To offer students a more practical feel of challenges in the field of work and how to tackle them professionally, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) has launched its new Ethics and Professional Skills module for accountants nationwide.
The module which is an upgraded version of the existing one will go beyond testing the intellectual prowess of students for certification, provide them the opportunity to experience real-life tasks and examine their ability to handle such situations.
Speaking on the sidelines of the launch, Head of ACCA Ghana, Doris Yaa Aggrey Ahiati indicated that the new model which replaces the other beginning October 31, will to a large extent, guarantee a high level of integrity and ethics in the accountancy profession.
“We are very certain that our new ethics and professional skills model is going to improve and become the bedrock for ethics and integrity in the practice of the accountancy profession. The reason is that, while you get certified at the end of the day, it is not some standard material that you have to read and produce responses to questions that are extracted from that material but it is actually testing your judgement.
“There are various scenarios that are presented to you and you’re supposed to judge. Assuming they were real life scenarios, how would you act, how would you conduct yourself? Judgement varies from time to time, and if you have imbibed and you have learnt that, your judgement has to go a certain way in the interest of public good, then your degree of integrity and ethics cannot be compromised.
Ms. Ahiati maintained that students have an added advantage of retaking the course as and when the need arises to keep abreast with issues pertaining to ethics in the profession.
“Another critical difference between the old and the new is that the model is available for you to retake the course in the course of time, at any point in your career, you can go back to the model and take it to keep you abreast with new trends in the field of ethics and integrity”.
The launch of ACCA’s new Ethics and Professional Skills module came off on October 18, 2017, in Accra.
The new Ethics and Professional Skills module focuses on developing vitally important ethical behaviour and judgement to ensure finance professionals are equipped with the skills needed to support exam success at Strategic Professional level.
ACCA was the first to introduce a compulsory ethics module in 2007. The new module revisions ensure all members have the broader ethics, communication, commercial, innovation, analysis and evaluation skills core to membership and essential for shaping the future of business.
The new module will officially take off on October 31 to replace the existing one.
