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This study explores how Canadian CPAs (Chartered Professional Accountants) are trained in sustainability. The main research questions are: What place should sustainability take in the accounting program? What place does sustainability occupy in the CPA accounting program? And, over time, has sustainability gained or lost ground within the Canadian professional accounting education program?

Content analysis and interviews.

We find that sustainability is not a key component of the CPA education program since its sustainability content has shrunk over the years. We believe that the groupthink phenomenon may have influenced the selection of CPA Competency Map participants (whose backgrounds reveal a lack of sustainability expertise) as well as the participants’ discussions. Additionally, a lack of consideration for society as a key stakeholder may have also influenced the shortage of sustainability content. Finally, power dynamics might have contributed to the financial accounting and reporting competencies dominating the new map.

We did not have access to the live meetings when the Map was created, although we conducted interviews with representatives involved in the process. This research is bound by a confidentiality agreement that limits us from providing sensitive details. However, we do not consider that these limitations undermine our contribution or reduce the relevance of our research.

Our research contributes to the under-researched domain of sustainability education and to understanding how groupthink, stakeholder theory and power dynamics may have contributed to the dearth of sustainability coverage in the new Canadian CPA program.

IES 3 Professional Skills, issued by the International Federation of Accountants in 2003, lists five essential skills that professional accountants need to acquire: intellectual, technical and functional, personal, interpersonal and communication, and organisational and business management skills. In education programmes, accounting students may be required to work in teams and may therefore acquire some of these skills through the team experience. IES 8, Competence requirements for audit professionals, includes “working in teams effectively” and “presenting, discussing, and defending views effectively through formal, informal, written, and spoken communication” as part of the skills requirement which should be included in the education and development programme for audit professionals. Working in teams, or cooperative learning, is a teaching technique used in the formal education phase, which enables students to acquire some of these skills. The paper uses the results of a questionnaire survey to investigate how teams function in an accounting project. Although the results indicate that skills such as meeting management and interpersonal skills have a positive effect on the students’ satisfaction with the team, no link could be found to the students’ project mark. These results suggest that skills such as meeting management and interpersonal skills, if included in the formal education phase, may contribute positively to students’ career preparedness. The study also found that students did not consider peer assessment appropriate.

The purpose of this exploratory study is to examine the perceptions of Saudi university accounting students of the importance of developing generic skills in their accounting education, the levels of competence they should acquire and expect to achieve during the academic study, and the constraints that may hinder the development of generic skills in accounting education.

The study uses the skills outlined in the IFAC’s International Education Standards (IES) 3 (intellectual, personal, organizational and business management, and interpersonal and communication) and IES 4 (ethics in accounting/business). A survey questionnaire was used to collect the data.

The findings show that students perceived all five generic skill categories to be important, with ethical skills rated as the most important. However, the students expected that they would achieve a somewhat lower level of generic skill by the end of their studies in all areas, and they perceived a number of constraints that impede their skill development. The results indicate the importance of developing generic skills in accounting education and suggest that the Saudi accounting education system could do more to provide students with opportunities to develop generic skills to enable them to succeed in their future careers.

As little of the current literature has focused on generic skills in accounting education in a non-Western country, this research contributes to the literature on generic skills in a developing nation.

Private universities in Ghana are perceived to offer low-quality education, even though the few studies conducted have produced contradictory findings. In addition to the paucity of research in this area, the debate has not largely reflected the views of alumni. This study aims to present the perspectives of a major stakeholder group in education on the quality of the accounting programme offered by a chartered private university in Ghana.

A survey questionnaire was sent to 150 alumni from a private university who graduated between 2011 and 2015 to gather data and analysed using descriptive statistical methods and hierarchical factor analysis.

In contrast to the perception of low-quality programmes in private universities in Ghana, the alumni group believed that the private institution offered good-quality accounting programmes. The accounting programme was accessed to be fit for its purpose, and it has generally transformed the lives of the alumni group, thus making the programme meet their quality expectations.

The study’s findings are an important contribution to the debate on the quality of private universities programmes in general and specifically in accounting.

Although some research has been done on quality assurances and accounting programmes in public universities in Ghana, the authors know very little about the quality in private universities. The study presents the opinions of an alumni group on the controversy over private universities quality of education. This study closes a gap in the literature.

The purpose of this study is to identify the professional skills and competencies of accountants that support a successful implementation of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The authors further investigate the extent to which professional accountants have developed these skills through professional training.

In the survey, Indonesian accountants were provided with a list of 47 skill items under nine categories of professional skills and were asked to rate the importance of each skill item and to indicate the level of priority given to the development of the skill items in the professional training they have undertaken. Their responses provide insights into the skills needed for applying IFRS and the adequacy of professional training in providing these skills.

The authors find that accounting judgement is considered to be the most necessary skill for applying IFRS. Likewise, the findings show that ethical skills and certain generic skills are also perceived to be necessary for adequate application of IFRS, while skills relating to cultural sensitivity are viewed as least important. The findings further demonstrate that professional training programmes need to emphasise the development of judgement and other relevant skills that are important skill categories for applying IFRS.

This study extends the literature on IFRS implementation through a specific focus on the professional skills required by accountants.

These findings have important policy implications for the standard-setters, regulators, auditors and to professional training providers across the world, such as professional accounting associations, accounting firms and educational institutions, for evaluating the content of the training and education programmes being delivered to accountants to prepare them with the relevant skills for applying IFRS.

This study is one of the first to examine the importance of various types of skills necessary for accountants in applying IFRS and the extent to which these skills have been developed through the professional accounting training provided.

The purpose of this paper is to examine professional accountant’s views on their satisfaction with Continuing Professional Development (CPD) offered by members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh (ICAB). While there is a great deal of research on CPD and accountants in developed countries, less developing countries are absent from this literature, and there have been calls for this type of research.

The present study employed a survey of members of the ICAB.

Results show that accountants in Bangladesh are satisfied with the CPD provided by their profession, and when satisfaction is compared with more developed countries, Bangladesh is greater on a number of measures. ICAB members would like to also be provided with opportunities to undertake CPD in more ways than just face to face.

The study has important implications not only for accountants from emerging economies such as Bangladesh, but also for the International Federation of Accountants and other less developed countries (LDCs). The results advance the understanding of professional accounting bodies from an international perspective.

This is the first study of CPD and accounting professionals in LDCs. The information obtained can inform the development and practice of other professional accounting bodies in emerging economies.

This paper compares and contrasts graduate accountant skills and employers' expectations in South East Asia (SEA).

We analyse the employers' expectation performance gap (EPG) in three countries – Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam – to provide a reflection on current professional accounting development in SEA. The study relies on data derived from multiple sources including job advertisements, CIMA “ready for business” project, Glassdoor website and other secondary data sources.

The findings indicate that over recent decades, the changing nature of the economy, state, and interest of the business sector (including the “Big Four”) have led to the wider adoption of professional accountancy qualifications. The findings suggest that graduates should be equipped with active learning activities such as project-based and work-integrated training to fill the expectation gaps between local university educators and employers.

Drawing upon a literature review of professional accounting education, we use the results of the documentations and secondary analysis to describe the performance expectation gap of accounting education in SEA.

The study indicates a large discrepancy between the teachings in accounting education and employer requirements in Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia and propose different methods to fill this employability gap in South East Asia.