Why this is a must-have skill for accountants (Updated 2 December 2024)

Creativity is increasingly recognised as a skill that is essential to all industries.

According to the World Economic Forum’s The Future of Jobs Report 2023, creative thinking and analytical thinking will be the top skills needed to thrive in the workplace over the next few years. Resilience, flexibility and agility also rank among the top five skills on the rise, highlighting organisational demand for workers who can adapt quickly to business disruption.

Mykel Dixon, author of Everyday Creative: A Dangerous Guide for Making Magic at Work and adviser to companies on how to unlock creativity among their ranks, argues that these skills are in demand right now.

“The world we live in used to value those who could ace the test, the ones who could memorise information, master instructions... Now we have machines for that, and they don’t need to be fed or need a break... What the world values now are those of us who can dream, those who can reinterpret and reinvent the world in new and exciting ways,” he says.

Unhelpful stereotypes portraying artists and creatives as flaky and self-absorbed, coupled with reductionist myths about people having either left-brained or right-brained capabilities, have served to encourage a dysfunctional relationship with our latent creativity, Dixon says.

The good news is that creativity and innovation can be cultivated. Christy Forest, CEO and executive director of LiveHire and former member of the Business Council of Australia Innovation Taskforce says, “It used to be that innovation was the task of a small development team in the corner of an office, but now innovation happens in an environment that taps the entire workforce. You have to harness soft skills and hard skills and have a lot of precision around process and reward.”

Risk of failure

Encouraging or reawakening creativity among employees has become key to a company’s competitive advantage. The Award Creativity ScoCollre (ACS), developed by management consultants McKinsey, shows that businesses that score highly outperform their competitors in two areas: an appetite and aptitude for innovation and shareholder return – in other words, growth and profit.

Despite this, there is a perception that a culture of innovation is hard to instil in traditional accounting and finance firms. Bureaucracy and a methodical approach conducive to compliance-based work are sometimes seen as roadblocks to creativity.

At professional services firm EY, Darren Chua leads innovation for the Oceania region. The risk-taking that accompanies experimentation can be much harder to swallow in large organisations, says Chua, exacerbated by the focus on short-term performance and individuals’ fear of failure.

“In finance and accountancy, we are by nature very precise individuals. Being allowed, the right to fail is typically incongruous with the way business is organised and run. If you are trying to hit your quarterly goal, how lenient can you be about failure?”

Chua’s advice is to be smart and deliberate in how companies frame innovation. “I can afford to fail fast, as long as I have a clear vision, a broad innovation portfolio and a mix of short - medium - and long-term goals. In that context, if we fail fast and have some space to shoulder occasional losses, we can then learn and move on quickly to the next opportunity.”

Support from the top

No enterprise is going to get creative without buy-in and support from the CEO – that is the consensus among experts.

“At a level or two removed from the CEO, it never really gets any traction, and organisations including EY and the big banks have struggled with that,” Chua says.

 

"In finance and accountancy, we are by nature very precise individuals. So, being allowed the ‘right to fail’ is typically incongruous with the way business is organised and run."

 

Any budget and resources allocated to innovation should also have a clear agenda.

Chua recalls a major client who invested over A$2 million in a state-of-the-art innovation hub that, within a couple of years, became a place for good coffee meetings but not much else.

“There wasn’t true ownership of why they needed the space and how innovation would be ingrained into the core business. The question - whether this was a place for brainstorming or a fundamental way of changing the business model and processes – wasn’t asked or key leaders weren’t fully sold on it.”

Innovation in the regions

Small accountancy firms that lack big budgets, resources and diversity of staff skills have to be more efficient in cultivating creativity and quicker in putting good ideas into practice.

Dr Kirsty Redgen is an associate lecturer in accounting at the University of the Sunshine Coast and has researched creativity in small accountancy firms in regional and rural Australia.

“Most accountants now recognise that creativity is important. Stepping back from the job at hand to ask, ‘How could I do this job better?’ takes time.” Add to this the litigious, regulatory environment in which the profession operates – it all serves to dampen creativity, Redgen says.

In her experience, an excessive focus on adhering to current year budgets can also cause accountants to avoid innovations that may “waste time”.

“By changing the focus from short-term budget pressure to long-term efficiency, we reduce that deterrent to creativity and innovation,” Redgen says.

 

"I think the view of creativity being at odds with accounting is largely gone. With the increased focus on technology innovation and customer focus, creativity has become even more recognised as something we need to embrace.”"

 

In recent years, there has been an increase in competitiveness and a reduction in collegiality between finance and accounting firms. Redgen suggests that creative solutions to common problems go begging as a result.

“In my research, I hear common complaints in small firms, particularly around new technology applications — as if they were the only ones struggling with these problems. When talking to older professionals, they recount how people from other firms would get together at the end of the week for drinks and share knowledge. Today, it is very competitive, and firms are really working against each other,” Redgen says.

Her advice, not surprisingly, is “collaborate, collaborate, collaborate”.

“We can’t be experts in everything. We need to work out how to leverage expertise from others.

Can we find IT experts who are willing to take the time to understand accounting? Can we share ideas with other small firms? Can we identify opportunities to network digitally?”

Redgen says it pays to maximise the sharing of ideas by giving all employees, including junior accountants and receptionists, a forum COASTto contribute ideas and offer opportunities to upskill through short courses such as IT or data science.

Training to encourage creative thinking among accountancy students has become a key component of university courses, Redgen says. The shift of emphasis is in response to professional demands for graduates with competencies alongside technical knowledge, such as design thinking and problem-solving skills.

“I think the view of creativity being at odds with accounting is largely gone. With the increased focus on technology innovation and customer focus, creativity has become even more recognised as something we need to embrace,” she says.

Within professional services firms, keeping employees up to date with technological change is an ongoing but essential task. At EY, all global employees are encouraged to enrol in the EY Tech MBA – a fully accredited, free-of-charge corporate MBA.

It is important to recognise that ideas and innovation depend on human imagination and ingenuity. The shift in recent years to remote working poses new challenges to how creative collaboration will work in the future, Chua says.

“You can’t do innovation really well unless people are together. Nothing ever beats that feeling and level of intensity and collaboration when you are physically together.”

In search of the creative accountants

In 2022, a team of researchers from the University of the Sunshine Coast conducted a survey of professional accountants working in regional Australian accounting firms. It found that accountants’ creativity and how they view the importance of creativity are significantly related to their perceptions of firm culture.

This finding has significant implications for the accounting profession. “Accounting firm managers (particularly those responsible for strategic direction and human resource management) need to facilitate organisational cultures that support the creativity of individuals within their firms,” the researchers write.

“The modern-day accountant is required to be creative, and creativity cannot flourish without the right conditions.”