Top 5 Skills of Accounting Professionals Today: #3

Critical Thinking is skill number three that accounting professionals today require. Of course, people will think DUH! But it’s not such an obvious skill to have or acquire. I found that this skill can take junior accountants 3-5 years to develop depending on your training and your personal interest in developing your career. Some people never get to this point and will end up stuck at the lower levels of accounting forever.

I’ve spoken about this before. As we move towards more specialized skills on Accounting teams, we’re producing more and more operating procedure docs with very specific instructions for how to do a task. Those documents are great, but they cannot teach you how to think for yourself. Nor can they show you how to adapt concepts and apply them to different situations. The basis of all accounting work is pattern recognition. We learn some basic skills, and then apply them over and over again in different ways and places. I guess this can be said of many jobs.

One person on my team started as an Accounts Payable Specialist and they were great at the job. They were able to take a set of instructions that we gave them and follow them with great attention to detail.

1. Find a prior invoice for this same vendor and code to the same account, department, and class.
2. If you cannot find a prior invoice, then follow this detailed list and identify what type of services this vendor provides and code it to what is given on the list.
3. If the service does not fit easily into any bucket, reach out to your Senior for assistance.
4. Update the date of the invoice and service dates.
5. Upload a copy of the invoice to the bill entered.
6. Rinse and repeat!

Easy enough right? Next step. Incorporate some critical thinking.

I wanted to challenge them to grow beyond the role. I first asked them to think critically about every single invoice that came across their desk. I told them to ask themself what the vendor did, what type of service did they provide for us? Really try to understand, why am I coding it to this account, department, class? Does it make sense that it would be coded there. If they didn’t understand, to note it down for our next discussion.

I then asked them to replace step 3 with, if the service does not fit easily into any bucket, make a good first effort to see where they think it would be coded to based on our current chart of accounts, department and class listings. Then to submit it for review and approval as usual.

Once they’re able to master this step, they can then take on more advanced duties such as becoming a reviewer of other people’s work. Or perhaps being the person that new teammates would come to for help when they didn’t know where to code something. Another component of thinking critically might be to challenge inefficiencies in the workflow, or help produce new and better operating procedures.

This would not only demonstrate a strong understanding of the specific task they are doing, but also show that they have a strong understanding of the entire process and show that they can take ownership and accountability of their role. This is always my ultimate goal for anyone coming into a role. Once they can operate at this level for a sustained amount of time, 3-4 months, it’s time to push them again to take on a new challenge.

What we’ve done here is taught someone how to fish instead of giving them a fish. We’ve empowered our teammate to learn more about their job. First, we gave them a strong foundation with easily digestible instructions and a good support system. Next, we taught them how to fish.

Of course, this is a very basic example, but I don’t believe that following a set of instructions will ever challenge you to think critically. Because all the answers are already given to you. You would have no reason to have to learn how to do it for your own, or question why it is done the way it’s done.

One of the basic tenants of critical thinking is to ask why? and how? We should seek to understand the things we are being asked to do. Then we should be comfortable challenging answers or perspectives. We need to be open minded and consider different perspectives, different methods, and even challenge our own assumptions. Here are some questions to help you in your journey.

General Inquiry & Analysis

1. What is the purpose, goal, or point?
2. What is the problem or issue being solved or described?
3. What evidence or data is being used to support this claim?
4. What are the strengths and weaknesses of this argument or approach?
5. What are the potential consequences or implications of this decision/action?
6. What are the underlying assumptions or biases?
7. How does this relate to what we already know?
8. What other perspectives or viewpoints could be considered?
9. What are the basic concepts or terms being used?
10. How do these definitions affect the framing/understanding of the problem?

Probing for Evidence

1. How did you reach this conclusion?
2. What steps did you use to solve this problem?
3. What evidence is there to support your answer?
4. What are the underlying assumptions of this?
5. Why do you think this works? Does it always? Why?
6. Is this provable? Knowable? By what standard?
7. What else do we have to accept as true if we accept this?

What are some ways we can push ourselves to think critically naturally? What are some examples of instances where you’ve been asked to think critically? Was it challenging for you? Why?