AC 301: So You Want To Be An Accountant?
Professor: Jane Stoneback, Ph.D.
Composite Profile of Capabilities Needed by Accounting Graduates
1. General Knowledge
- An understanding of the flow of ideas and events in history
and the different cultures in today's world
- Basic knowledge of psychology, economics, mathematics
through calculus, and statistics
- A sense of the breadth of ideas, issues, and contrasting economic,
political and social forces in the world
- An awareness of Personal and social values and of the process
of inquiry and judgment
- An appreciation of art, literature, and science
2. Intellectual Skills
- Capacities for inquiry, abstract logical thinking, inductive
and deductive reasoning, and critical analysis
- Ability to identify and solve unstructured problems in unfamiliar
settings and to apply problem-solving skills in a consultative
process
- Ability to identify ethical issues and apply a value-based
reasoning system to ethical questions
- Ability to Understand the determining forces in a given situation
and to predict their effects
- Ability to manage sources of stress by selecting and assigning
priorities within restricted resources and to Organize work to
meet tight deadlines
3. Interpersonal Skills
- Ability to work with others, particularly in groups, to influence
them, to lead them, to organize and delegate tasks, to motivate
and develop people, and to withstand and resolve conflict
- Ability to interact with culturally and intellectually diverse
people
4. Communication Skills
- Ability to present, discuss, and defend views effectively
through formal and informal, written and spoken language
- Ability to listen effectively
- Ability to locate, obtain, organize, report, and use information
from human, print, and electronic sources
5. Organizational and business Knowledge
- A knowledge of the activities of business, government, and
nonprofit organizations, and of the environments in which they
operate, including the major economic, legal, political, social,
and cultural forces and their influences
- A basic knowledge of finance, including financial statement
analysis, financial instruments, and capital markets, both domestic
and international
- An understanding of interpersonal and group dynamics in business
- An understanding of the methods for creating and managing
change in organizations
- An understanding of the basic internal workings of organizations
and the application of this knowledge to specific examples
6. Accounting Knowledge
- History of the accounting profession and accounting thought
- Content, concepts, structure, and meaning of reporting for
organizational operations, both for internal and external use,
including the information needs of financial decision makers and
the role of accounting information in satisfying those needs
- Policy issues, environmental factors, and the regulation of
accounting
- Ethical and professional responsibilities of an accountant
- The process of identifying, gathering, measuring, summarizing,
and analyzing financial data in business organizations, including:
- The Concepts, methods, and processes of control that provide
for the accuracy and integrity of financial data and safeguarding
of business assets
- The nature of attest services and the conceptual and procedural
basis for performing them
- Taxation and its impact on financial and managerial decisions
- In depth knowledge in one or mare specialized areas, such
as financial accounting, management accounting, taxation, information
systems, auditing, nonprofit, government, and international accounting
7. Accounting Skills
- Ability to apply accounting knowledge to solve real-world
problems
8. Personal Capacities and Attitudes
- Integrity
- Persistence
- Empathy
- Leadership
- Sensitivity to social responsibilities
- A commitment to life-long learning
to AC 301