The accounting profession will face significant changes in the next three decades, and professional
organisations, their members, and educational institutions should get prepared to respond accordingly.
The three changes-evolving smart and digital technology, continued globalisation of reporting/disclosure
standards, and new forms of regulation-are also major challenges for the profession. A research by
Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) research titled Drivers of Change and Future
Skills has explored some important changes which are expected to be encountered by the year 2025.
Three of the possible changes are highlighted here:
First, accountants will use increasingly sophisticated and smart technologies to enhance their traditional
ways of working, and these technologies might even replace the traditional approach (see The End of the
Accounting Profession as We Know It). Smart software systems (including cloud computing) will support
the trend toward outsourcing services (including more overseas outsourcing), and greater use of social
media via smart technology will improve collaboration, disclosure, engagement with stakeholders and
broader communities (see ACCA research). Social media (including Facebook, Twitter, and Google
search) will reveal more data (including alternative reporting (see BHP Billiton Annual Report 2012) than
any corporate assurance report and stakeholders will use tools to interpret “Big Data” (see ACCA’s Big
Data: It’s Power and Perils).
Second, continued globalisation will create more opportunities and challenges for members of the
accounting profession. While globalisation encourages the free flow of money from one capital market to
another, enhanced overseas outsourcing activities and the transfer of technical and professional skills will
simultaneously continue to pose threats to resolving local problems (with different cultural, financial, and
tax systems). Accounting firms in the US, EU, and Australia are outsourcing services to India and China
for the purpose of cost minimisation, which will create a shift in employment within the accounting
