CHARTERED PROFESSIONAL ACCOUNTANTS
FUTURE IS BRIGHT FOR CPA PROFESSION BY WENDY KING
IN MANITOBA, THERE ARE TWO DRIVERS FOR CHANGE IN THE WAY CHARTERED PROFESSIONAL ACCOUNTANTS ARE GOING TO BE TRAINED IN THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE. O collected, interpreted and applied to track a business’s success is expanding beyond dollars and cents — and CPAs are ideally poised to make sense of it. “Chartered professional accountants don’t necessarily realize that they have this incredible influence through the decisions that they make on a daily basis. Because of their proximity to the money, accountants have so many opportunities to effect change in the world,” says Geeta Tucker, FCPA, FCMA, president and CEO of CPA Manitoba. A 2022 labour market study undertaken by CPA Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan is leading to initiatives being developed to address a serious need to graduate more CPAs in the immediate future. Tucker says the new certification program in development will have a focus on emerging issues. “Students will get the core ne, Manitoba is currently short of about 200 CPAs over the next five years. Two, the data being foundational training in accounting, as well as current issues and updated skills including data visualization, data management and data analytics,” she says.
“Accountants have to be able to manage huge amounts of data and help organizations make sense of that data.” Tucker says E.S.G. (environmental, social and governance) is a key emerging area CPAs will be relied upon to navigate. “Accountants are now stepping into new roles related to sustainability,” she says. “For example, greenhouse gas emissions are starting to appear in annual reports. We will have accountants who specialize in reporting and auditing greenhouse gas emissions to ensure consistency of information.” Our world is also faced with complex social challenges and opportunities. “Learning to work on non-financial data will become a key aspect for CPAs and it’s exciting, too, because it takes us out of that back-office transactional accounting. It really gets us at the table with business people looking at ways to solve problems in the larger society based on our knowledge,” she says. “CPAs do bring a financial lens but I think it broadens how they’re thinking about the environment and social issues, and we’re going to need people to be able to report and audit a variety of metrics.” Understanding value creation is where a CPA can show an organization how they could be adding value by creating new revenue streams, reducing costs to become leaner or seeking other ways to thrive and be successful. She says artificial intelligence is also changing the face of the profession. “No longer do we have little armbands and big ledger sheets — that part is now largely automated — which
makes the profession more concerned with judgment, analysis, reporting, communicating and problem-solving with real emphasis on the analytical types of thinking that machines might not necessarily be able to do,” she says. “You need a nuanced human perspective to make sense of what the machine is spitting out in order to guide the organization.” Changes to the way students are educated aren’t the only way to fill the need for more CPAs. Partnerships with YES! Winnipeg and both the governments of Canada and Manitoba is another strategy. “The recruitment partnership is a way of demonstrating through Economic Development Winnipeg that coming to Canada is fruitful to an internationally trained professional’s career and that we have created a clear pathway — with support for a good landing — to come here from certain countries,” she says. Countries with accounting programs equivalent or near equivalent to Canada’s very high standards are targeted to ensure the candidates are “work ready.” Right here at home, strong encouragement is in place for Indigenous candidates. “There is such a need for Indigenous CPAs to serve in these positions as trusted advisors in their own communities,” Tucker says. The Accounting Education Pilot, which launched this spring specifically for Indigenous learners, includes the prerequisites of Introductory Financial Accounting and Introductory Management Accounting.
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WINTER 2023
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