Retail
Subscription
to Advertise
  • ISSUES
    • 2006 to 2009
      • 2006
        • January 2006
        • February 2006
        • March 2006
        • April 2006
        • May 2006
        • June 2006
        • July 2006
        • August 2006
        • September 2006
        • October 2006
        • November 2006
        • December 2006
      • 2007
        • January 2007
        • February 2007
        • March 2007
        • April 2007
        • May 2007
        • June 2007
        • July 2007
        • August 2007
        • September 2007
        • October 2007
        • November 2007
        • December 2007
      • 2008
        • January 2008
        • February 2008
        • March 2008
        • April 2008
        • May 2008
        • June 2008
        • July 2008
        • August 2008
        • September 2008
        • October 2008
        • November 2008
        • December 2008
      • 2009
        • January 2009
        • February 2009
        • March 2009
        • April 2009
        • May 2009
        • June 2009
        • July 2009
        • August 2009
        • September 2009
        • October 2009
        • November 2009
        • December 2009
    • 2010 to 2019
      • 2010
        • January 2010
        • February 2010
        • March 2010
        • April 2010
        • May 2010
        • June 2010
        • July 2010
        • August 2010
        • September 2010
        • October 2010
        • November 2010
        • December 2010
      • 2011
        • January 2011
        • February 2011
        • March 2011
        • April 2011
        • May 2011
        • June 2011
        • July 2011
        • August 2011
        • September 2011
        • October 2011
        • November 2011
        • December 2011
      • 2012
        • April 2013
        • June 2012
        • July 2012
        • September 2012
      • 2013
        • January 2013
        • February 2013
        • March 2013
        • April 2013
        • May 2013
        • June 2013
        • July 2013
        • August 2013
        • November 2013
        • December 2013
      • 2014
        • January 2014
        • February 2014
        • March 2014
        • April 2014
        • May 2014
        • June 2014
        • July 2014
        • August 2014
        • September 2014
        • October 2014
        • November 2014
        • December 2014
      • 2015
        • January 2015
        • February 2015
        • March 2015
        • April 2015
        • May 2015
        • June 2015
        • July 2015
        • August 2015
        • September 2015
        • October 2015
        • November 2015
        • December 2015
      • 2016
        • January 2016
        • February 2016
        • March 2016
        • April 2016
        • May 2016
        • June 2016
        • July 2016
        • August 2016
        • October 2016
        • November 2016
        • December 2016
      • 2017
        • January 2017
        • February 2017
        • March 2017
        • April 2017
        • May 2017
        • June 2017
        • July 2017
        • August 2017
        • September 2017
        • October 2017
        • November 2017
        • December 2017
      • 2018
        • January 2018
        • February 2018
        • March 2018
        • April 2018
        • May 2018
        • June 2018
        • July 2018
        • August 2018
        • September 2018
        • October 2018
        • November 2018
        • December 2018
      • 2019
        • January 2019
        • February 2019
        • March 2019
        • April 2019
        • May 2019
        • June 2019
        • July 2019
        • August 2019
        • September 2019
        • October 2019
        • November 2019
        • December 2019
    • 2020 to 2023
      • 2020
        • January 2020
        • February 2020
        • March 2020
        • April 2020
        • May 2020
        • June 2020
        • July 2020
        • August 2020
        • September 2020
        • October 2020
        • November 2020
        • December 2020
      • 2021
        • January 2021
        • February 2021
        • March 2021
        • April 2021
        • May 2021
        • June 2021
        • July 2021
        • August 2021
        • September 2021
        • October 2021
        • November 2021
        • December 2021
      • 2022
        • January 2022
        • June 2022
        • February 2022
        • July 2022
        • March 2022
        • April 2022
        • August 2022
        • May 2022
        • September 2022
        • October 2022
        • November 2022
        • December 2022
      • 2023
        • January 2023
        • February 2023
        • March 2023
        • April 2023
        • May 2023
  • FOR DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTION
  • BT AWARDS
    • BT Top 40 2021 – 2022
  • ABOUT US
No Result
View All Result
Business Today
No Result
View All Result

A Role Of Relevance

0 0
0

Business Today speaks with CIMA Global President, Aubrey Joachim, an intellectual who believes that knowledge is power only when it is shared with others and that ‘relevance’ is key to what one disseminates as knowledge.

By Sonali Kadurugamuwa 

Photography by Menaka Aravinda


You are the current CIMA global president. What do you plan to bring into this role?


