With the finance sector feeling the pinch from mass skills shortages and digitisation, how can the accounting profession evolve to remain as attractive and relevant as possible?
This question was put under the microscope at this year’s IPA National Congress during a session on education and employability.
“We’re seeing a suitability gap in some occupations where people are coming out with what looks to be the right set of skills and qualifications and not getting employed. And that suitability gap is where we need to see business and industry lean more into the design of training packages, and the design of higher education programs,” said panellist Professor Barney Glover, Commissioner of Jobs and Skills Australia.
“We need to see more direct involvement… I speak to big industry groups who have concerns about skill shortages, or challenges in the education and training space, or the need for reform, but there’s not enough industry lean-in to that challenge.”
Glover was joined on the panel by Dr. Robert Kay, co-founder and Executive Director of Incept Labs, Amanda Linton, CEO of the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers, Professor Philomena Leung, Group Executive Education at IPA, and Andrew Mills, the chair of the Financial Reporting Council.
IPA’s CEO Andrew Conway raised important issues around education and training for accountants in his opening address to Congress the previous day.
We heard that recruiting and retaining talent is difficult, finding the right staff to come into your practice or business who are ready on day one is getting really challenging. It’s not so much around the technical elements – it’s around professional skills, around problem-solving, teamwork, or emerging skills like cyber security and sustainability.
Competency over credentials
During the panel session, a recurring theme was the recognition that traditional credentialling models do not support the current employment landscape.
“When we look around the world, you see a higher education system which has not radically changed for quite a long time,” said Kay. “There is a strong trend coming around the world to move away from the way that higher education has been done, [where] you get assessed against learning outcomes. We are moving to a world where it is getting assessed against competencies, and that means that you have to demonstrate the skills to get the [qualification].”
This transformation is exemplified by IPA’s new Global Certificate of Public Accounting (GCPA) program, which represents a shift from the standard model of accounting education, with a focus on practical skills and knowledge that can be applied to real-world contexts. It also includes areas growing in importance such as sustainability, data analytics and cybersecurity alongside core accounting competencies.
“This is the first of its kind anywhere in the world, and it’s designed to transform the way people come into the profession, stay in the profession, and continue to add value,” said Conway in his opening address at Congress.
He also noted that IPA’s work to reshape education and help build a stronger pipeline of capable accounting professionals is not limited to Australia, referencing IPA’s recent work with the Solomon Islands Institute of Accountants to design a professional Diploma of Accounting program.
“Think about the billions of dollars of aid rolling through the Solomons. It’s on our doorstep. So we stepped up, and rather than just saying, ‘Here, do this,’ we said, ‘We’ll work with you to co-design a program,” he said.
“We know that the pathway out of poverty and developing status is financial transparency and a stronger profession, and so we stepped up to the plate to do that.”
Flexibility to meet industry demands
As the skills required by the accounting profession evolve, so too do the educational pathways that support them.
According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the average half-life of a skill is currently about five years. In contrast to past generations, where a single set of skills and qualifications could sustain a 40-year career, today’s accountants must continuously update and expand their expertise to keep up with rapid technological progress.
This calls for far more flexibility in the way education is designed and delivered, said Linton.
“I think there’s a broader cultural shift [where] people want education and training when they need it, when it’s relevant for them, rather than doing a core qualification where students are sitting there saying, ‘I actually don’t understand why I’m studying this subject, because I’m not going to go anywhere near it when I actually go into practice.’”
IPA’s educational offerings, including GCPA, have been honed over the past year to help accountants cultivate a broad and flexible skillset.
For instance, the microcredentials included in the program provide a faster and more dynamic way to equip accountants with the specific skills they need to navigate their role. The program offers recognition of prior learning, allowing participants to skip over topics they already have experience with.
“It creates the potential for a lot more efficiency in the education system… If you want to do the GCPA, you don’t need to do all of it, because you can demonstrate that you’ve already got a whole bunch of those skills,” said Kay.
Stackable credentials like these, which can be completed on a flexible schedule, also better accommodate different demographics entering or moving around within the profession. This is particularly true in the bookkeeping sector, said Linton.
“The vast majority of people who enter that sector – and it is a growing sector – they’re not students who are coming straight out of school or university. They are very frequently returned-to-work mums. The bookkeeping sector is 90 per cent female,” she said.
“So we are talking about people who want to upskill, they want to be professional, they want to meet the requirements, but they’re saying, ‘I just don’t have the time to be sitting in a classroom or on an online training session at 3pm on a Wednesday afternoon. I want to be able to take that competency unit and complete it in my own time, where I actually have the ability to do that.’”
Adapting to global trends for a stronger profession
Like so many other industries and professions, accounting is in the midst of transformation through globalisation, digitisation and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).
Rather than resisting these changes, panellists emphasised that the profession should embrace change and adapt its practices accordingly. To that end, technological proficiency is built into the IPA’s GCPA and microcredential programs.
Another important inclusion in the GCPA is skills such as problem-solving, teamwork and communication. These skills have always been critical, but never more so than in the age of AI. Recent research from LinkedIn found that 91 per cent of global learning and development professionals agree that skills like these, traditionally thought of as ‘soft’, are becoming increasingly important.
“They’re looking for people that aren’t just one dimensional – they have a broader skill set,” said Mills. “They have the right attitude to start with… and they have the right ethical base as well, because that’s incredibly important.”
As a result, the GCPA program includes transdisciplinary competencies that combine essential technical skills with human skills for maximum impact, explains Leung.
“It’s not just about [the technical skills] – accounting is being able to express those output in accounting in a narrative suitable for your clients,” she said.
Going forward, new sustainability reporting requirements mean accountants will also need to be equipped with the skills to support the national push to net zero. In his opening address, Conway encouraged members to “lean into” sustainability reporting and assurance, as it will be a key area of demand in the near future.
“We know we’ve got scopes one and two coming online. We’ve got larger entities reporting against this framework, and in the very near future, we’ll have SMEs caught up in scope three, who’ll be required to report because they’re part of a larger entity’s value chain. Who’s going to provide the assurance service to them on sustainability information? They’re not going to go to larger firms. This is a space for you to own, and I think you’ve got around six months to get across it.”
The scale of upskilling and reskilling required for the accounting profession to thrive in the future of work might seem daunting. However, rather than being bystanders to change, accountants have an opportunity to help shape the future of the profession.
“My first piece of advice to everybody is to get involved in the conversation,” said Linton. “This conversation affects all of us in one way or another. Whether we’re talking about the future of the profession, whether you’re looking to hire staff, whether you may be interested in the training sector, it’s really important that your individual voice gets heard.”
Want to learn more about the latest developments and issues affecting the accounting landscape which was discussed at the 2024 National Congress? Read the next article in the 2024 National Congress series: How accountants can navigate mounting compliance challenges
