Why Aren’t Accountants Happy Being Accountants? asks a recent article in the UK’s PQ Magazine.

True, we’ve covered aspects of this issue several times already, but then, it’s eternally intriguing. Here’s what the article has to say:

• Just over a third (36%) of accountants are considering leaving the profession in the next five years, including 30% of under 25s, new data from cloud platform Dext has revealed.
• This is particularly concerning as the number of students choosing an accountancy career appears to be falling, they say.
• Dext surveyed accountants and bookkeepers across the UK to determine their attitudes towards the profession, and what they needed to be happier in their roles. When looking at reasons why respondents are planning to leave the profession, the majority are planning to move to another industry or undertake a complete career change (21%).
• Surprisingly, when looking at the specific demographics of those wanting to leave the profession, 24% of respondents aged 25-44 are leaving due to a lack of a healthy work/life balance. Some 22% of those with children are looking to leave for the same reason. For the over 55s, while the majority (67%) are leaving due to retirement, a third (33%) are planning to leave the accounting sector to join a new industry.
• Although the majority of respondents enjoy their role (90%), some 56% feel they spend too much time completing manual tasks. With 26-50% of tasks currently automated, respondents believe that this will increase to up to 75% in 10 years. When asked said: “Accountants are vital for supporting entrepreneurs and businesses of all sizes, yet many are leaving because of work/life balance issues. Unfortunately, too much of an accountant’s role is still completed manually, meaning that they cannot optimise their time as much as they need to.
• “Although it is positive that automation is likely to increase in the next 10 years, that will be too late for many accountants who are planning to leave the industry long before then. It’s also concerning that many leaving for work/life balance reasons are parents, as a lack of optimised tasks is pushing this demographic from the accounting profession. It simply doesn’t need to be this way.”

This seems to support the view expressed here before, that higher compensation alone can’t solve the profession’s recruitment challenges. I opined that maybe the term “accountant” is outdated and needs to be replaced by something broader, but there’s also an opposing argument, that accountancy fails to sufficiently nurture its core competency. For every accountant who pays some active attention to (say) IASB releases and updates, there are probably ten who just absorb what they need to, when they need to. And of that relatively geeky first group, even fewer try to keep tabs on developments in theory or academic research. Do these disconnects contribute to a kind of existential solitude whereby accountants feel motivationally marooned?

In the same way that even the greatest actors warm up with simple vocal exercises, or that business owners might spend some of their time literally or figuratively getting their hands dirty to keep in touch, there might be something rejuvenating for accountants in sometimes returning to debit and credit basics. One way of doing this might be to pay a visit to the strangely delightful Accounting Café website, an online “community to enable students and teachers to learn from each other,” based on the premise that “teaching and learning accounting can be an engaging and enjoyable experience.” While it should be clear from the goofier entries on this blog that I have no problem subscribing to this notion, for some it might seem at best debatable. But one’s resistance may crumble on seeing that one of the most recently posted articles as I write this is titled “Teaching introductory management accounting principles using LEGO® bricks.” While the site pays due attention to current issues such as the impact of artificial intelligence, it also makes time to circle back to the origins of accounting; articles are as likely to cite Greek myths as to reference Andreas Barckow. And it’s much more nicely designed than the blog you’re reading now (well, of course it is…)

It seems more and more to me that accounting is afflicted by a spiritual heaviness (the ongoing Canadian accounting wars seem to me a manifestation of this, like the fracturing of an imperiled empire that effortlessly held together in happier times). Maybe that’s a largely inevitable reaction to our accumulating challenges (I wonder how satisfying it will really be to specialize in sustainability reporting, as heatwaves and droughts and displacements overwhelm whatever signs of progress might be found within individual enterprises). But we have to push back; the profession has to become lighter, more expansive, more joyous even. More like playing with LEGO!

The opinions expressed are solely those of the author.