Paul Barnhurst and a finance professional argue that CMA, CPA, and CA certifications were built for slower business cycles that valued perfect accuracy. Today's decisions happen in days, not weeks, so finance teams must choose between flawless analysis and timely answers. The real blockers: curricula still demanding perfection and long-tenured staff stuck in legacy processes.
We as finance professionals, whatever we have learned in our curriculums back in the college, back in the university, or in the professional certifications, CMA, CPA, or CA, we have been trained for a world that has changed drastically. So whatever we have learned was built for, I would say, the early 2000s, and that was rewarding people for being 100% accurate. So what I would say is there needs to be some trade-off between you being accurate and you delivering your analysis. or your report on time, which can influence the decision. So the pace of business today has changed so much that the decision that could wait earlier for 3 weeks can't wait today for 3 days. So that is the exact gap that we are trying to address. Got it. Kind of that whole gap of the decision taking too long.
And so is the primary reason for that then, do you think it's the way we're trained? Do you think it's the way accountants are trained? Because you have accountants in FP&A, but you have people that come from finance or different backgrounds. So there must be something more than just training, but training I think is one you mentioned, but what are the root causes?
Training is one. The other could be that finance is mainly operated by people who have been in that environment for so long.
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