Where to go, accounting profession?
When thinking about accounting education in Indonesia, my highest concern is creating as well as sustaining a proven accounting graduates in the market. Market is increasingly demanding them to be more responsive and adaptive with recent business development. They are not projected merely as a scorekeeper and operationally-centered worker. Nor do they expected to master on just audit skills.
Have Indonesia universities done the utmost to accomplish the goal? well, I guess, the dream is still long way to go. Many of these accountant wannabe supplier still struggle to meet the basic needs such as minimum number of students, teaching staff wealth, and many more. It doesn’t mean that, I by no means, don’t credit the current achievement. Only, I just feel that there is something missing in shaping our students internally.
What I see on current process is that we undeliberately transform them into what I call an accountant with limited organizational view. We place them in a tunnel of limited capability along the way, fueling them with merely basic capability with no limited knowledge of how organization works as a weapon. If they turn out to be auditor, they’re just an auditor with a limited view of enterprise.
The emerging information era and a rapid complexity and risks in business have transformed market expectation on them to be an information workers and business analyst. They are now expected to provide solution for business challenge instead of just merely providing number crunching for the executive annual/monthly meeting, and leave those execs to decide next course of action. Accounting graduates should position themselves to be an integral part of the organization, whatever their role will be, be it an auditor, consultant, tax consultant or other roles. And I guess the most appropriate role they can take is as an analyst. To be a business/system analyst, one ought to be knowledgeable about specific organization’s business processes. They must know how information flows from one state to another.
A part of crucial element constituting accounting expertise is the mastery of information system. University must revamp their orientation to produce a capable user or an excel project manager. They must start to think their students as a future analyst, who will address both user needs and IS development project.