The World Congress of Accountants (WCOA2018) was held in Sydney, Australia, this month. With the theme of Global Challenges, Global Leaders, it highlighted how global issues are driving change in the accounting profession that will change the role of accountants in the future.
Three areas that are going through significant change at a global level at the moment are the economy, demographics and technology.
According to historian Professor Niall Ferguson of Harvard university, Brexit and the rise of populist and extremist governments is creating financial upheavals that will challenge the global economic order for a long time to come.
Looking to history, he argued that there will be an increasing need for good standards of business conduct in the future to maintain business confidence and safeguard against corruption.
Critical role to play
The accounting profession has a crucial role to play in this new world. But our role will extend beyond ensuring individuals and business are compliant, to making sure that we all do the right thing.
At a demographic level, we’re already seeing the impact that baby boomers are having on the ageing sector, but there is less discussion about the effects of the baby bust. The Australian government has been counter-acting this decline in national fertility rates with immigration.
According to Bernard Salt, these demographic changes will continue to drive every aspect of our lives. If we’re going to share in the prosperity to come in the future, Salt believes that people need to become knowledge workers.
Future generations
We need to upskill and train our future generations in technical skills that have global application. According to Helen Brand, CE of the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants (ACCA), the accounting profession is ahead of the game because we have a common technical language that is already global, but there’s still much more that we need to do to keep up with the rate of change.
One of the most important factors driving the need for new skills is technology. A hot topic at the WCOA2018 was artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential to transform how accountants work.
Kriti Sharma, VP of AI for Sage, highlighted small businesses spend a shocking 120 days a year on administration. This is an area where she believes AI can make a real difference in the near future.
Value added tasks
Another is in compliance, which Carol Barnay Head of AI R&D programmes at Xero believes will become something that is done passively in the background. This will leave accountants more time to focus on value-added tasks for their clients.
To thrive in this new world, we all need to develop new skills. Matt Tindale, managing director of LinkedIn Australia and New Zealand, highlighted that core professional technical skills like accounting, management, finance, reporting, auditing and even Excel remain the backbone of the accounting profession.
Essentials for the future
But technology and data analysis skills are emerging as essentials for the future. This includes knowing things like python, javascript, customer relationship management tools, strategy and digital marketing. The only constant skill that accountants require both today and in the future was communication.
These skills agree with a survey that the ACCA took of its members that highlighted the professional accountant of the future needs vision, ethics, intelligence, creativity, emotional intelligence, digital savvy and experience.
My key takeaway from the WCOA2018 was that the skills that accountants have relied upon in the past will no longer be enough. To face the future we need to take stock of the changes that are occurring at a global level and grasp the opportunities before us.
Being aware of how the economy, demographics and technology will change our industry is the first step in starting to prepare your organisation for the changes ahead. I believe this will change our industry for the better, which means it’s an incredibly exciting time to be part of the accounting profession.