When I started off with the presidency I was asked the same question. Every president has a theme for his or her year and coming up to the event before I was elected in June of last year, I was asked the question, “what will you bring into this role?” My immediate answer to that question was just one word; ‘relevance’. To me the word ‘relevance’ is a very interesting word. It is a perpetual word, it never gets outdated because you are always relevant to circumstances, the environment, time, audiences… and it puts a significant challenge on CIMA to fit in with all of these situations.
If you go back to the history when CIMA was first formed it was five British industrialists that also included Lord Leverhulme, one of the founding fathers of Unilever, who 90 years ago, thought that we need a different kind of accountant. Our view of an accountant would be someone who records numbers, does debits and credits, prepares P&L’s and balance sheets. However, Lord Leverhulme wanted to see an ‘accountant’ that adds more value to a business, who works within a business, helps a business understand what its goals and outcomes are, and provides decision-making information, not after the end of an accounting period, not in hindsight but with foresight. That is how CIMA came into being, management accountants came into being out of a need for being relevant and CIMA has fulfilled that need all along.


CIMA Is One Of The Few Bodies That Continuously Revises And Updates Its Syllabus Structure – The Content Of It. Why? It’s Because We Believe That Management Accounting Is A Dynamic Body Of Learning. It’s Constantly Changing.

In today’s context, especially with what the world has been through in the last two years and what it’s facing currently, that need for relevance is stronger than ever. CIMA as a body, having multiple customers and many people think that our students and our members are our only customers, however, there’s more to it. Our customers are also the people who employ our students and members. With this in mind we have to constantly create a brand of accountants who are wanted by businesses, which is why we are seeing a shift across the world from the relative decline in the regulatory accounting aspect of it, or the historical accountant, to someone who is adding value and contributing to wealth creation. That to me is the challenge, so my theme for the year… being relevant.


If I see a qualified CIMA member in a number crunching role ten or twelve years after he/she is qualified, I’d be disappointed. That is because you’ve not moved ahead; you’ve not changed the business and you’ve not moved into a different and more challenging role and value adding. A question I always ask management accountants is if they have a hard and safety shoes in their office. If you do not have that, how would you know what’s going on in a business – how would you know what’s going on a factory floor or construction site?

I also put a slight shift on this by challenging CIMA as an organisation itself. I would tell the CEO and his team, “You have to be relevant as well as an organisation. You have to be smart, efficient and current.” My vision for CIMA is that it becomes stronger, more relevant and a dynamic body in the current market.

Your career began in Sri Lanka. Could you give us a little brief about this?


As I said before, CIMA came into being because of Lord Leverhulme of Unilever. I had studied at St Joseph’s College Colombo as well as St. Peter’s College Colombo and in 1973, when I had finished my A’ levels, funnily enough, I found a job at Unilever’s finance department.


From the time I walked into that office it was my fascination to become a management accountant and Lever’s provided me a solid grounding in that field. During childhood I had always wanted to become an engineer. However, now interestingly I tell people that I’m a ‘financial engineer’. I manage to engineer things and make something out of nothing, which is very much the role of an accountant. This is why Management Accounting is a much more interesting area than any other aspect of the wide financial space.


I also went on to work in the garment manufacturing industry in Sri Lanka, there- after, went to Dubai and worked with one of the largest oil and gas engineering companies in the world, Mcdermott International. While in Dubai I also managed part of their financial operations in Singapore and in 1991-after winning a CIMA Global Management Accounting competition, for which I was presented the award in London- I was transferred to their design engineering offices in London. In 1993 I migrated to Australia and now I live and work in Australia and again, wherever I have worked I’ve always sort out to work in the Management Accounting space rather than the regulatory or audit space. It always favoured my interests and apart from being involved with CIMA, I’m also on the Council of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) where I’m vigorously pushing the CIMA and Management Accounting message.

Could you tell us about the fellowship status you acquired with CIMA.


A number of professional bodies have different tiers of membership, for example, at base level you have your student memberships, and in the case of CIMA, after completing the examinations, one has to prove the Practical Experience Required or PER, which will lead to an associate membership or ACMA. Thereafter, you would have to prove that you’ve been involved with much more senior work in the areas of strategy, influencing, directing, and so forth and that is when you achieve the ‘fellow’ status of membership, which is the most senior position. The transition from ACMA to FCMA is not automatic as in the case of other professional accounting bodies. At CIMA we like to maintain our ‘Gold Standard’.


In my case, by the time I had completed my exams, it showed that I had had enough of experience in Management Accounting, decision-making, strategy and all those aspects that I never had the chance to be an ACMA, at any point in time. I became a direct ‘fellow’.
Any organisation’s standing is looked at by the number of senior positions presented, much like the way you would look at the prestige and standing of a university where you would ask the question, “How many PhD’s have you produced?” That is what a fellowship status is, it is a higher level of acceptance and standing in the institute.

