The latest IBM CFO survey (2010), Pushing the Frontiers, CFO insights from the Global C-suite Study, continues to remain relevant in terms of the main pressing concerns and tasks for CFOs and their finance functions including:

• Measuring/monitoring business performance
• Providing inputs into strategy
• Developing talent in the finance organization
• Optimizing planning, budgeting and forecasting
• Driving enterprise cost reduction.

ACCA's Future Pathways to Finance Leadership highlights that those seeking a career path to finance leadership will require a broad range of skills and capabilities acquired through their professional training and career experiences. Top of the list is experience in the core finance areas of financial and management accounting across the finance value chain.

According to the ACCA survey, around half of today's CFOs have had six or more finance roles during their career.

Finance leadership, and working as an effective business partner, also requires much broader leadership capabilities as well as deep business and sector specific experience and knowledge. Leadership and interpersonal capabilities are required to lead transformation and change projects, and to work effectively in different cultures and international environments. Finely honed communication and influencing capabilities are required to put across the right messages to different internal and external groups.

Strategies for finance function development and transformation vary depending on the nature of demand for business partnering within an organization, as well as the current skills and capabilities in finance. The challenge for organizations is to set out an appropriate vision for finance and how it supports the business, and subsequently creating the right behaviors and supporting the acquisition of necessary skills and capability among staff through qualifications and training, and on-the-job experiences. For many finance leaders, the key challenge is how to create a learning organization and culture that allows people to develop needed skills and capabilities that contribute to developing the business and delivering its objectives.

A macroeconomic look at the re-shaping of the jobs landscape and impact on accountants

In his speech to the Trade Union Congress in the UK in November 2015, the Bank Of England's Chief Economist, Andrew Haldane, spoke about how since the Industrial Revolution, technological progress has held the key to rising worker wages. Three key waves of technological revolution (the most recent being the era of information technology starting in the mid twentieth century) brought about a remarkable re-shaping of the jobs landscape rather than damaging jobs. These dramatic shifts are striking at an occupational level. For example, since 1870 accountants have blossomed at the expense of other occupations with the general increase in demand for high-skilled workers.

But in the latest technological revolution driven by a fast pace of IT development, the set of human skills machines could reproduce, at a lower cost, has both widened and deepened. As McKinsey captured in its article, The Four Global Forces Breaking All The Trends, "the difference today is the sheer ubiquity of technology in our lives and the speed of change. It took more than 50 years after the telephone was invented until half of American homes had one."

The impact of this recent technological development and change in the UK at least has been the loss of mid-skilled jobs. Haldane poses the question, how much wider and deeper can the impact be? A greater number of jobs will be automated, including many accounting tasks and services. A key question is how humans will likely adapt their skills as has occurred in other technological revolutions. In its study, From Brawn to Brains, The Impact of Technology on Jobs in the UK, Deloitte found that almost three quarters of UK businesses surveyed saying they will, net, employ more people in future and most think that technology will have a significant impact on their businesses. In the future, businesses will need more skills, including digital know-how, management capability, creativity, entrepreneurship and complex problem solving.

The perception of the profession, and the contribution of accountants, is all important. As Haldane points out, the BBC website includes an algorithm for calculating the probability of jobs being lost. For an accountant, the probability of vocational extinction is 95%. While exaggerated, this shows a perception of accountants that is more associated with technical and routine tasks. The reality is that many jobs undertaken by accountants are at high risk of automation. The Frey and Osborne methodology of job automation has been applied in various country contexts including the US, UK and New Zealand. The profiles of the categories of employment at risk of automation for the UK and NZ are highlighted below.

The Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand publication, Disruptive Technologies Risks, Opportunities- Can New Zealand Make the Most of Them?, explores the number of accountants at high risk of automation by role predicting job loss within the profession. The analysis found that all but two roles are at high risk - corporate treasurers and company secretaries.

The key question arising for the profession is how it can enable accountants to upskill in new areas of demand arising from business advisory and partnership. Such jobs rise above accounts processing and presentation, and working solely with the financials. The inability of the profession to supply and support accountants with the right skills and capabilities will likely lead to a different kind profession. The inability to adapt may lead to less demand for some of the skills that accountants have to offer today, and consequently will impact their potential earning differential.

Identifying Implications for the Various Stakeholders

A Selection of Key questions for IFAC and its PAIB Committee

What are the key activities that can be usefully pursued in the following areas:

• Knowledge sharing across the global profession, such as via direct communications to PAOs, round tables, and use of the Global Knowledge Gateway.
• As part of the IFAC strategic communications and advocacy.
• Communicating relevance to others such as the International Accounting Education Standards Board (IAESB) for example in terms of its standards and research?
• Is a global perspective of required PAIB skills and capabilities needed for use within the profession, and for presentation to external stakeholders? If so how is this best delivered?
• Are there gaps in knowledge where further research is required?

Implications for Professional Accountancy Organizations

Assessing whether the professional education and training of accountants is keeping pace with market demand by

• Proactively engaging employers and finance professionals in the development of professional training and education, and support services. PAOs and accounting educators might need to integrate higher levels skills and competency into their training and courses. They might also consider greater integration of required competency across courses and modules.
• Identifying the key skills and capability gaps such as critical business thinking, business and strategic insight, leadership and relationship management, and those subjects where accountants need greater grounding in their qualifications and training, for example technology and analytics.

A Closer Look at Research Highlighting a Skills Gap

In its research study with the American Productivity and Quality Center on the skills gap among entry-level professionals (0-3 years on the job), the IMA found that entry-level jobs had become more sophisticated, whereas the skills possessed by accountants matched traditional expectations. The research revealed that the competencies in the diagrams below had the largest gaps. The results show a technical and non-technical competency crisis.

• Identifying how organizations can support finance professionals and PAIBs acquire the necessary skills to work effectively with others within the organization, and providing support on approaches to organizational learning and continuing professional development in the workplace.
• Raising awareness across the profession of the type of accounting jobs at risk and the opportunities for accountants.
• Consciously managing the expectations and requirements of different generations in the workforce. For example, ICAEW's Understanding Ambition, Attracting the New Generation of Finance Talent reports that Millennials are generally ambitious to take on opportunities for leadership and senior management.

Implications for Employers

• Developing appropriate finance capability (people, structures, systems and processes) to match organization need. An organizational culture based on trust and learning, and continuing knowledge acquisition is critical. Employer defined frameworks for skills and competencies for finance and accounting roles can help create a vision.
• Facilitating a demand for business partnering by fostering a mutual understanding and trust. The influence of finance professionals in business decisions will depend on management trust in finance capabilities and the contribution of finance professionals.
• Facilitating a role for finance that helps to solve business problems in tandem with maintaining a stewardship role by providing independence, and healthy levels of skepticism and challenge. How finance and business partners are positioned will affect the ability of finance to create collaborative relationships and address potential conflicts.

Implications for Finance Professionals and PAIBs

• Involvement in business decision making involves being comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty; a departure from dealing with traditional finance activities such as statutory and regulatory reporting that requires accuracy and predictable outcomes. A deep understanding of an organization and the business environment in which it operates is critical in effectively applying professional skills and knowledge.
• Identifying the type of continuing professional development that can help you become an anticipatory rather than reactionary professional. In developing knowledge in particular areas such as technology and analytics, it is necessary to understand how developments can be applied to the business to support business objectives.
• Identifying and deploying opportunities for new finance and accounting services and tools that help improve performance.