In November 2010, the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) partnered with the University of Toronto to respond to this challenge. The result was Leveraging Change – The New Pillars of Accounting Education, a one-day symposium during which leading academics from Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom explored the new pillars of accounting education along with 100 delegates from across the country.
The five new pillars were identified for the symposium as: (1) accounting principles and concepts; (2) ethical decision-making; (3) professional and personal attributes; (4) professional judgment; and (5) integration. The Pillars are not based on a formal research process but on an extended dialogue among the CICA, the University of Toronto and other interested academics. The Pillars re-position and re-emphasize areas that have long been of interest to educators and to the accounting profession alike.
The objective of the Symposium is to begin the process of rethinking accounting education by articulating the questions that accounting educators need to ask. During the Symposium, 15 thought papers were presented. Those papers raise the questions eloquently and so begin this important discussion. For more information, visit the CICA’s newly redesigned website section on Supporting CA academics. Also, refer to the blog post on October 11, 2011, Should Professional Judgment be a Pillar of Accounting Education?
