As a professional accountant or student, you can help to build a better, fairer and more sustainable world. This is how…

It is not just down to governments and large organisations to solve the biggest problems facing our planet today – problems such as climate change, social inequality, and a widespread lack of trust. As individuals, each of us also has an important role to play.

Being a professional accountant or student, you are particularly well placed to make a difference. Here are five ways in which you can make a positive impact that will help to change our world for the better:

Sustainable organisations that create long-term value for society, as well as financial value for their stakeholders, will be the bedrock of the future global economy. Yet despite setting ambitious non-financial goals, including net zero targets, many organisations today are still overly focused on short-term, financial metrics and are struggling to transition to more sustainable business models.

A survey by ACCA, IFAC and PwC, published in November 2023, found that almost half of senior professional accountants globally (46%) admit that their organisation has yet to produce a plan for reducing its carbon emissions. What’s more, nearly 70% of those without an emissions plan say their organisation has no intention of developing one.

How you drive the sustainability agenda within your own organisation is likely to depend on the nature of the organisation, as well as your own role within it. Nevertheless, you should have many opportunities to enhance the sustainability performance of your organisation during your daily work.

For example, using connected sustainability and financial information you could build a ‘value case’ for investment that supports your colleagues to develop sustainable products and services. You could also help to ensure that sustainability considerations are factored into spending plans and procurement decisions. In addition, you could play an active role in helping to set targets and monitoring the organisation’s performance against those targets.

Another way to have a positive impact is by actively contributing to the sustainability reporting process. You could help your organisation to capture the key non-financial data that will enable it to comply with new reporting standards and provide trusted information to stakeholders. If you’re an auditor, you could develop expertise in the assurance of sustainability information.

Further resources:

• Accounting for society’s values
• Chief value officer – the important evolution of the CFO
• Climate action and the accountancy profession: building a sustainable future
• Green finance skills: the guide
• SME Toolkit: creating a sustainable world
• Sustainability accounting will support governments
• The role of the CFO and finance function in the climate transition: driving value and sustainability
• Sustainability information and reporting - the guide to preparation
• We're introducing a new Diploma in Sustainability later this year - watch out for details

While AI presents some significant societal and environmental threats, it is also potentially a huge force for good. The ways in which AI can be used to positive societal effect include increasing the accuracy of cancer diagnoses, identifying patterns and links between crimes, and improving the efficiency of energy systems. There are also a host of powerful business use cases for AI, from automating basic customer service transactions through to monitoring risk and boosting cyber resilience.

As a professional accountant, you are well placed to help your organisation to understand and capitalise on the benefits of AI adoption, supporting the business case for investment. As part of this process, you can ensure that any AI tools adopted have a valid business use, genuinely benefit the company’s stakeholders, and will help further the journey towards a better, fairer and more sustainable world.

You can also deploy AI tools that specifically boost your own productivity as a finance professional. Already, AI tools are being used to automate a range of standard finance processes, such as data entry and invoice processing. Meanwhile, within audit, they are being used to analyse entire datasets, enabling auditors to move away from the traditional ‘sampling’ process. To date, however, we have only seen the start of what AI is capable of; the rise of generative AI is about to unleash a wealth of new opportunities.

Going forward, generative AI tools should enable finance professionals to automate the report generation process, conduct enhanced risk assessments, undertake scenario modelling, and make use of predictive analytics that can inform business decision making. Thanks to these capabilities, finance professionals will have more time to provide strategic advice to management teams. The majority (70%) of ACCA members surveyed for our Digital horizons report agreed that AI could help them to increase the amount of time they have to focus on business-critical tasks.

Furthermore, 78% of respondents to ACCA’s Global Talent Trends Survey 2024, a survey of almost 10,000 professional accountants from 157 countries, agreed that AI will enable finance professionals to add more value in the future.

AI will only be a force for good if it is used in a responsible way. As a finance professional, you can work with your organisation’s technology team, as well as other teams that are using AI models, to ensure the technologies are being used ethically and effectively and that they do not cause or exacerbate bias and discrimination.

