More Questions Than Answers: A Few Encouraging Answers: How to Bridge the Gaps in Finance and Accounting

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/jcaf.22245
• Published date: 01 January 2017
• Date: 01 January 2017

94

© 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).

DOI 10.1002/jcaf.22245

MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS

“An ongoing assessment of our effectiveness at serving the corporate

world of accounting and finance”

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A Few Encouraging Answers: How

to Bridge the Gaps in Finance and

Accounting

Tom Pryor and Michael Cipriano

In our first installment of

this series of columns, we

attempted to pose several

questions that focused on

gaps between education and

practice as well as potential

bridges to those gaps. In this

installment, we would like to

make it clear that classroom

educators, practitioners, and

those responsible for jour-

nals related to accounting

and finance are all included

in the “our” of the phrase

“our effectiveness” that we

are using as the stated central

theme of this series. As we

indicated in our last column,

this series was inspired by

conversations we have been

having as an editorial advisory

board following the words and

vision of our editor-in-chief,

Dr. Jim Edwards. Between

us, we have membership in

all three groups included in

the “our” of the phrase “our

effectiveness.”

Given our perspectives

from each of these points of

view, we hope to share a little

of our perspective on a few

very encouraging examples of

ways in which gaps between

education and practice of cor-

porate accounting and finance

are currently being studied and

addressed. We do not pretend

to have a comprehensive list of

answers to the questions that

we posed regarding these gaps

in our previous column, but we

are hoping to both encourage

further dialogue and action

among all parties included in

the “our” of “our effectiveness”

and make a few suggestions

that might be worth consider-

ing in the name of bridging

the gaps now and in the future.

While some may be tempted

to analyze what the current

state of education is relative

to the demands of the profes-

sions that accounting and

finance educators are serving,

Ray Johnston reminds us in

his book The Hope Quotient

that individuals and businesses

would be much better served by

refocusing on what the current

state of things “can become”

rather than what the current

state of things “is.” That is

our focus: to identify what our

effectiveness can become rather

than what it is.

In their comprehensive

review of accounting educa-

tion, Lawson and colleagues

(2014) identified a set of skills

desired by the accounting pro-

fession that mirrors the set we

listed in our last installment.

This skill set was also validated