Skills and Qualities of a Chartered Accountant

Today We are going to reveal a few skills and Qualities of a Chartered Accountant which you must start developing form today! It’s better to take multiple attempts to qualify the CA Final Exam rather than once you become CA and someone said that you don’t deserve to be a Chartered Accountant.

Chartered Accountants are the most reputed professionals in our society. But in order to become successful, only degree is not important. You required some serious CA skills, some ethics to maintain your position. The industry has thousands of working CA professionals. The average salary of a CA is Rs 6-7 lakhs but on the other hand, CA professionals who are managing their own firm are charging fees for a single minute and lakhs for a single audit.

Also Read – How to Become CA

Qualities of a Chartered Accountant

Confidentiality 

Chartered Accountancy is the profession where the client has to disclose all his data and financial statements to the auditor. It contains various confidential information which requires not to be disclosed until and unless the law requires and this provision is also mentioned in the guidelines issued by the ICAI for its members.

A CA has to deal with a great level of confidential information such as mergers, demergers, amalgamation, dissolution, conversion etc of listed companies. And you can imagine if such information gets disclosed before the time then how much loss a company has to suffer. It may not only affect the company financially but also affect its reputation in the market.

Hence, at every point when CA is dealing with the Financial Statements of the Company, he has to make sure that information is not used for any personal advantage or otherwise. Being confidential about the details is the first and foremost required quality of a chartered accountant. All the information collected during the course of his work should not get disclosed until client himself permission to do so.

Integrity 

Integrity refers to the honesty and accuracy. A CA has to be honest and should be straightforward while performing his duties. He is responsible to aware the management if anything comes into his notice which is false or misleading.

CA has to fulfill his duties according to the values, ethics and principals they are responsible to maintain. If a Chartered Accountant came to know that organization is indulging into some activities which may result into huge tax liabilities later then he should immediately bring it into the notice of management and save the assessee from the further assessment procedure.

Objectivity

Objectivity refers to the quality of services that delineates its value, one of the skill must possess in a Chartered Accountant. It urges an obligation to be unbiased, completely honest as well as free of a conflict of interest.

A Chartered Accountancy is one of the most respected position in the society similar to a doctor. When a person believes that a Doctor would not play with the health of his patient, similar belief has been seen over a Chartered Accountant, that he would not play with his F.S. to gain an advantage.

Maintain Ethics 

In the current scenario, where the cases like Chartered Accountants arrested during demonetization caught helping the frauds in exchanging their currency and later PNB scam like cases, some CA’s has seemed to forget their Ethics which they claim to hold. Some such cases raise finger over the Chartered Accountants Ethics and values.

Hence, this is the first and foremost priority of CA’s to uphold their strong Ethical Standards. If any work a CA being offered against his values and Ethics, he should not accept it. He should apply his professional skepticism while accepting the work, this is a quality of a chartered accountant which very few have!

Strong Communication Skills 

Well, this is the point where major Chartered Accountants get back from the MBA’s or other similar professionals. Instead of being highly knowledgeable, an expert in multiple domains they found incapable of proving themselves.

A CA should know how to communicate with the client’s or how to represent in an interview or Board Meetings or Annual General Meetings. He must possess how to influence a client by presenting technical information or other financial data that a layman could understand such a thing.

Today, ICAI is conducting multiple training in order to improve the communication and analytical skills of a Chartered Accountant such as General Management and Communication Skills which is mandatory to certify as a Chartered Accountant.

Keep Amended 

Everyone knows that becoming a Chartered Accountant is the toughest task. But no, this is just a step towards the toughest job. A Chartered Accountant requires to keep himself updated with the new and amended laws as well as keep an eye over new case laws.

The CA is known to be an expert in multiple domains, to say, accounting, auditing, corporate laws, taxation, finance etc which means updating himself with the Income Tax Act is not enough. He is expected to know about IFRS, new standards of auditing, new provisions came into the Company Laws 2013 and also know about the trending and profitable investments or the fluctuations in the share market.

Self Promotion

If you are pursuing CA, you must know that CA can’t advertise his business, his services. The only way to attract client is increasing Goodwill of your business or services. If he provides quality services, the client will automatically get influenced and refer his services to other.

Besides providing quality services, a professional Chartered Accountant can highlight himself in some standard conferences, meetings, discussion etc. For say, it is compulsory for a company to invite Chartered Accountant in the AGM, this can be an opportunity to introduce to the people and promote yourself without letting them understand. But you should always know your limit, promotion out of the limits can let your CA degree in danger.

Expert Knowledge of Excel 

A CA has to play with numbers and Excel is the only thing which makes our work easy. You could not purchase software for every kind of calculation or it may not be cost effective. But a brilliant knowledge of excel can save your cost and many hours. For example, it will be very time consuming to calculate the tax of 100 or above parties considering the slab rate by the calculator, but excel can do such thing within seconds with just one formula.

You might have seen that ICAI has also made it compulsory to give the knowledge of excel in its training like ITT or Advance ITT because learning Excel is the need of the hour.

Good Analytical Skills 

A CA must possess an ability to analyze the numbers and draft decisions based on such numbers. While pursuing Articleship, students seem to develop this ability by working on practical examples.

In general terms, good analytical skills can be taken as an ability to solve complicated problems using an intelligent approach.

Develop a Habit of Listening 

We all have met at least once with such professionals which keeps on advising without listening properly our problem whether he is a lawyer or a CA. They use to interrupt in between the client end up with a conclusion.

It is the duty of a Chartered Accountant to listen properly to the actual problem of his client and take its deep analysis first. Thereafter, advice him.

Tech Savvy 

With the passage of time, the person who keeps himself in touch with the latest technology gets more demand and this thing does not apply to the Chartered Accountancy profession only. Every profession demands you adopt the modern technologies as it helps in giving an accurate and fast work.

Today no one has a time, to wait for you to prepare his return with the pen and paper, there are many taxation software like Computex, Genius which let you prepare return within minutes. You simply require to fill your income in the specified columns given there and software will automatically display the computation by considering all income, deduction and also shows your tax, interest, penalty as well.

Possess the Knowledge of Local Language

Many times, professionals are seen speaking in English with their clients even when the client is not comfortable with such language.  Although, in practical life, people wish to share their issues with a professional who communicates with them in their language.

Speaking in the local language gives them a friendly feel where they can share their problems without any hesitation. This simple thing encourages them to refer the same person in future.

Conclusion –  These are some of the skills which in our opinion a Chartered Accountant must possess while performing his duties. The more the value they offer to the client or their organization, the more they will be remunerated and also lead a successful life. So, make sure that the above-given skills are the fundamentals of an effective Chartered Accountant. Do not neglect them.

You Must Also Read: Career Options for a Chartered Accountant