Introduction

 

Accounting is a profession that has been marketed as being one of the securest of the careers. They are made to believe that accountants are always in demand, the field is stable, and once you start the career, then you have one to stay forever. Parents recommend it. Colleges advertise it. An entire business is based on coaching institutes.

However, many in the profession that engage in accounting jobs are in silent situations after years of service. They believe that their jobs have turned into monotony. Growth slows down. Pay increment becomes disillusioning. Job satisfaction declines. Lots of them begin to wonder whether they went on the right career path.

 

The Promising Times of Accounting Careers.

 

At first, accounting appears to be an appealing career because of a number of reasons.

It is regarded as an adult and respectable discipline. The clear qualifications include BCom, MCom, CA, CMA, ACCA, CPA. Career path is defined in paper. Articleship, junior accountant, senior accountant, manager, controller and CFO. Everything seems to be organized.

Even entry-level positions tend to be quite easy to get compared to specialties such as investment banking or strategy consulting. Accountants are required in every firm. Compliance is necessary with every business. This brings about security.

The work is also meaningful in the case of freshers. You are getting to know the preparation of financial statements. You are getting to know about taxation. You are involved in audits. It is as though you were establishing a good framework.

However, in the next couple of years the picture starts to look a bit different.

 

 

Most Accounting jobs are repetitive in nature.

 

The monotony in the work is one of the greatest causes of accounting becoming a dead end.

In the majority of companies, particularly in conventional firms and mid-sized organizations the accounting positions are characterized by the following tasks:

·         Posting journal entries

·         Bank reconciliation

·         Vendor payments

·         Invoice processing

·         GST filing

·         TDS returns

·         Audit support

·         Preparing monthly reports

These are the activities, which are significant, but hardly alter. It is month after month, quarter after quarter and year after year that the cycle continues.

In 2 -3 years, these tasks are almost automatic when performed by the majority of professionals. Intellectual challenge is very minimal. The learning becomes extremely slow. The growth turns into an incremental and not transformational one.

Unless you improve your day to day work, your career ceases to improve.

 

 

Skill Ceiling Is Achieved Before Time.

 

The other significant issue in accounting professions is that there is early skill ceiling.

The learning curve, in such directions as product management, consulting, data analytics, or entrepreneurship, takes many years. One has a new field, a new issue, a new outlook to acquire.

The basic or core skills in traditional working of the accountant position reach the plateau very soon. When you have acquired compliance, reporting as well as the general financial processes, there is not much new you learn until you make that effort to advance in more dimensions such as:

·         Financial planning and analysis (FP&A).

·         Business finance

·         Corporate strategy

·         Mergers and acquisitions

·         Financial modeling

·         Valuation

These areas are not exposed to most accounting jobs. The individuals have been stagnating in operational finance as opposed to strategic finance.

Consequently, a couple of years later, your resume ceases to appear thrilling to the recruiters.

 

 

Promotions slow down on a long-term basis.

 

The accounting promotions are quite fast in the initial years. Junior accountant- accountant. Senior accountant to accountant. But thereafter, the ladder is congested.

Senior accountants are numerous in a way whereas the number of finance managers is very small. Finance managers are in plenty but there is only one finance controller. It has a large number of controllers but only a CFO.

The pyramidal structure is very steep.

This brings about stiff competition to the upper levels. There is a politicization of promotions instead of merit promotions. Experience begins to count more than competence. Human beings cannot ascend to power without waiting to get someone who is located above them to resign or retire before they can ascend to power.

As a result of this slow growth there is frustration, stagnation and disengagement.

 

Salary Increases do not work out as anticipated.

Accounting is being marketed as a secure and handsome profession. But the truth is more complex.

The highest-paid and highest-ranking professionals such as Big 4 partners, CFOs, and senior heads of the finance department make astronomical salaries, but the average accounting professional has a small increase in salary.

Most accountants who have 8 to 10 years of experience continue to receive wages that are not satisfying relative to others who graduated to positions such as:

·         Product management

·         Management consulting

·         Investment banking

·         Growth marketing

·         Business analytics

·         Startup roles

The difference is brought out even more clearly as time progresses. At the age of 22, income of 4 to 6 LPA is okay. After ten years of being in the job market, and earning Rs 8 or 10 LPA at 30 years old, you are beginning to feel not very good, and you notice others are doing better.

