COMPETENT AND VERSATILE — Professional Accountants in Business

Worldwide, more than one million professional accountants work in commerce, industry, financial services, education, and the public and not-for-profit sectors. Many of them are in positions of strategic or functional leadership. These professional accountants in business (PAIBs) are well-placed to create long-term sustainable value for their organizations.
  
PAIBs play key roles in organizations— roles that often go far beyond the stereotypical perceptions of accountants. It may not be readily apparent to all employers and business owners, but they can capitalize on professional accountants’ training, knowledge and skill sets to help guide their organizations toward long-term sustainable success.

To help the global accountancy profession respond to changing expectations of society, financial markets and organizations, the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) has identified eight drivers of sustainable organizational success. These eight drivers, which draw from various management and quality frameworks, provide a basis for understanding how professional accountants can support organizations in sustainable value creation.

The ability of PAIBs to help drive sustainable value creation is based on a range of professional skills and a particular attitude and mindset. That mindset needs to embrace five key areas: Professionalism and ethical behavior; Professional judgment; Organizational and environmental awareness; An investor and wider stakeholder focus; and Change, uncertainty and complexity. 

For more information, read the publication, Competent and Versatile: How Professional Accountants in Business Drive Sustainable Organizational Success, available at the International Center for Professional Accountants in Business on the IFAC website (www.ifac.org/paib).

Educating Professionals: Ethics and Judgment in a Changing Learning Environment

There is a general consensus that it has never been more important for the accounting profession and accounting and business educators to work together to determine how best to prepare tomorrow’s accountants.

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 objective of that symposium was to begin the process of re-thinking accounting education by articulating the questions that accounting educators need to ask.

In March 2014, the University of Toronto  hosted a follow-up symposium which was jointly sponsored by the Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada (CPA Canada), the Institute for Management & Innovation (IMI) and the CPA/Rotman Centre for Innovation in Accounting Education. The symposium provided an opportunity to discuss the issues across several professions including Health Care, Engineering, Law, Education and Accounting.

Fundamental questions that were discussed at the symposium included: How do the various professions define professional judgment? How do the concepts of ethics and judgment pertain to different professions? How can educators help students develop these very important abilities? How does the changing educational environment offer new opportunities for enhanced learning in these areas?

The conference was chaired by Irene Wiecek and included speakers from across Canada. For each profession, at least two perspectives were presented – the academic perspective and the practitioner perspective. Those who attended the symposium worked in groups to encourage reflective discussion. From the perspective of the Accounting Profession, a presentation was given on “Educating Accounting Professionals About Ethics and Judgment.” For more information, contact Efrim Boritz (Professor; Assurance, Information Systems) and Krista Fiolleau (Assistant Professor; Assurance, Ethics) at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.