How did you become interested in accountancy as a career?
Like many young people, I didn’t really have any idea of what I wanted to do when I left school. However, I saw a post advertised in an accountancy practice, thought it might be an interesting first job, and started working there. After a couple of years, I started studying for the AAT qualification and after I completed it I moved to the National Health Service. My boss could see that I had the potential for a future career in accountancy and offered me day release to study ACCA. I completed my exams in 1992.
I am now deputy director of finance at a mental health partnership trust in Worcestershire, UK, which involves working with social services colleagues to provide health and social services to 250,000 people across the county.
Why does ACCA have a president and council, and what are their roles?
The ACCA president represents all ACCA students and members. I see it as an ambassadorial role – meeting as many of our members and students as I can around the world, dealing with regulators and governments, and being the voice of ACCA.
ACCA regards itself as being at the vanguard of corporate responsibility, and consequently we need to ensure that our governance policies are cutting edge and best practice. ACCA Council is a democratically-elected body comprising 36 members, each elected for a three-year term. Council acts as trustees on behalf of the members and is responsible, together with the senior executive team, for the strategic direction of ACCA. The council structure also includes an officer team of three people – the president, the deputy president (currently Gillian Ball) and the vice president (currently Richard Aitken-Davies).
What are your main priorities for your presidential year?
To put it simply, my main priority is to represent all of our members and students as well as I possibly can. I am extremely honoured to be ACCA’s president. And for our students, I am always mindful of how difficult the exams are to pass – I am not one of those people who says that it was always harder in my day. One of the reasons that ACCA has such a good reputation around the world is that the quality of our qualifications is never compromised. As such, if you pass the exams and gain membership, no matter where you are in the world, you become a highly-regarded professional with a highly-portable qualification.
Do you have a key theme for your presidential term?
Being the first ACCA president to come from the healthcare sector, the key theme of my presidency is health. We are already working with the British Medical Association, which has a global reputation in clinical expertise and practise, on a clinically and financially-driven report on how to modernise the UK health service. We have canvassed best practice across the world – for example in Australia, Denmark, the US, and Singapore – to include in the report, and the project will culminate in September 2006 when I will launch ACCA’s health manifesto at the UK’s governing Labour Party conference. I hope this will have wider relevance than just the UK, and I am sure that it will form an interesting discussion piece.
What do you think are ACCA’s principal strengths?
The first strength, to my mind, is very clear. It’s the army of members and students that we have across 170 countries. I regard it as a family: a unique, global business family.
Also, vitally important to ACCA is our reputation and the reputation of the profession. The confidence in accountants was knocked by the corporate scandals of previous years. While you can’t guarantee that something like that will never happen again, ACCA, together with all accountancy bodies around the world, has to ensure that the reputation of the accountancy profession continues to improve. Wherever you are, users of financial statements should be able to rely on these statements, appreciate that they have been professionally prepared, and be reassured that the decisions that they make will be drawn from information that is reasonable, reliable, and based on fact. And that’s why ethics is at the core of the new ACCA Qualification, to be first examined in December 2007.
What are the key qualities of an accountant?
I think it is vital that our students and members make ethically-sound decisions. Ethics should be the lifeblood of all organisations. Also, key to being a highly-regarded professional is to keep your knowledge up to date. When you qualify as an ACCA member, you demonstrate your ability to pass stringent exams. For students, this is the biggest milestone imaginable. However, equally significant milestones will exist in the future to ensure that the knowledge of every ACCA member remains at that high level for the rest of their career. As a result, ACCA has introduced continuing professional development (CPD) as a requirement of membership. I am a great believer in the premise that you are only as strong as your weakest link. With CPD, ACCA will ensure that everyone maintains the standards expected of the profession.
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