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Recently I attended an evening interactive session organised by ICWA in Delhi. It was an interactive session organised for CFOs and Heads of HR. The theme was “From Potential Talent to Required Talent”. The overarching theme was what should ICWA Institute do to train and bring out high quality of CMAs. There were many diverse and interesting views expressed on this subject. In this article, I am trying to present a perspective that may have gone amiss during the heat of pushing one’s ideas at this forum. I shall present some divergent views that were shared and how the institute could make a meaningful difference to the quality of passing out CMAs. Some of these suggestions are easily actionable – define talent appropriately, set standards for industry employability (NOS), curriculum standards etc.
Talent
We must define ‘talent’ before taking the discourse to any conclusion. Very often popular press and business discussions consider every person in employment market as ‘talent’. This may be a misnomer and create huge challenge at both ends of the pipeline. A ‘talent’ is defined in Oxford dictionary as – someone possessing natural aptitude or skill. Dictionary.com defines ‘talent’ as – a capacity for achievement or success. Therefore only those who are employable or have specific skills or capacity for achievement are part of a talent pool. This will bring focus on the right issues.
One of the key issues therefore for CMA institute is not about challenges of hiring but how to convert a person into a ‘talent’. Hiring challenge will be only limited to making selection within this pool of talented people – who have the ‘capability’ or ‘skill’ for a particular role. Unless a person has right skill to be employable he is not part of this ‘talent pool’. While this reduces the challenge for hiring managers, it also focuses the attention of institutions like ICWA/ CMA to focus on building competencies to make candidates employable. Completing a course or going through the routine of writing some assessed tests does not compete its role, unless these passing out people become employable or at least have some ‘capability’ or ‘skill’. The ‘test’ of an institute is in conversion of a candidate to ‘talent’, not merely on number of people passing out its assessments and then remain unemployable.
Occupational Standards
The institute should expend energy and devise a framework for CMAs that must define occupational standards and standards of assessment. Since ICWA/ CMA is the only institution in the country, it will become national standard – National Occupational Standards. This standard will include and reflect aspirations of hiring organisations in terms of what a CMA must be able to achieve. Everything else then need to dovetail into this framework. Organisations cannot then come back and say the passing out candidate did not know this or that. They know before hand what to expect.
CMA must also insist that hiring organisations should share standards for qualifying or selection criteria very clearly. Without this there is tremendous confusion – both
amongst young people looking for assignments and those in organisations looking to fill positions with these people. Even institutes do not have a clue as to what specific skills and abilities is being hunted for by hiring managers. Lack of this clarity and transparency leads to avoidable chaos all around. Both the definition and standards must be explicitly shared with larger public for them to digest and understand it; it will enable them prepare accordingly to meet ‘fitness for employment’ criteria.
The institution also cannot burden itself with the responsibility of creating specific requirements that different industry or business requires at different points in time. NOS will also ensure that businesses know they will have to invest into customised skills development of CMA qualified candidates.
Curriculum Quality
One of the key challenges for most of the professional institutions in India is they offer ‘lagging’ curriculum and not ‘leading’. Leading curriculum means creating one that is going to be relevant in future, one that is ahead of the businesses and serves as a guide for them as to where is the industry moving, professionally. In our case most of the curriculum is ‘lagging’, based on what happened 5-10 years back. Some of this may not be relevant. Since most of the senior CMAs who come for hiring are aware of this, they also have reservations about quality of candidates. No wonder, the candidates also possibly show lack of confidence during interview because somewhere they also know they are under-
prepared. I used to teach some courses in ICWA almost 30 years back. Most of the curriculum outline still sounds and reads the same. I know the profession has moved so much ahead and there are so many different things a CMA is exposed to and required to do, but I am not sure if the candidates are exposed to these leading trends. One of the senior CMAs at the meeting, aptly presented his view around this.
Institutions must reach out to the best people in business to engage in developing curriculum. Once these business managers recommend leading requirements, it should only then go to academics to convert these requirements into teaching curriculum. Our system of curriculum design is unfortunately led by people who are not managing current or futuristic businesses. Academics who have had no brush with business competencies, therefore cannot design an appropriate curriculum. We have perpetuate an archaic system in academics wherein those who have no knowledge of ‘real-business’ decide, how future managers should be prepared. No wonder we have this dilemma that produces large number of certified candidates that the industry finds unemployable.
Employability Conundrum
A very intriguing and interesting debate ensued at the event around soft skills and english language competency. There are as many views on this as there are people. Let me present a pragmatic view. We must realise that we belong to a society where english speaking does not come naturally. Most of the people who even speak it, howsoever poor it may be, they largely think in hindi or their mother-tongue and then transliterate it in their mind before speaking. We must realise and appreciate this fact.
The second consideration should be that ‘communication’is about ‘sharing undertanding’ and not about expression or language. Other important factor to bear in mind is that communication is not a natural but deliberate skill. Everyone needs to learn – what to say, when to say and most important how to say it. These are not things that one learns in a day. There is undue emphasis on soft skills these days, without understanding the rationale and/ or application of these skills. It is fancy, popular and something that is advocated by even those who lack it themselves.
Institute of CMA is supposed to train people in accounting and not in selling. My sense is that this is done to only muddle the dilemma further. Should the Accountant at junior levels be hired for their insight into accounting principles and practices or for making presentations? We must drive this point home that it is no good if the Accountant is a glib talker and makes excellent presentation, but less than desirable on his accounting skills/ insights. CMAs could develop this over period of time while working with their suave seniors, if they are fortunate enough or go to another institute for picking up threads of learning english language.
I am not putting down importance of soft-skills but every job requires different kinds of soft-skills at different levels. A professional outfit like CMA Institute should focus on developing technical accounting skills and not squander its resources and energy on doing something other institutions can possibly do better. No other institution can do training on accounting better than ICWA/ CMA institution. Therefore we must priorities and focus on delivering accounting insights and skills.
Institute should therefore play down this desire of training on soft skills and focus on intensifying curriculum around accounting practices and principles. One more thing the institute should focus on is getting a team of consulting firms and allow a platform for its student candidates to get an opportunity of internship as part of the curriculum. These accounting focused interventions will bring far more value to both the candidates as well as hiring firms that this misplaced glamour quotient of soft-skills. If there are people who are keeping soft-skills in the basic competency requirement for a CMA over-riding hiring criterion of accounting insights, are doing more harm in glamorising soft-skills and underplaying technical knowledge. Good accountants could learn soft-skills over period of time with their ‘superior’ seniors, but an expert soft-skills person may not be able to pick up basic accounting insights later. Let us do first things first and not chase glamour over substance.