About
Ezekiel Tanaka joined the AB Business faculty in 2019 as Assistant Professor of Accounting and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2024. He is the lead accounting faculty at AB and the program's primary mentor for students preparing for the CPA examination. Since 2020 he has personally guided 31 AB graduates through the CPA exam — an unusually high pass-through rate for a 1,100-student university.
Tanaka was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to a Japanese-American father (a third-generation Honolulu accountant) and a Korean-American mother (a public-school teacher). He holds a Ph.D. in Accounting from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business (2017), an M.S. in Accounting from the University of Hawaii Manoa (2010), and a B.B.A. in Accounting from the University of Hawaii Manoa (2008). He is a licensed CPA in West Virginia and Ohio.
Before academia he spent six years at Deloitte in the Honolulu and Cleveland offices — most recently as Senior Auditor in the Cleveland office's Higher Education and Nonprofit practice. He came to AB after a postdoctoral teaching fellowship at Indiana.
Education
- 2017Ph.D., Accounting — Indiana University Kelley School of Business. Dissertation: Auditor Discretion in Small Audit Engagements: A Field Study of Community Accounting Practice.
- 2010M.S., Accounting — University of Hawaii Manoa.
- 2008B.B.A., Accounting (summa cum laude) — University of Hawaii Manoa. Beta Alpha Psi.
Teaching
Dr. Tanaka teaches the entire accounting core sequence, the senior auditing capstone, and runs the AB CPA prep program.
- ACC 215 / 216Financial Accounting I & IIThe two-semester required accounting core for all Business majors. Heavy problem-set workload; supplemental review sessions Tuesday evenings.
- ACC 410Auditing PracticeA senior capstone covering audit theory, planning, sampling, and reporting. Includes a semester-long live audit-engagement simulation.
- ACC 460CPA Examination PreparationA one-credit elective in which seniors and recent alumni work through the four-section CPA exam in a structured year-long cohort. Free to AB students and alumni.
Research & Practice
Tanaka's research focuses on auditor discretion in small audit engagements — particularly the working practices of community-accounting firms serving small nonprofits, faith-based organizations, and small businesses. His recent work has examined the unique audit-evidence challenges of small church and small college audit engagements.
He maintains active CPA practice on a quarterly basis (largely as a peer-review reviewer for small WV accounting firms) and is a frequent guest at the WV Society of CPAs continuing-professional-education events. He is on the AICPA Higher Education Audit Council.
Selected Publications & Presentations
- 2024"Auditor Discretion in Faith-Based and Higher-Education Audits." Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory.
- 2023"The CPA Exam Pipeline at a Small University." Issues in Accounting Education.
- 2021Beta Alpha Psi National Teaching Award.
- 2025Plenary, AAA Annual Meeting, "Why Small Universities Are the Future of CPA Recruitment."
Honors & Service
- 2024Promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure.
- 2023AB Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching.
- 2021Beta Alpha Psi National Teaching Award.
- 2017Indiana Kelley School of Business Distinguished Dissertation.
- 2008University of Hawaii Beta Alpha Psi.
The CPA exam is not a screen. It is a long, careful conversation about whether you have actually understood what an accountant does. My job is to make sure my students have the conversation in earnest — and pass.— Dr. Ezekiel Tanaka, CPA
Beyond the Classroom
Tanaka lives in Philippi with his wife Maria (an accountant at the Davis Health System) and their young son. He is the AB Faculty Senate member at large, a member of First Baptist Church of Philippi, and the unofficial gateway from AB to the local CPA firms in north-central WV.
A serious surfer in his youth, he has reluctantly become a serious indoor-rock-climber since moving to WV. He hosts an annual sushi-making evening for the AB Beta Alpha Psi chapter each November (he was the chapter president at Hawaii).