Happy Mentoring Young Professionals!
Over the weekend I was helping the DePaul IMA Student Chapter Board and found myself preaching something very important… Accounting isn’t just about numbers, taxes and financial statements. Accounting goes much deeper. So deep we look past the numbers and begin to search to better understand how our organization is “Accounting for Change.”
There is a social impact organizations make that need to be measured, interpreted and understood so organizations can better help communities and ensure their time, efforts and capital is being used to create positive change. Currently the college curriculum focuses on audit, tax treatments, financial reporting but nothing on accounting for change? Nothing on “How Accountants can help improve an organization’s Corporate Social Responsibility Model.” Should this change?
I think so! I strongly feel there needs to be more of an emphasis on developing Ethical, Accounting Leaders that are well balanced in both their
- technical/engineering skills (e.g. developing and understanding financial statements) and
- creative/philanthropic skills (e.g. developing and understanding people/communities)
Both are important yet colleges and universities deliberately decide to push 1 (technical/engineering skills) over the other (creative/philanthropic skills) to accounting (& most business majors) students. I am not saying what is currently being taught to accounting students isn’t important. It’s all important. I am saying there needs to be a way to implement more of the social impact side into what we teach. We need to start developing students into Thought Leaders & Game Changers! Literally develop students to challenge the process and come up with a better way of doing things for the company and for communities.
If we don’t change the curriculum of what we teach our students we are not improving our society. We are simply allowing things to just be...
Please feel free to engage in the following questions:
- How does your organization “Account for Change?”
- What would you have liked to learn as a student that you weren’t taught for your major?
- Do you feel you were prepared for Upper Management by the courses you took for your major?
Kind Regards,
William T. Kernan
Chair, IMA Young Professional Advisory Committee
"The business of business should not be about money. It should be about responsibility. It should be about public good, not private greed” – Anita Roddick