Integration With an Accounting Pathway,

¶ … Integration

With an accounting pathway, I studied business computing, global and cultural environment of business and business ethics. These are all interconnected. In business, different aspects of business cannot be segregated, so one must integrate all of the different skills one has acquired, all the time. So for me, I will be an accountant, but the modern accountant can build a long-term career that incorporates all of the different things that I have learned. The business computing course gives me specific functional skills. These skills will form the basis of what I do, day in and day out.

The global and cultural environment is business frames the setting for what I will be doing. It is where I will perform the skills I learned in the business computing. In a globalized world, working with people from a number of cultures, I will be in a position to put this knowledge to the test while in the performance of my role as an accountant.

Business ethics covers the issue of how I will perform my duties. Ethics is inherently important in accounting, because the career is governed by fairly strict legal requirements, and moving beyond these requirements is not only unethical but illegal and could severely harm my company. It is important, then, to consider the different things that I have learned in the Accounting Pathway as answering the questions of what I do, where I do it, and how I do it. So each course contributes to the totality of my role in the workforce. By mastering all of these disciplines and acquiring the knowledge from these courses, I will be in a better position to excel at all dimensions of my role.

2. All problems have multiple dimensions, so it is not going to be difficult to use the different knowledge and skills that I have acquired in my studies to solve problems. One of the hot issues in accounting right now is the issue of convergence between U.S. GAAP and the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). There are certainly different dimensions to this. The global and cultural dimension is obvious, since there are significant underlying philosophical differences between the two systems and I will need to know what those differences are. Those differences will be apparent also any time when dealing with people from different cultures.

With respect to the hard skills, those reflect the tools I will use to manage the issue. If I need to work with databases and spreadsheets, for example, to create financial statements that are in line with both accounting systems then I would need to know the systems, why they are different, how they are different, and then apply all of that knowledge with my technical skills to deliver the two sets of financial statements.

For its part, ethics is an overarching issue that lies in the background. Understanding different ethical issues can help to resolve dilemmas, for example. Also, ethical conduct is something that must be done at all times, not just some of the time. As such, this is something I learned in my coursework that will always provide me with a means of framing different issues. Ethical studies might not answer why we need to have convergence of accounting systems, but it can still guide the means by which a company will implement such changes and how it will communicate such changes to the different stakeholders.

3. For the most part, the courses that I took fit well within my major of Accounting. The pathway I chose is to learn all of the major issues in business and apply them to the accounting context. It is important that accounting is not just counting beans, but is a part of the comprehensive exploration of how business is conducted. Ethics are important in areas of business, and since many ethical issues of recent years have involved the accounting profession, learning about the fundamental philosophies of ethics is a critical part of the job.