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This article was first published in the October 2016 International edition of Accounting and Business magazine.

When you see the ACCA letters after a professional’s name, you know you’re looking at someone with a great combination of strategic thinking, broad, deep and up-to-date technical skills, the highest ethical standards and a practical, real-world approach. ACCA members pride themselves on being ahead of the curve – helped by our global network, professional insights and CPD resources.

The ACCA Qualification is the essential foundation of every ACCA professional. Its continued evolution and relevance has ensured that, throughout our history, we’ve developed the next generation of professional accountants with the skills the world needs. Since 2014, we’ve been carefully designing innovations to the ACCA Qualification. We consulted extensively with members, employers, education providers and regulators worldwide, and used the findings from our leading Professional accountants – the future research.

Already, many significant innovations to the ACCA Qualification are in place, for instance:

  • our Knowledge exams that test early workplace application
  • our new Skills exams that use real-world technology
  • our revamped practical experience requirements 
  • our market-leading integrated BSc and MSc degrees.

So now we unveil our latest developments to the final level of the ACCA Qualification – the new Strategic Professional level, and our new Ethics and Professional Skills module.

Strategic Professional level

With the Strategic Professional level, we’re setting a new standard by fully integrating deep, broad and relevant technical expertise with ethics and professional skills. Because every element has a real-world focus, our students will be prepared to handle the challenges they’ll face in the workplace. The result is strategic, forward-thinking professionals equipped with the unique blend of skills needed to hit the ground running – and add immediate value to their employers.

The Strategic Professional level is benchmarked at Master’s level on a number of education frameworks. Its innovative features are:

Strategic Business Leader – innovative case study
A new innovative case study uses real-world scenarios to set challenges that require students to use their combined technical, professional and ethical skills in the evaluation, synthesis and presentation of their responses. Mirroring the workplace, students will be required to present their answers to the standard employers expect from future business professionals.

Strategic Business Reporting
We take the qualification’s current holistic view of reporting to new levels. The underpinning principles of corporate reporting remain, but these are enhanced by giving students the skills needed to confidently speak the language of business and explain reports to a wide variety of stakeholders.

Options exams – unique opportunity to specialise
Our Options exams remain available, offering the unique opportunity to specialise in areas of greatest relevance to a chosen sector or career path.

Integrated Master’s degree
The ACCA Qualification includes the world’s first Master’s degree integrated with a professional accountancy qualification, delivered with the University of London.

New Ethics and Professional Skills module
With our new Ethics and Professional Skills module, we’ll be the first to deliver a unique module that focuses on developing the complete range of professional skills employers have told us they need. Building on our pioneering Professional Ethics module, it continues to develop the vitally important ethical behaviour and judgment, complementing this with the broader communications, commercial, innovation, analysis and evaluation skills vital for career success.

Alan Hatfield is executive director, strategy and development, ACCA