, she got tired of searching for a place where she did not think her race would hold her back, so she started up her own practice.

Now she does not spend a lot of time dwelling on the past.

"Was there racism? Absolutely. But that's Life 101. You look around and say, 'How many more companies am I going to hop to?' If you did it any differently, how could you live your life?"

Still, when you ask Yarbrough why she set up her own practice, she is all business-minded CPA.

"I wanted to be able to set my fees, and I wanted to make the most money I could make, and I wanted to feel good about the work I do," said Yarbrough. "I wanted to work for and with people who were appreciative of what I was doing for them. Working for yourself, there's a whole different level of appreciation. You really are helping people."

Both women now say their practices cater largely to clients - small businesses and individuals - who share their ethnicity. Like others interviewed for the article, they have found that their race, a disadvantage in some arenas, helped them gain the trust of clients, many of whom turned to them because they either could not afford the services of larger firms or felt shut out by cultural or language differences.

"I enjoy helping out companies that I know are having the same issues that I'm having," said Yarbrough. "I can help them because I understand that the playing field is not level. I can bring the Big Five skill set that I have at an affordable price."

In their own practices, Yarbrough and Huie have taken a step toward insulating themselves from both racism and sexism.

"Some people just don't want to deal with women," said Huie who, like most CPAs, gains most of her clients through referrals from other clients. "That's fine. They don't have to. I think it's the same thing with race. If they don't want to deal with Asians that's fine, they don't have to."

Diverse Groups Are More Creative
But in terms of the future, if you do not want to deal with non-whites, it will be your company's loss. In his book The Diversity Advantage, John P. Fernandez, a business consultant who teaches management at New York University, writes that mixed groups come up with more diverse solutions to problems than homogeneous ones.

"In our work with major clients, we are seeing increasing evidence that strongly supports the contention that work-team heterogeneity promotes more critical strategic analysis, creativity, innovation and high-quality decisions and solutions."

It is an advantage, he points out, that companies can achieve only if their workforce appreciates diversity, and group members get along.

What can companies do to gain the creative edge with a diverse work force? The answer comes from our interviewees in a kind of wish list for the future.

Lino says as far as the Big Five go, he would like to see more diversity at the top.

"More office managing partners and partners in charge of audit, as opposed to being just line partners," he said. "But it has to be deserving. Minority professionals have to learn how to walk and talk at the top. It's not a hand out, it's not, 'Because I'm a minority you owe me.'"

On the other hand, Keener believes an understanding of where everybody started is urgently needed, from those people at the top.

"For hundreds of years, through slavery, my ancestors were not accustomed to controlling the fruits of their own labors. They were not allowed to reap the sense of self-sufficiency through business ownership."

And that is something, he points out, that is being learned and observed by members of other cultures whose children take for granted their position in society.

"This race did not start with everybody having Nike track shoes. Some are generations ahead of everybody else, and if you don't address it then you just won't move on."

Keener says change is going to be a twofold process. First, more minority professionals need to be involved in education so that young people see someone who looks like them in a position of power.

"It's important to develop people," said Keener, who has taught accounting and management at San Francisco State University and, along with Yarbrough, is involved in ACAP.

Henry Vasquez is another ACAP colleague who understands the value of minority role models.

"All some kids see is low-income, crime-ridden areas," he pointed out. "Their parents are laborers. They don't see suits. I say, 'Get your education and help the others to come behind you.'"

Which brings us to the second part of Keener's vision of change.

"At some point I think it will start from the top down. There needs to be a view that there is some value in having a diversified workforce," said Keener.

A value driven both economically and morally: "If you look at the world around you, it's a collection of various cultures," continued Keener. "And as the world continues to get smaller, it's only fair that if you're extracting wealth from the people around the world, that you make your business reflective of the world's cultures."