Accountants can build the kinds of skills needed to stay relevant in a rapidly automating world that’s increasingly taking advantage of technologies such as robotic process automation and artificial intelligence to handle routine financial tasks, according to Institute of Management Accountants president and CEO Jeff Thomson.
“It is a bit of a race where technology capability is really moving at warp speed, but it’s not clear that the profession’s ability to upskill and transform itself is moving at warp speed,” Thomson told Accounting Today. “Therefore it’s a race for relevance, creating the story, and telling the story of our profession because we want to attract technologists into our profession.”
He believes the accounting profession will need to do a better job of competing for students and finding ways to attract them to the profession, given its reputation for routine work that is increasingly being automated away.
“We get to work with the latest technologies, but not if we don’t make that part of our profession,” said Thomson. “There is no doubt that our profession is susceptible to job loss, in audit, in book close, in bank reconciliations, in journal entries and the list goes on and on, whether it’s RPA, whether it’s AI, etc., because there are a lot of routine, repeatable tasks in audit and the book close process.”
He believes the profession needs to commit to more aggressive upskilling to attract accounting students and retain more accountants who have joined the profession.
A recent study by the World Economic Forum found that job creation is slowing in fields such as accounting because companies are increasingly relying on automation to replace human roles. However, people can continue to maintain an advantage over computers when it comes to jobs requiring management, advisory, decision-making and communication skills.
“Accountants tend to do the numbers and log the long hours and close the books,” said Thomson. “That might be part of it, but it’s not all of it. We do a lot of cool technology stuff. We do a lot of cool analytical stuff.”
Upskilling can involve learning more about computer coding in newer programming languages like R, Python and Power BI, and becoming more proficient at data analytics and data science. “Yes, change is hard,” said Thomson. “We can create a differentiation for ourselves. We can become technologists in data science, as part of our profession, and create those jobs that are the jobs of tomorrow that the World Economic Forum talks about, jobs that are even more valuable per position, with more monetary value per job.”
The IMA has been improving its Management Accounting Competency Framework to include more technology skills that are in greater demand. Thomson pointed to the work being done not only by the IMA, but also the American Institute of CPAs, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants and the International Federation of Accountants to improve the skills of accountants and make them more relevant in today’s market. Those technology skills came into play during the COVID-19 pandemic this year when so many companies and accounting firms needed to move swiftly to a remote work environment.
“IMA likes to refer to the 4 As of future-ready professionals, being analytical, adaptive, agile, anticipatory,” said Thomson. “We’re really good in terms of being a rock in terms of our ethics and core values, but we’re not particularly fast in our profession. Maybe that’s because of our roots in standard-setting and things of that sort. We’re not necessarily known for our transformational change and our time to market, but we need to figure that out. Maybe we learned an awful lot from COVID-19. I know IMA did. I’m so proud, for example, of our finance team, and I’ll bet [AICPA president and CEO] Barry Melancon is. I bet Kevin [Dancey] is at IFAC. I’ll bet a lot of CEOs around the world are so proud of how their CFOs stepped up and kept their organizations afloat, managing their balance sheet and cash flow and their working capital.”
He noted that the IMA kept its team together through the pandemic and provided free training to accountants online while promoting its Certified Management Accountant credential on TV and online. “We continued to invest in a multimillion-dollar ad campaign, and I’m sure there are similar stories in the profession,” said Thomson. “We continued to offer free educational programs in the spirit of compassion over commercialism. We have it in us as a profession to do the right thing and to rise to the occasion.”
He believes it’s important for the accounting profession to provide more training for free to help people improve their skills, especially as the pandemic has prompted more layoffs and forced people to spend more time at home. “One thing is the learning culture that came out of it,” said Thomson. “There’s absolutely that learning mindset that says, ‘Hey, you know, am I going to take a two-hour nap or am I going to commit to learning?’ We helped to facilitate that. We not only offered free CPE, but we really ramped up our educational offerings, our virtual offerings, especially in areas that were in most demand, like strategy management, data science, data analytics. We just had an incredibly innovative virtual student leadership conference that featured a virtual career fair.”
He sees a continued need for accountants to learn new skills to enable them to compete against the big consulting and audit firms. “In terms of our profession it really is a call to action and a sense of urgency for our profession to commit to upskilling because it really is about relevance and influence,” said Thomson. “We are absolutely susceptible to automation because we have an awful lot of routine, repeatable jobs in audit, book close, etc., due to RPA. We tend to take the approach that, hey, you know, I wasn’t trained to be a statistician. I wasn’t trained to be a computer scientist. Let’s hire Accenture. Let’s hire a boutique statistical firm. Let’s outsource it to Deloitte. You know what? If we outsource that type of high-level analytics to consultants, we might as well say that we’re outsourcing our future. The lower-end jobs are going away. If we’re willing to give away the higher-end jobs to consultants, what’s left?”
To attract students to the profession, the accounting profession will need to compete against other sectors of the economy where educational institutions have been trying to increase the pipeline of available talent in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) programs.
“We must ratchet up the pace and upskill in strategy, technology and data science,” said Thomson. “It is indeed a race for relevance, creating the story and telling the story of our great profession, and that’s why the IMA and AICPA, ACCA, IFAC, more than ever we need to do our thing better than we’ve ever done it before.”