The sense of stalemate can be supported by this financial stagnation.

 

Too much Compliance, too little Business Impact.

The traditional accounting is very compliance oriented. Filing returns on time. Adhering to the accounting standards. Closing books accurately. Ensuring audit readiness.

All of this is necessary. However, it is not itself what drives the growth of business.

Contemporary organizations are more appreciating professionals who are able to respond to questions such as:

·         What can be done in order to enhance profitability?

·         What is the product line that we should invest in?

·         How will changes in pricing affect it?

·         So what would we do to optimize working capital?

·         Where are we losing money?

These are strategic questions. They need business knowledge, skills in analytical thinking and decision making.

Majority of the accounting jobs fail to train accountants to think in such a manner. They instill in them the ability to remember the past, rather than to create the future. This restricts the relevance in the long term.

 

Accounting work that is routine is gradually and gradually being replaced by automation.

Another reason that makes conventional accounting jobs risky is technology.

With the rise of:

·         Zoho Books, Tally, QuickBooks accounting software.

·         SAP, Oracle, and different ERP.

·         Artificial intelligence reconciliation tools.

·         Web-based tax filing systems.

·         Invoice processing by use of OCR.

There is massive automation of a big part of the routine accounting work.

Fewer people are required in the companies to do their data entry and reconciliation. They require additional individuals who are able to analyze data, interpret numbers and give insights.

Those professionals whose roles are difficult to automate are those who stayed in the rut of low-level accounting. They are turned into cost centers and not value creators.

 

Most Professionals remain too long in Comfort Zones.

A painful fact that one cannot deny is that the profession is not the only cause of career stagnation. It is also caused by mindset.

Most accounting practitioners remain in the same occupation too long because:

·         The job feels safe

·         The workload is predictable

·         The fear of changing the domains is present.

·         One lacks confidence in new skills.

·         It is a socially pressurized field to remain in the selected field.

On the one hand, comfort zones are safe in the short term but unsafe in the long term.

Having worked 6-8 years doing the same work it becomes more difficult to switch. Recruiters begin to brand you an accountant pure and not a versatile finance professional.

Before individuals actually become aware that they are locked in, it becomes too expensive to change.

 

The Disconnect between Academic Accounting and Business Real Finance.

The other factor which makes accounting careers stick at the ground is a lack of alignment between theory and practical application.

The accounting in colleges is taught in the form of rules, formats, and standards. Students get to know how to pass journal entries. They get to know how to prepare balance sheets. They are taught abstracted theories.

However, the real business finance is about:

·         Knowledge on customer behavior.

·         The interpretation of financial trends.

·         Evaluating business models

·         Assessing risk

·         Decision making in conditions of uncertainty.

These aspects are not often given a proper emphasis in traditional accounting education. So experts come to the labor market as technically prepared, yet, tactically weak.

Their skill set can only transform further based on textbooks meaning limited growth.

 

Little Cross-Functional work Experience.

The high-growth careers are most commonly constructed in the convergence of various functions.

Product managers are knowledgeable in business, technology, and behavior. Consultants know about finance, strategy, operations and communication. Leaders of startups know how to market, sell, finance and execute.

The majority of the accountancy jobs are compartmentalized. You work under the finance department. Interact mostly with auditors, tax consultants and internal finance groups. You do not get to work closely with the product, sales, marketing or the leadership teams very often.

This is not being exposed to cross-functional and makes you less knowledgeable on how businesses work in real-life situations. It also minimizes your likelihoods of becoming leaders.

 

The Delusion of Having Fancy Those Who do not actually have power.

Accounting positions are normally accompanied by the grand names such as Senior Accountant, Assistant Manager Finance, Deputy Manager Accounts, Finance Lead.

Titles, however, do not necessarily portray the actual influence.

The accounting teams are regarded as support units and not a strategic partner in most organizations. It is their duty not to ask why things are done, but to report numbers. They are not supposed to grow the business; they are supposed to enforce obedience.

This gives a psychological trap. Paperwise, your position appears senior. Actually, you do not make much of a difference. Eventually, the consequential effect of this disengagement is dissatisfaction.

 

The way Accounting can still prove to be a powerful career when evaluated well.

Notwithstanding all these difficulties in the accounting process, it is not to be considered a dead end. The issue remains to be not accounting. The issue is the need to languish in operational jobs too long.

