Who, Me A Consultant?

Young man facing image of himselfIt’s time to look at yourself in a new light.

By Jody Padar
The Radical CPA

I love Andersen Consulting, now Accenture. I especially love the story that when Andersen Consulting first started, the consul­tants who worked for the firm were not accountants. They hired mostly liberal arts majors – creative thinkers who were exception­al at communicating and innovating, but not so great with the numbers. The executives at Andersen taught the consultants accounting and, well, how to be an actual consultant.

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I hope this motivates today’s firms. This younger generation of accountants has more than 150 hours of accounting, but they are less well rounded than previous generations. This is a problem.

We can no longer complain to the AICPA as to when they made that 150-hour rule, why they created more necessity for young accountants to learn more useless financial knowledge that’s constantly changing as opposed to having them develop better writing and analytical skills. That’s most important in today’s workforce.