Further resources:

• AI (Artificial Intelligence) in the finance profession
• Building the foundations for trusted artificial intelligence
• Digital horizons: technology, innovation and the future of accounting
• Machine learning: an introduction for finance professionals
• Quick guide to AI

Without good ethics, it will not be possible to build a better, fairer and more sustainable world. Professional accountants hold some of the most trusted positions in our society and their work underpins the effective functioning of the capital markets.  Rightly, it is therefore expected that professional accountants will behave ethically – in other words, take the ‘correct’ course of action, even in circumstances when it’s challenging to do so.  

We live in an era of misinformation and widespread distrust. The 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer found that just 60% of people trust businesses to make sure that innovations are safe, understood and accessible, with that percentage falling to 54% for NGOs and 50% for governments. So, it is more important than ever that accountants provide authentic and reliable financial and non-financial information that organisations can rely on.

As an ACCA member, it is your responsibility to uphold the five fundamental principles set out in our Code of Ethics and Conduct: integrity, objectivity, professional competence and due care, confidentiality, and professional behaviour.  You should also use the conceptual framework set out in the Code to identify and address any threats to compliance with these principles. 

Additionally, you can also act as an ethics guardian by helping to develop other ethical frameworks within your organisation – for example, frameworks governing the use of data and AI. Another way in which you can promote the importance of good ethics is by helping to create a culture that supports people to act on their ethical principles, for example, by providing training on how they can handle ethical dilemmas.

Further resources:

• ACCA code of ethics and conduct
• Ethical frameworks should enable
• Ethics
• Fundamental ethical principles
• The conceptual framework and ethical dilemmas
• Ethical dilemmas and sustainability

Innovation will be the route to growth and competitive advantage for the organisations of the future. In the knowledge economy, innovation will take the form of the innovation of ideas. So, organisations must be able to tap the talents of a broad pool of people – people with different backgrounds, capabilities, experiences, knowledge and skills. The only way that they will be able to achieve this is by creating a culture that embraces diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I).

Nearly three-quarters (73%) of respondents to our Global Talent Trends Survey 2024, said that a strong diversity and inclusion culture is a key factor in deciding to work at an organisation. The research also found that employers need to think more broadly about inclusivity since 41% of employees believe that their organisation focuses more on some aspects of diversity compared with others.

You can help to advance an inclusive workplace culture within your organisation by recruiting from a diverse talent pool, in every sense – including age, ethnicity, gender, neurodiversity, sexual orientation and socio-economic background. In addition to recruitment, it’s also important to factor DE&I into promotion and retention strategies and to think about how you practise inclusivity in your day-to-day interactions with others – for example, by ensuring that everyone in the team has an opportunity to speak in a meeting and actively welcoming new ideas.

Another way to promote inclusivity is by collaborating with other functions within your organisation. Deliberately seek out the perspectives of people with different roles, responsibilities, and levels of seniority. You could also be a mentor, both to finance professionals and people in other functions.

Further resources:

• Diversity and inclusion: working together
• Global talent trends 2024
• Increasing gender diversity to boost performance
• Leading inclusion

The journey towards a better, fairer and more sustainable world has far-reaching implications for learning and development. Global trends, such as the rise of AI and the focus on sustainability, are demanding that professional accountants continually develop new knowledge and skills. Meanwhile, the hunger for expanded skillsets is helping to blur the delineation between different job functions.

What accountants want from their careers is changing in tandem with broader developments. In the past, professional accountants may have followed the so-called ‘career ladder’, but now they are increasingly following more fluid and flexible paths that are aligned with their own personal growth agendas, ambitions and values. They may also welcome the opportunity to work in new roles, for example, as a sustainability controller or value analyst.

To thrive into the future, and to help shape a better world, you will still need your traditional finance skills, the ones that will have stood you in good stead in your career so far. These might include the ability to interpret an accounting record or produce a cashflow forecast. Alongside these traditional skills, however, you will also need to develop new skills, which might include the ability to apply new auditing or reporting standards, interrogate and interpret data, or effectively prompt AI tools.

In light of today’s rapid rate of change, it is essential to develop a continuous learning mindset – a mindset where you are always ready to learn new things and prepared to adapt to changing circumstances. As well as gaining additional credentials and qualifications, you can nurture this mindset by seeking out mentors and new professional experiences. Also, think about your ideal career trajectory, which skills will take you to where you need to go, and how you can develop those skills.

Further resources:

• Continuous learning
• Leading the change
• Integrative thinking: the guide to becoming a value-adding CFO
• Learning for the future
• Developing the skills of the sustainable business and finance professional