You can make a strong base out of accounting, provided that you intentionally add a layer to it.

The professionals who move to the fields of pure accounting to:

·         Finance planning and analysis.

·         Corporate finance

·         Business strategy

·         Investment analysis

·         Startup finance

·         Entrepreneurship

Tend to have very fruitful career.

The distinction will be on attitude and skill acquisition.

 

Becoming a Business Pro instead of an Accountant.

The most important change is the one related to going beyond being a record keeper to being a thinker in business.

Instead of asking only:

·         Is this entry correct?

·         Is this compliant?

Start asking:

·         So what does this figure tell about the business?

·         Why are costs increasing?

·         Why is revenue slowing?

·         Which is a more profitable segment?

·         So what is the decision that the management ought to make on this data?

This change changes your position as a back-office service person to a strategic player.

 

The need to acquire modern finance of the day.

Accounting professionals have to invest in something extra-ordinary- learning other than accounting in order to avoid their stagnation.

The dramatically enhancing career potential skills can be:

·         Financial modeling

·         Higher order analysis using Excel.

·         Power BI or Tableau

·         Business valuation

·         FP&A concepts

·         Budgeting and forecasting

·         Strategic thinking

Stories and communication using data.

These skills provide instruction on more important positions that are more difficult to automate and more appreciated at the top.

 

The Role of Career Ownership

After all, there are no dead ends on careers. When professionals cease to actively form it, it turns in a dead end.

Firms will be glad to retain you in the same position over years assuming that you were performing. You must find a way to grow, request additional tasks, and dedicate yourself to learning.

Individuals who establish good careers in the field of finance tend to do three things on a regular basis:

They do not want comfortable jobs, but rather challenging.

They keep on updating their competencies.

They do not just think about their job in the present but long term.

It is only when accounting becomes passive that the accounting becomes dangerous.

 

Concluaion: Accounting Is Not the Problem, Stagnation Is.

Accounting careers do not usually work as dead ends in their careers since the field is not useless, but because many practitioners neglect continuing their careers after joining it. It is not the profession, but the real problem. The actual question is the extent that the majority of people use it and how they remain and stay confined within small, repeating roles without increasing their thinking and abilities of doing things.

A solid base is a good foundation of accounting. It inculcates discipline, details, financial logic and arrangement. These are good attributes within a business setting. However, once accounting is nothing more than compliance, information entry, and reporting, the power of the accounting is lost. It is meaningless instead of mechanical. It turns into recital of the past instead of defining the future.

The struggling professionals are not necessarily the ones who are not so smart or able. All they are caught in are systems that encourage routine and not innovation and risk instead of risk taking. In the long run, this brings about frustration. They experience inequality in terms of underpayment, underutilization, and underappreciation. They see their colleagues in other fields advance into enjoyable positions, better pay, and better career paths, whilst they sit stagnantly performing monthly end of balance sheets and audit workbooks.

However, it can be quite a contrary to people who own their professions.

Leadership, strategy, entrepreneurship and high-impact finance can be opened to accounting. Nonetheless, it will need a deliberate change. A change of being on the side of doing to thinking. A change in obedience to learning. The change in comfort to continuous learning.

The professionals, who regard accounting as a foundation, and then purposefully construct higher-level skills such as financial analysis, business insight, communication, and strategic thinking, may frequently come out of the rut. They go into positions where their views count, their input in decision production and their work has direct effect on business. These are the ones that take the shape of finance partners and not the back-office.

The sad reality is there is no profession that can be deemed enjoyable. In every discipline one can reach a dead end when passive. And any discipline can be strong once it is done deliberately. Accounting is no exception.

Assuming that you are already in an accounting position, you do not have to ask, is there a future of accounting. The actual question is, are you creating a future outside according to what is in your job description? Do you know skills that are making you become less replaceable? Do you devise insights that render you worthy in decision-making halls? Do you prepare to go beyond compliance and reporting.

Accounting is not supposed to be a cage but a shot up to the sky.

It is the individuals who achieve this early, do early and invest early in their development that avoid stagnation. They do not change their careers by quitting accounting, but by taking it to an even greater level.

Finally, jobs should not be considered dead ends, due to job titles. They end-up being dead ends due to decisions. And the good news about that is that decisions are never permanent.