You are the first person outside of the UK to become CIMA’s Global President. How do you feel about this?


I feel extremely proud about it. It is something that speaks volumes for the institutes changing demographically, in terms of acceptance, and also for the fact that I’ve been able to prove myself within a sort of club, that previously would not have thought it fit to have someone like myself, because it is a process of election by 52 fellow council members, 90 percent of whom would be from Western countries. To be accepted by them is something to be proud of, as it was not something I had expected in my lifetime. It is not a position that you can demand for, you may aspire for it, however at the end of the day, it will only come to you if you’re deserving. Personally I would like to attribute my success to my Sri Lankan roots, the core values that were taught to me by my parents, schools and teachers. My success is something that I would like dedicate to all Sri Lankans.

What principles of management does an experienced & distinguished individual such as yourself stand by?


Some of the most important aspects that people like myself and other people in the finance profession should stand by are ‘governance’ and ‘ethics’.


CIMA members are very focused on the ethical aspect. A few weeks ago, we produced a new document on ethics on where we thought the finance profession should be. I’m often asked by various forums, whether the accountants had anything to do with the recent happenings in the last two years. So I tell them that its not what the accountants did, but it’s what they didn’t do.


Accountants failed to guide their organisations, boards and the directors on how to handle their finances appropriately, during times of crisis. As accountants we are in a privileged position of knowledge and we have to use that knowledge in an ethical manner. Therefore when people think of ethics and governance, it’s not only about preventing fraud. As management accountants especially, our ethical spine should give us the courage to tell an organization when it’s having flawed strategies or when it doesn’t have a vision. To me, those are ethical issues as well, from that aspect.
If I were to answer your question in one word, I would say that it is the ‘ethics’ that is currently the most important value or principle that I would uphold.

How has CIMA contributed to facilitating the learning process of Management Accounting in general?


We have been a relevant body from the start. We want to be accountants who add value to what we do in all aspects of accounting procedure.


CIMA is one of the few bodies that continuously revises and updates its syllabus structure – the content of it. Why? It’s because we believe that Management Accounting is a dynamic body of learning. It’s constantly changing.


We have begun on an area called Environmental Management Accounting, because we feel that it’s the next stage. One of the leading universities in the UK, the University of Bath, constantly researches nearly 12,000 members, employers, professions, and students, mainly to understand what they require from a good finance professional and every four to five years our definition of Management Accounting changes or keeps expanding. Therefore, we incorporate this information into what we teach our new members.


Our next mission is to watch over the members who are already qualified. CIMA is very strong on our Continuing Professional Development (CPD). We encourage our members to always be current because there’s no point in having passed your exams ten – fifteen years ago if you don’t keep updating yourself. It is as bad as visiting a doctor who had passed his exams in 1940, and didn’t keep himself updated with the latest methods and techniques. I tell my members, why would a company have you advise them if you don’t know about the current situations, trends or market.
The other very interesting aspect is CIMA’s global qualification. You can take a CIMA member any where in the world, they would have done the same exams, marked under the same conditions, studied the same syllabus and had the same competencies. So when we get a member from anywhere in the world, they would have had the same ubiquitous skills. We consider it to be our ‘gold standard’ in Management Accounting.


Our Next Mission Is To Watch Over The Members Who Are Already Qualified. CIMA Is Very Strong On Our Continuing Professional Development (CPD).

What would you say are the most essential skills that accountants of today should possess?


Many accountants are quite content in gaining all the technical skills. However, the challenge lies in the gaining the soft skills.


Recently I read something very interesting in the context of organisations; that ‘knowledge is power’. However, I beg to differ, because knowledge, until it can be disseminated and shared, is of no use to anyone. Me knowing the best of anything doesn’t add value to anything, until I can share it.


In the past, we had accountants who knew everything but didn’t share it with others, which is why the accounting sector was always seen as a closed profession, almost a secret sect. Whereas now you need people who shouldn’t only understand a set of numbers, but be able to interpret it to managers and stakeholders of the organisation. Its not just the capturing and the recording of data, it is also about the interpretation, presentation and decision-making capabilities. These are added competencies we are looking for.

With the loss of jobs globally that we’ve been faced with during recent times, how has CIMA contributed to equipping students with what the competitive world requires?


CIMA equips a person to be able to do anything. I’ve met many CIMA qualified accountants, who’ve constantly chosen to walk away from an accounting job and get into other interesting areas in the job market.


