Hyderabad: From July 6-14, Dennis Whitney, CMA, CFM, CAE, senior vice president at IMA® (Institute of Management Accountants) will be traveling to Hyderabad, Bangalore, Cochin, Mumbai, and Delhi to meet India’s finance leaders and management accounting professionals and discuss the impact of technology and digitization on accounting and business.
“The role of the finance team is expanding, with growing responsibilities in both operations and strategy. Artificial intelligence (AI) – or what I prefer to call augmented intelligence – is here and here to stay. Both companies and individual management accountants need to raise their level of competence and develop new skills,” explains Whitney who has overall responsibility for the CMA® (Certified Management Accountant) Program, IMA’s globally recognized advanced-level credential for accountants and financial professionals in business.
Whitney will travel across India to discuss how technology is changing the nature of the management accounting job functions; define and identify ways that data analytics can create competitive advantage; explain data governance, data mining, predictive modeling, and data visualization and help management accountants understand why they need to build skills such as data analytics for career success.
Just last month, IMA released the exposure draft of its enhanced Management Accounting Competency Framework. The existing Framework is being enhanced to reflect the skills that management accountants will need to remain relevant as new technologies such as blockchain, machine learning and robotics process automation impact the profession.
The said Framework identifies six domains of core skills that finance and accounting professionals need, many of which are included in the CMA® (Certified Management Accountant) credential curriculum:
Strategic Management
Reporting and Control
Technology and Analytics
Leadership
Business Acumen and Operations
Professional Values and Ethics
New additions or enhancements include competencies for better utilizing automation in business like strategic management, data analytics, data governance and data visualization. “Professional ethics and values” was added as a skill domain, highlighting the need for and importance of ethical behavior in the accounting profession.
The Framework is currently open for commentary and practitioners, academics and other stakeholders are invited to share feedback now through September 17, 2018 by visiting http://www.imanet.org/frame work .
“It could become too easy to assume whatever the “robot” says is right and must be right which could be a dangerous assumption. Accountants should pursue soft skills training in order to make good business and societal decisions. As a “data translator” – being the bridge between the data scientist and top management – management accountants will require strong communication skills, critical thinking, professional skepticism, and ethical decision-making skills,” Whitney concludes.
