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Professional Competencies for Accountants: Advancing Our Understanding of Soft Skills

Kara Hunter (Fairfield University, USA)
Joan Lee (Fairfield University, USA)
Dawn W. Massey (Fairfield University, USA)

Research on Professional Responsibility and Ethics in Accounting

ISBN: 978-1-80455-793-8, eISBN: 978-1-80455-792-1

Publication date: 30 March 2023

Abstract

Stuebs et al. (2021, p. 38) note that soft skills “are essential for accountants to carry out their moral agency role in society.” Indeed, calls for aspiring accounting professionals to have well-developed soft skills have been ongoing for decades (American Accounting Association [Bedford] Committee on Future Structure, Content, and Scope of Accounting Education, 1986; Accounting Education Change Commission, 1990; Albrecht & Sack, 2000; Big 8 White Paper, 1989; Lawson et al., 2014; Pathways Commission, 2012). Despite these calls, the development of accounting students’ soft skills remains elusive (Fogarty, 2019; Rebele & St. Pierre, 2019). Perhaps this is not surprising as a commonly accepted, profession-specific definition of the term is lacking, as is consensus about the corresponding capabilities comprising accounting professionals’ soft skills. Instead, those in the accounting profession have treated the term soft skills much the way Justice Potter Stewart famously described hard-core pornography: “I know it when I see it” (Jacobellis v. Ohio 1964, p. 197). The problem, of course, is that such a description is individualistic and can lead to conflicts and inconsistencies not only in identifying the phenomenon (Baskin, 2018; Goldberg, 2010) but, more importantly, particularly in the case of soft skills, in taking steps to foster its development and measuring changes in it. Thus, understanding the term soft skills and its fundamental capabilities is a necessary prerequisite to the development of the soft skills deemed critical for future accounting professionals. In this chapter, the authors advance that understanding by developing an accounting-specific definition for soft skills and identifying a set of capabilities that comprise soft skills applicable to accounting professionals. The authors also discuss the implications of the work and conclude by recommending soft skills in accounting be referred to as professional competencies.

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

We thank participants at the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting, the 26th AAA Annual Meeting Ethics Symposium, Elizabeth Almer, Rebecca Bloch, Timothy Fogarty, Tara Shawver (Editor) and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. We thank the Fairfield University Dolan School of Business for generous financial support.

Citation

Hunter, K., Lee, J. and Massey, D.W. (2023), "Professional Competencies for Accountants: Advancing Our Understanding of Soft Skills", Shawver, T.J. (Ed.) Research on Professional Responsibility and Ethics in Accounting (Research on Professional Responsibility and Ethics in Accounting, Vol. 25), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1574-076520230000025001

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2023 Kara Hunter, Joan Lee and Dawn W. Massey