  I present a method for accurately calculating the pole mass of the lightest
Higgs scalar boson in supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model, using a
mass-independent renormalization scheme. The Higgs scalar self-energies are
approximated by supplementing the exact one-loop results with the second
derivatives of the complete two-loop effective potential in Landau gauge. I
discuss the dependence of this approximation on the choice of renormalization
scale, and note the existence of particularly poor choices which fortunately
can be easily identified and avoided. For typical input parameters, the
variation in the calculated Higgs mass over a wide range of renormalization
scales is found to be of order a few hundred MeV or less, and is significantly
improved over previous approximations.
