How CPAs can prepare for handling the big data world

Using different skills to analyze big data, such as natural curiosity, will be advantageous to future accountants (Getty Images/eclipse_images)

Digitization is affecting many facets of day-to-day living. According to a recent report, The role of professional accountants in data, from CPA Canada and the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), digital data was estimated to be at 40 zettabytes (40 trillion gigabytes) in 2020, up from 1.2 zettabytes in 2010.

Maintaining relevancy in the digital age of AI-compiled data sets, as the report shows, means accountants will have to learn new skills and competencies to succeed. One such strategy being undertaken by the CPA profession is the draft of the new “Way Forward” Competency Map (CM2.0), which was developed to better align the needs of this changing world with the skills of an accountant. 

“The data sets are changing and getting bigger,” says FCPA Tim Jackson, chair of the Competency Map Task Force and CEO of Shad Canada, Canada’s premier summer enrichment program for high school students focused on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) and entrepreneurship. “But we also have access to more tools that make it easier to select those datasets.” 

As Jackson points out, CPAs are already skilled at analyzing data and completing sample selections. “In many ways,” he says, “I don’t think [the role] is changing, the information is changing.”

CONTINUOUS LEARNING

To remain successful in this changing digital landscape, Jackson says CPAs will have to continue being lifelong learners. Upskilling through various courses and CPD credits will help accountants be in the know when it comes to digital trends and data crunching. Much of this, he says, will need to happen both through training and by organizations providing roles that allow employees to evolve—such as data scientist and data controller, as the IFAC and CPA Canada report states. 

“That’s an investment [employers] have to make,” he says. But he adds that the responsibility also rests on employees, who must have an appetite for continued learning—whether through training offered by employers or staying up to date on new information on their own accord. 

“This idea of being curious will be the key characteristic for new CPAs,” says Jackson. “If we bring people into the profession who are curious, it implies they’re constantly trying to figure out what’s new, what’s coming. And, with that curiosity, comes knowledge.”

POSITIVE CHANGE

The upside to the shifting role, according to Jackson, is that it allows accountants to do more analysis. “We still need to apply and validate and understand the historical data, but now it’s the interpretation, saying ‘how do I then use our data moving forward to inform decision making,’” he says.

Traditionally, the accounting profession has had a historical approach, looking back to understand how things will look in the future. But, as Gigi Dawe, corporate oversight and governance lead at CPA Canada explains, “Big data is bringing more unstructured and intangible data, and data that will help you to assess what’s going to happen versus telling you what did happen, for measuring. That’s the biggest challenge that we’re facing—we don’t really have experience in dealing with this unstructured or intangible data.”

While CPAs have the tools to handle an influx in digital information, Dawe explains that the introduction of big data means accountants must now shift how they manage it. “We’ve really got to start looking at what we do with that AI-enabled data and working with that,” she says, “and learn those skills and ensure that we’re understanding and dealing with that.” 

To tackle this hurdle, CPA Michael Lionais, managing director, Technomics Canada—which specializes in decision support—and consultant on CPA Canada’s Foresight initiative, says accountants will have to learn a new data language, analyzing unstructured data against the new ways it is processed, “so that [accountants] actually take the data and get it into a format that they can then use,” he says. 

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

The most important skill Lionais foresees accountants needing? Learning to accept uncertainty. “The accounting profession is all about precision and reconciliation,” he says. “What we’re going to have to start learning is, how do we embrace uncertainty and learn how to reflect that in the advice that we are giving?”

The other concern, he says, is whether or not CPAs have the mindset for this. “It’s not just, ‘can you develop the skills to understand data and manipulate data,’” he says, but you must have the inquisitiveness to appropriately manipulate the data, too. 

Lionais sees these changes as an opportunity for the profession to move into more integrated, cross-functional roles. “It becomes a much more relevant, much more interesting, much more dynamic profession,” he says. 

ENHANCE YOUR DATA KNOWLEDGE

Expand your skills with CPA Canada’s data management course and delve deeper into the roles professional accountants can get involved in to oversee and manage data.

Also, learn to capitalize on the benefits of the digital economy and find out where the profession is headed in the future.