This month, the spotlight swung on to Kyriakos Iordanou, ACCA member and head of the Cypriot accountancy body ICPAC. He’s also a songwriter and amateur guitarist, though has yet to compose a song about being an accountant. ‘It’s something that takes my mind away from the daily routine, tests my brain and builds up my emotional intelligence skills,’ he says. But he has no regrets about choosing numbers over notes: ‘I pursued a professional qualification which opened my horizons. This is what a qualification in accountancy does.’
We also focus on CFOs who are now facing financing worries both in Europe and America. Vulnerable banks could pull back on lending as they seek to bolster their balance sheets amid the banking crisis. In a similar vein, Peter Hughes (chair of the Risk Accounting Standards Board and a member of ACCA’s Global Forum for Governance, Risk and Performance) looks at the fear of contagion and systemic risk that swept the global markets during the banking crisis. He calls for accounting standards for accepted non-financial risks to be established, saying that accounting professionals are crucial to restoring confidence.
Growth in the top international accountancy networks and associations hit 11% in 2022. We analyse where the growth is coming from and which groups were the best performers.
And finally, does boasting help? According to Dr Rob Yeung, self-promotion may boost your chances of getting ahead, but the benefits could be short-lived. As he warns, when colleagues work with self-promoters over months or even years, they can form much more accurate judgments about their actual skills and capabilities. So tone it down a bit, unless your boss is a narcissistic leader, in which case, go for it.
