Skills that SHOULD be taught in Accounting Classes
In order to prepare accounting students for the real world as much as possible, schools need to integrate professional skills into the classroom. Institutions have been doing this for many years now with some great results. However, today I want to discuss how accounting students can gain valuable skills that they will retain going into their careers. Let’s talk about the skills that should be taught in accounting classes.
What are these Key Skills?
The two key skills that I think should be taught in accounting classes are communication and Microsoft Excel. Both of these skills have a significant impact on your ability to function as an accountant in the professional world.
Aren’t Students Learning This Already?
They should be! University programs typically require students to have some sort of business communication course as well as some course that requires the use of Microsoft Excel. However, there are some skills that are best learned in the context of accounting rather than a general business context.
What About Accounting Makes These Two Skills Different?
The professional world of accounting builds upon the fundamentals that are taught in school by applying very specific frameworks to how that knowledge should be applied. Regarding these two core topics:
Business Communication - involves not only communicating professionally, but communicating clearly with coworkers and (most importantly) clients that have various levels of understanding about sensitive financial matters.
Microsoft Excel - is more than just knowing formulas. Professionals need to understand how to prepare workpapers by themselves, show their work, and manipulate general ledgers and other common accounting reports
In many cases, the context of accounting is missing when a student learns these concepts, but that context is so important when that student steps out into their first internship or job after graduating.
What Should Be Done Differently?
Here's a few examples of what I think are great opportunities for students to gain accounting centered exposure in the classroom:
Communication - Workshops and case studies that break down the following scenarios:
Communicating sensitive financial information via email
Requesting documents from a client via email
Creating a technical accounting memorandum from scratch
Developing internal accounting policy documents from scratch
Excel - Assignments that require students to:
Show their work and calculations in their Excel spreadsheet, with proper labeling
Format a GL detail and use tools (Sort, Filter, Pivot) to find specific information
Format workpapers and understand the various tools available to increase readability
If your school is already integrating lessons like these, great! Many schools don’t have these accounting specific scenarios integrated into their curriculum. If you haven’t had the opportunity to gain exposure to these scenarios, try your best to do your research and ask your instructors to incorporate these into your courses if they are able!