Wherever you work, there's more to being an accountant than pure accounting. There's business strategy and spending decisions in every part of the organisation, from IT to HR. And if you're in the public sector, chances are you'll also be doing things on a grand scale. The NHS Trust where I work, for instance, has 1200 employees and a turnover of nearly half a billion pounds.
ACCA's wide-ranging syllabus gives you the breadth of training you need to contribute in this kind of large-scale and business-led environment.
The question of ethics is key too. You're spending huge sums of taxpayers' money so you have to be completely accountable. This is another area where the ACCA Qualification is particularly strong. It's embedded in the training - as well as there being a module dedicated to it, ethics is a theme that runs throughout the syllabus.
As an ACCA Council member I've had a front row seat on the lobbying side of the ACCA's work too. We're working behind the scenes at the most senior level, responding to Government consultation documents and helping to shape policies that affect the profession or finance in general. And not just in the UK either. Tomorrow I'm off to chair an ACCA conference in Singapore.
