Employers of labour, especially those that need the services of accountants, are the ultimate beneficiaries of the new module the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) launched recently with the aim of scaling up the professional offerings of its members.
ACCA, a global organisation in over 100 countries of the world, is always innovating and equipping its members with relevant and model skills that will place them in good stead to compete and excel in a challenging business and professional environment such as Nigeria’s.
Last year, the association took steps to shape the future of the accountancy profession by unveiling major innovations to its Master’s level qualification tailored at meeting the challenges of the 21st century disruptive economy.
The new module, known as Ethics and Professional Skills Module (EPSM), is a fundamental change in the qualification requirements for the accountancy profession aimed to equip practioners with the relevant skills that meet the present and future workplace demands.
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Increasingly, employers of labour are demanding much more from the accountant, insisting that what they are offering at the moment will no longer be enough going into the future. It is a very challenging working environment and so the association believes that what it can do for its members is to equip them with the tools to overcome those challenges.
“The main purpose of today’s event is for us to respond to our employers who are telling us that our members need more than ethics; that they need a whole range of skills wrapped around the qualification they have; the employers are saying to us that, going into the future, it is not going to be enough to have ethics but professional skills”, explained Jonathan Mbewe, ACCA’s Head of Education and Development in Sub-Saharan Africa, who spoke at the EPSM launch in Lagos.
Continuing, he said, “What we have done today was to tell our members that, over and above ethics, if you want to do business, you also need some professional skills. All these years, we have been talking about ethics but from the end of October 2017, we will be telling our members more about professional skills that will help them to perform their job well”.
Mbewe added that the launching of EPSM is also the best way for the association to equip its members with sufficient ethics and skills in a way that will help them in their career. “We want our students to see this module not just as one of the things they have to do to pass their exams, but as something they need to place them in the strongest position to qualify as professional accountants”, he said.
By this development, it is going to be a new dawn in the qualification requirements for the professional accountant as changes are going to be introduced and these will include applied knowledge, applied skills, strategic professional skills, etc.
There are some qualification requirements that will not change including qualifying examination. Members will still have to demonstrate competence through experience. Ethics also will not change because, according to Mbewe, it remains a qualifying factor for an accountant.
Essentially, qualification to become an accountant of the future has to change and in applied skill level, there is going to be computer-based examination, which will be done for the first time in March 2018.
“The biggest change that will happen is in the strategic professional skill”, Mbewe emphasised, explaining that they had researched on what entrepreneurs and employers need from accountancy profession and the accountant, which is that they should innovate and update their skills.
As in any other profession, ethics still remains relevant for the accountant professional because as the philosophy that separates right from wrong, the accountants are not unmindful of the implications of ethical violations which have the capacity to break relationships and also damage personal reputation.
