The 2014 Certified Public Accountants (CPA) congress held in Nadi was an opportunity for accountants to broaden their horizons on leadership in their various organisations.
This is according to Jeff Hughes, Chief Operating Officer, Member services, CPA Australia who was present at the meeting which ended yesterday.
“It is to bring people outside the profession to add significant value to the way professional accountants think,” said Mr Hughes.
He said there are 14 congresses in the world with about 10 000 people attending them.
“Accountants are the strategic business advisors, and we encourage accountants whether they are the more junior or the senior, to think outside their finance department,” he said.
“We want them to become a partner with the business and understand the business as a whole.
“Challenges vary from business to business, they are certainly seen as leaders in the various organisations that they work for.
“Unless they have the context of what is going on, they are not going to understand what the numbers actually mean.”
He said there is a need to take away standard thought of accountants as sort of compliance and standards and actually see them as strategic business advisors they actually ar.
“They need to be innovative, with the engineers and the marketing people, and other aspects of the business because that’s what sustains organisations”
“As professionals, we need to add value to the business and shareholders, other staff and leaders”
He said the CPA is looking at offering more services to its Fiji counterparts which will see universities and organisations being a part of the developments.
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