Access Like Statement Problem

From a search form I perform a query on an access table that uses the like statement on many columns. e.g.

select ____ from people where specialty LIKE '%%' and firstname like '%%' etc etc

The problem is that the statement does not pick up null values, so it omits certain records. This table is constantly updated and when I import the updates null values go into the columns where there is no value.

My question is this: is there a way I can include records with null values for my query WITHOUT having to change the query? I realize I might be able to use where specialty LIKE '%%' or specialty IS NULL, but I would really prefer not to change the SQL.