Meeting the digital revolution head on

As people of influence within their organisations, one of the tasks facing chartered accountants [CAs(SA)] is not only to prepare themselves for the digital transformation that is confronting commerce and industry, but also to help their organisations remain relevant and use technology as a strategic tool.

Nwabisa Tsengiwe, senior executive: marketing, communications & PR at the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (Saica), says the institute is undertaking a research project to identify the changing competencies that need to be developed in response to the challenges that digital transformation presents.

“Digital transformation is a part of the current and future business world and we need to help CAs(SA) operate alongside technological advancements rather than being displaced by them. This digital paradigm also has implications in terms of the manner in which we develop CAs’(SA) technical capabilities and the training process will have to adapt to move along with the times,” Tsengiwe says.

Saica is playing a lead role in this and is changing the ways in which it prepares CAs(SA) for the challenges in the digitised workplace and how this affects their role as business leaders.

This is not only with regards to the digital and technical elements of preparing these future organisational leaders, but with focus on the development of the pervasive skills as well. The training goes beyond developing technical competence, such as accounting and auditing, and incorporates the ethics and professionalism components that are required of CAs(SA) in their roles as business leaders.

“The Assessment of Professional Competence (APC) also assesses these pervasive skills when evaluating whether candidates are competent or not. This is why the APC takes the form of a multidisciplinary and integrated case study because prospective CAs(SA) not only need to prove they can do the work, but they also need to be able to explain and discuss why issues such as ethics matter in the fulfilment of their duties.

“These nontechnical skills are necessary for the development of CAs(SA) of the future,” Tsengiwe says.

She says the assessment (which does take the form of a written examination) also includes an approach, piloted in 2015, whereby candidates can either compete their response to the assessment manually (pen and paper) or by using the computer as a tool (e-writing in a secure environment). By 2018, it will be mandatory for students to compete this assessment on computer.

“The idea of the assessment is to simulate the real world and to give aspiring CAs(SA) a taste of what it will be like when they are qualified and operating in a digitised world,” Tsengiwe says.

THE APC TAKES THE FORM OF A MULTIDISCIPLINARY AND INTEGRATED CASE STUDY