Professionals like accountants can be agents of change, especially when it comes to tackling global issues like sustainability, Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) head Michael Izza told the Straits Times.

Private enterprise now has more opportunity than ever to make an impact, he said.

“Issues like trade wars have occurred before, but the new thing now is the pace of change in terms of technology and the awareness of the role that businesses have to play in global problems, such as sustainability. That awareness is only going to grow.”

Izza, who has been CEO of the accounting body since 2006, noted that in earlier financial crises, businesses were thinking only of survival.

But now sustainability issues have come to the fore, especially with an important catalyst like the Sustainable Development Goals set out by the UN in 2015.

The 17 integrated goals were adopted by all UN member states as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030.

Izza, 58, said: “It is nearly 2020 and we are not doing that well . . . Some big businesses are leading the way but the problem is among small and medium-sized enterprises [SMEs]. Most businesses in the world are SMEs.”

This is where financial industry professionals, such as accountants, come in, he added.

ICAEW member accountants advise more than three million businesses per year in Britain and most are SMEs.

“They are in a great position to be agents of change,” Izza said.

This power to impact businesses and the environment can also be a compelling argument for more young people to join the accounting profession.

Izza said: “Accounting is not always an attractive career choice, especially because it has to compete with banking, consultancy and technology jobs. But this profession is one with a purpose. At the basic level, our role is in measuring, reporting, assuring and helping businesses make better decisions.”

His own journey with sustainability started when Prince Charles made a speech at an ICAEW dinner in 2005 and challenged the organisation to think about how accountants had a role to play in a system that uses resources without thinking about what will happen when they are eventually depleted.

Izza noted: “At the same time, my children were getting into issues related to sustainability. We went to the supermarket and they talked about where products came from and what the consequences of certain products arriving on the shelf today are. It started this consciousness about our natural resources.”

His daughter is now 21 and his son 24.

Soul-searching

He said the period of economic slowdown much of the world is in now could be the time for soul-searching.

“This might be an opportunity to think about what we do in our domestic economies, such as finding alternate sources of supply, [considering] things that we should no longer be producing and even envisaging a system where the measure of growth is no longer profit or revenue, but sustainability, employee and customer satisfaction.

“We as a species are great problem solvers. We just need to put our brains to the sustainable development goals and see the role of professional services in this.”

Financial services also remain important, even with technology changing the way processes might be carried out, he said.

“In the 1980s, with the introduction of spreadsheets and Microsoft Excel, people said it would replace the accounting profession, but these things are just tools.

“Now, developments like artificial intelligence and blockchain can replace mechanical roles and help things to be done more efficiently.”

But this is not bad news for accountants or other roles in the finance industry. He said: “We should embrace the fact that routine drudgery can be replaced and jobs can be more interesting and value-added.

“We can find more productive things for people to do. Technology is often called disruption, but I also see it as innovation.”

Izza added that the human brain remains important, even behind digital processes. “With digital filing, people still want an adviser behind to check it. When there are variations, the algorithms cannot cope. So there will be a demand for higher value-added skills for the job.”

These skills include making sense of data and understanding data sets that might be incomplete or corrupt.

“We are drowning in data but starving for insights. The reality is that there is always a role for someone to provide that.”

THE STRAITS TIMES (SINGAPORE)/ASIA NEWS NETWORK