Companies now have more expectations from finance and accounting professionals than just traditional number crunching. This means that accountants need a new set of skills to transition from just being spreadsheet jockeys to strategic experts. Organizations are encouraging and helping their accountants to develop these new skills that will be required in the future.
Employees must upgrade with time because they are the ones who run organizations. However, convincing them to develop a flexible mindset is the most challenging part. Sometimes it’s even difficult for stakeholders to inspire organizations to innovate because they want they’re scared of change.
But after the pandemic, most organizations have realized that they need to prioritize flexibility. Having a fixed mindset will only harm their business.
If you’re struggling to find the right way into a successful accountancy career, start with enrolling for a diploma in accounting online. Besides that, here are a few essential skills you must develop in order to succeed as a thriving accountant.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence has become an essential element of any career in current times. Therefore, you can hardly ignore the need to cultivate EQ. It dramatically helps increase work efficiency and allows you to get through complex situations without getting affected negatively. In addition, you will also develop empathy and understand your own weaknesses and strengths.
Many experts believe that even though emotional intelligence isn’t usually associated with an organization’s revenue management, it proves to be beneficial for the accountants themselves. They develop an understanding of how others are processing an experience and how they’re feeling about their own experiences. This can be really helpful in making sound decisions at work.
What you can do to develop these skills is start listening to others actively instead of just waiting for your turn to speak. Once you become an active listener, your compassion and empathy will increase.
Communication Skills
Having the ability to maintain effective communication is essential for almost any job – whether it is verbal or written. For example, being an accountant, you will be attending corporate functions, client meetings, networking events, and welcoming new coworkers, all of which require excellent communication skills. In addition, you will be able to properly assert your thoughts and concepts in a way that creates an impact on the listeners and helps establish strong relationships.
Even if you are sending out an email, your tone and content should reflect your communication skills. It should be easy to understand and well written. In addition, you should be well aware of the message you’re sending out and whether it is appropriate to use this channel for communication or if you should consider some other.
Living in the information age, if you don’t have the necessary communication skills, all of this information will just turn into noise. To become an exceptional accountant in this day and you, you should not only know how to retrieve insights from data but also how to convey them to others skillfully.
For starters, you can put a smile on your face and have an impactful posture. Also, ensure to begin important conversations with a handshake. You can practice this skill with your friends and family. Finally, prepare a shortlist of questions in your head that you ask people when you first meet them.
Honesty And Integrity
Every industry appreciates honesty and integrity, but their value is really high in the outsourced accounting world. To become the best accountant, you need to abide by the highest ethical standards.
You should be both empathic and transparent when providing advice and making decisions. This will make you a trustworthy and reliable accountant for the company, which will in turn help improve your working relationships. In addition, it will lead to better teamwork as both your colleagues and your clients will be able to rely on you.
Leadership Skills
Accountants are usually provided with a team. So having leadership skills is unavoidable for them. It could be challenging, but it will significantly help accountants throughout their careers. Even if they aren’t leading a team, leadership skills teach them to take responsibility and ownership of their work. Without these skills, they might not have the confidence to make difficult decisions when required.
Every accountant in a team should be able to take control of what they do. This leads them to do really fulfilling work instead of working half-heartedly. In addition, each member should be aware of their place in the team and the importance of their work. In this way, they will be able to give the best value to their company and clients.
If you want to become the best leader, you will have to invest time and effort into your job. Regardless of the official hierarchy, sit in late nights along with the rest of the team.
Tech-Savviness
Technology has become a part of every industry, so there’s no way you can avoid it. Instead, what you can do is develop technical skills. Organizations have realized the need for this skill in accounting too.
In fact, a CommBank Accounting Market Pulse report stated that 70% of accountancy firms are working towards providing more than just traditional accounting services and delving into the world of cybersecurity compliance, property advisory, and tax compliance.
In essence, they are looking for accountants who have technical skills. So you should at least have a particular level of enthusiasm and comfort about technology.
Develop the willingness to adapt to new technology and solutions. Make time to attend training and learn new skills as it will be helpful in the long run.
If you want to improve your technical skill, connect with someone from the IT department of your organization and ask them to train you or at least guide you. In today’s digital world, your qualification as an accountant is just not enough. You need to do more than that, especially when it comes to technology.
Analytical Skills
Analytical skills are imperative for accountants since they have to provide stakeholders with predictive and historical data. This skill will help you turn ‘Big Data’ into decision-driving, concise insights. Most organizations are hiring data scientists now for that reason.
Hence, becoming an accountant in the future will require an in-depth understanding of both theoretical and practical data and analytics. You must be critical about the details to efficiently sift through numerous financial records. Having analytical skills will ensure that you do your job accurately and don’t yield inconsistent results in your analysis.
Determining whether facts and figures are computed shouldn’t be a difficult job for an accountant. You should just look at an analysis report and be able to pull it together quickly. Being a great accountant, as soon as you lay eyes on the output, you will be able to judge whether it is reasonable or not.
Relationship Skills
You need to form friendly relationships with your family and form more than just water cooler-level acquaintances. Human interaction is critical to developing a relationship with your teammates where they would want to give their best to their job. It will also help you in managing people besides numbers.
You should know how to turn individuals into a team, how to motivate them to work, keep them engaged, and how to deliver bad news in a considerate manner. Building this skill will take you a long way.
Organization Skills
Accountants have to deal with multiple clients simultaneously. To juggle between them, keep a check on deadlines and ensure that the guidelines are being followed, you must develop organization skills. A disorganized accountant won’t be able to sort all the documentation entailed by each assignment. You need to keep track of paperwork and for that, developing organization skills is essential. This will help you stay on top of the deadlines and ace your accounting career.
Wrapping Up
To become a successful accountant, it is necessary to acquire the education, skills, training, and experience you will require in the future. It will keep you ahead of time and certainly brighten your chances of becoming an exceptional accountant.