I knew a person who had a very good post at an Australian telecom company and then one day she comes and tells me that she has left her job and that she wanted to start her own business in designing clothing and today she’s doing extremely well at this new business. It was the same story with another friend of mine that switched his career path from accounting to tea production. They were both CIMA graduates and they were able to use the knowledge they gained from CIMA to apply it into something different.


So often what we say is, you don’t need to feel that you are without a set of transportable skills, and that’s the value we use. Especially in Management Accounting, the skills are transportable. In regulatory finance, in the tax space, in audit space you’re still governed by demographic rules.
We still have different demographics, which have to have things different. But Management Accounting is a ubiquitous language. I run courses in Tehran, Iran and 90% wouldn’t understand English, they listened to me through an interpreter, a dynamic interpreter. The questions that come up to me right after, just showed me their level of understanding is huge, so I often use this as one of my quotations, I can go and talk the language of Management Accounting in sign language and it’ll still be understood. Irrespective of where you are there’s one way to run a business in an optimum way and that is to understand strategy that can be conducted in any shape or form.


Management accountants – they never need to feel threatened about loss of jobs or a loss of things to do because they’re thinking lies outside the box and there will always be opportunities for them.

With several institutions around the world involved with CIMA, how are standards maintained?


There are 100s if not 1000s of institutions conducting CIMA classes, but there are only some of them that are accredited by CIMA. Students should be looking for CIMA accredited tuition providers. Accredited training partners is what we call them and the way that is done is their teaching methods are looked at, class sizes, lecturer to student ratios, KPIs of performance – are all looked at in order to ascertain their suitability, and might I add that Sri Lankan lecturers, over the last few years, have been unanimously carrying away the CIMA global awards for the best tutors of the year. I have been a judge on that for the last two years and the innovation I see coming from our Sri Lankan lecturers is unbelievable. They are now in to the next generation, using all the technology available to teach their students. That is how we maintain that quality.

CIMA has become very popular in Sri Lanka, why do you think this is?


We are increasingly seeing the growth of Management Accounting and the desire for Management Accounting is also increasing. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s a very interesting area, a dynamic area. It’s about learning leading edge management tools.


When you are dealing with an organisation, especially in the area of strategy, decision-making, performance management – you have to look at things and interpret it. You have to be very cognisant of what’s happening. You’re not only looking at the past, but the bigger challenge is for us to be looking at, and knowing what’s happening in the future.


Here is an opportunity of being a leader and guiding the organisation in the way it moves forward, I feel that this is the attraction. There has been a transformation in the finance function and the days of controlling are gone and now it is time for partnering. It’s not the traditional pinstripe suits, round glasses, crunching numbers, but it’s about being out there… that is the attraction for students today.

What was the reason for your visit to Sri Lanka?


CIMA Presidents always visit our major markets and Sri Lanka is certainly the second largest CIMA Market outside of the UK. In addition, being of Sri Lankan origin, it would have been a pity if I didn’t come here to celebrate my success. My former schools St. Joseph’s College and St. Peter’s College felicitated me, where I was able to share my success with, and hopefully inspire and influence young students. I am not the first Sri Lankan to achieve global recognition and I certainly will not be the last.

Future plans?


I feel that I would have made several changes in CIMA that would be remembered. Whenever I’ve acquired a role in an organisation it has never been the same after I’ve left that role. To me change is of paramount importance in the world we live in. I have no doubt that CIMA will grow from strength to strength locally here in Sri Lanka and of course globally. Many organisations may try to copy and emulate CIMA but they will never be equal. My vision is to see us retain that prestige position.

Any final thoughts?


I’d like to think that I’m part of a story and I’m sure that there will be presidents who will follow, with even more innovative ideas to share. I hope every CIMA member can learn from what I’ve shared. My final advice to all Sri Lankans is that there is no place you cannot reach on the global stage – just have the courage and confidence to reach out!

TweetShareShare

Business Today May 2023

Business Today

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions

© 2023 BT Options. All Rights Reserved

No Result
View All Result
  • ISSUES
    • 2006 to 2009
      • 2006
      • 2007
      • 2008
      • 2009
    • 2010 to 2019
      • 2010
      • 2011
      • 2012
      • 2013
      • 2014
      • 2015
      • 2016
      • 2017
      • 2018
      • 2019
    • 2020 to 2023
      • 2020
      • 2021
      • 2022
      • 2023
  • FOR DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTION
  • BT AWARDS
    • BT Top 40 2021 – 2022
  • ABOUT US

© 2023 BT Options. All Rights Reserved

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In