This unprecedented Vision Process was a profession-wide effort involving the contribution of approximately 3,400 CPAs from all states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands to craft the CPA Vision. A series of 177 professionally facilitated, day-long "Future Forums" was conducted to gather input from CPAs working in public practice, business and industry, government, and education. The Future Forums presented a unique opportunity for CPAs to seriously consider their futures - an experience that most would not have had without the prompting of the Vision initiative. A broad spectrum of data and a variety of perspectives were captured from the Future Forum participants as they worked in teams to stimulate creativity and exchange ideas about the future of the profession.

The content of the Future Forum materials was developed through a significant amount of internal research including information from state CPA societies, the AICPA Strategic Planning Committee, and staff, as well as external market research.

Virtual Consulting, a professional consulting firm specializing in visioning, combined this information with future studies and literature surveys to design the visioning technique for the Future Forums.

Focusing on the global horizon, the Future Forums began with a worldview of the future 10 to 15 years from now, using the year 2011 as the target.

Participants evaluated global forces and scenarios that could emerge from the interplay of those forces using a visioning framework known as PESTHR, an acronym for the following categories of global forces: