Post #71
September 6, 2023
Tamara O’Brien
FW writer Tamara finds out how a new AICPA & CIMA/Oxford University’s Saïd Business School course in sustainability-related financial strategy is helping finance professionals meet the latest international standards and improve business performance.
If you’re a finance professional staring down the barrel of new sustainability reporting requirements, our blog this month is for you. Claire talks to Dr Jeremy Osborn, Global Head of Sustainability at AICPA & CIMA. You may remember Jeremy from our ISSB webinar last October – but he’s also behind a new course designed and delivered by leading thinkers and practitioners in sustainability and finance.
Before we get into their conversation, here’s some background. The Online ESG and Sustainable Financial Strategy Course, to give it its full title, is run and certified by Saïd Business School, the business school of Oxford University, in partnership with AICPA & CIMA. (Well, you didn’t think we’d let any old exec training course onto the FW blog, did you?)
It’s a brand new course, developed by titans of the accountancy, academic and ESG worlds. The six-week online course will give CFOs, Financial Controllers, Chief Accountants and other finance leaders the tools, skills and approaches they need to measure, analyse and report on sustainability metrics in relation to their own business performance. And develop them into a clued-up cohort that will be an asset to global accountancy.
Enough preamble – let the practitioners have the floor!
How did the course come about?
Jeremy Osborn [JO]: From my job! AICPA & CIMA is the world’s largest accountancy institute, with 700,000 students, members and engaged professionals across the UK and US, Europe, the Commonwealth and many other countries too. I joined The Association, as we call it, a year ago, in the newly created position of Global Head of Sustainability. My role is to support our members in developing their understanding of sustainability in business.
The ever-growing emphasis on assessing the impact of sustainability issues on a company – and that company’s impact on the environment and society – will profoundly change how we account for and report on performance. It follows that the accountant’s role will also change, whether they’re in a business, advising a business or providing audit and assurance.
As an organisation we have the critical mass to influence how this transformation in our profession, and business more widely, is brought about. That’s how the idea of training in sustainable financial strategy was born.
I was keen that, as the world’s largest and arguably most prestigious accountancy body, we should partner with a genuinely world-class university. Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, founded in 1996, is a young institute with an entrepreneurial outlook and an outstanding academic accountancy team. Together we describe ourselves as ‘the world’s most prestigious accountancy institute, teaming up with the world’s best university.’
Claire Bodanis [CB]: To me this course is incredibly timely. With all the new regulations on the horizon – the European ones, the ISSB standards and so on – businesses will have to ask themselves questions like: We emit X amount of CO2; what does that mean for how we perform as a business? We have to explain the relationship between the ESG metrics and the financial numbers.
It’s a real challenge, not just for the management accountants and finance people, but on the assurance side; auditors have to be able to understand this all too. But a recurring question I’m hearing from people across the reporting fraternity is: who is actually qualified to do all this? There’s a realisation that we can no longer have finance, accountancy, sustainability and business performance in separate boxes. They have to come together, so that finance understands sustainability, and those writing the broader corporate narrative understand the accountancy side better.
So I guess this is where you and your course come in Jeremy – to help your members be conversant with the non-financial side too?
JO: Yes, that’s essentially what the course is about: developing a deeper understanding of how to create, use and assure sustainability-related financial information. That’s our preferred phrase, by the way, as well as the ISSB’s. Bit of a mouthful, but it’s more meaningful than ‘non-financial information’ when it comes to decision-making and asset allocation. ‘Non-financial’ suggests that it’s nothing to do with finance – and the point is that much of this information does relate to finance, and that relationship needs explaining.
What’s happening is that the traditional ‘information value chain’ model of accounting is now being applied to sustainability-related financial information too. It’s a proven pathway in which management accountants create financial information, which passes through to management for internal decision-making, is reconciled with information that’s published externally, then audited and assured for end users like investors, pension funds – and wider society, including government, regulators, customers, supply chain organisations. At the moment this information is also filtered through ESG ratings agencies, but an enterprise’s ratings can be inconsistent between agencies, and a number of governments, including our own, are looking at regulating them.
In June, the IFRS issued S1 and S2, the first two disclosure standards for sustainability-related financial information. And they present challenges at every stage of the value chain. CFOs, finance teams, auditors and assurance providers will need to have answers for questions like, how do you create this information? How do you make sense of it, for better internal decision-making? How do you assure it? If you’re an investor, what do you do with it? That’s the gap in knowledge and experience our course is designed to fill.
Do other organisations offer similar training?
JO: Not really. It’s true that, in the past year, some of the larger accountancy institutes have partnered with non-accounting organisations to help meet this need. And for almost 20 years, the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) has been doing a brilliant job with general business executive training around sustainability.
What’s different about our ESG and Sustainable Financial Strategy course is its pure focus on sustainability-related financial information disclosure, and what that means strategically for the business. Participants not only gain insight into the issues and metrics involved, but come away with a practical roadmap for their organisation and a way of understanding the relationship between sustainability, finance and business strategy.
CB: Can I interject here, because Jeremy won’t say this, but – basically he’s brilliant, and you can be sure the people he works with are too. Which means this is definitely NOT your average executive training course!
Who’s it for?
JO: The course is for mid- to senior-level accounting and finance professionals worldwide. CFOs, FDs, Chief Accountants, Financial Controllers, and anyone in a senior strategic role. Other than that there are no admissions requirements, and you don’t have to be an AICPA & CIMA member (though members do get a discount!) to join the quarterly course.
What can participants expect from the course?
JO: A mix of learning, doing and support. On the learning side, the course’s six modules [see callout below] will be taught online by faculty members who are leading academics and practitioners in sustainability and finance, with substantial practical experience in a range of sectors. Many are directly involved in helping shape the world’s response to the climate emergency and other global challenges. We also have an amazing roster of external guest speakers – business leaders from different industries and geographies.
The aim is to give you subject matter expertise in key sustainability concepts such as climate change and net zero… equity and inclusion… ISSB, TCFD and other relevant standards and regulations… as well as stakeholder management and governance. You’ll learn why and how to consider sustainability in your strategic and financial planning, and in stakeholder communications.
CB: From my many meetings and chats with business leaders over the last few years – this is exactly what they want to understand in depth, to feel confident about integrating these issues into their business models. If I were a participant, I know I’d be really looking forward to these sessions.
JO: That’s the aim! The ‘doing’ aspect is that, with the learning you acquire from the modules, your own reading, a variety of industry case studies and enriched discussion with faculty and peers – you’ll create a Sustainability Transformation Plan (STP) for your organisation. This STP will be tailored to your company’s unique culture, measurement data and impacts, positioning it for long-term growth and profitability.
Friendships and allegiances will arise naturally from the fact that you’ll be pioneers in a difficult but exciting and vital enterprise. We know how important these connections are and foster them in a number of ways, not least through automatic membership of the prestigious Oxford Saïd Elumni Network, upon completion of the course.
CB: Yes that’s so important, and often overlooked. When you’re putting something as new and complicated as sustainability-related finance strategies into practice, there’s massive value in being part of a network of people facing the same challenges, and finding solutions and pathways through them.
And how is it assessed?
JO: There’ll be the usual ongoing assessments for this type of course, and your STP will also be assessed and graded by the faculty. When you’ve successfully completed the course, you’ll be awarded a digital certificate by Oxford and AICPA & CIMA, since completion is really what it’s about. Ultimately, the course is intended to be a catalyst. A way of bringing together and enhancing the skills of people whose decisions have a huge cumulative effect on what happens next in the world.
CB: Can I turn that around and ask how you’ll assess the course – what does success look like from your perspective?
JO: That we’re helping to shift the dial on the knowledge and understanding of accountants worldwide, in terms of the role they can play in creating more sustainable businesses. We’re changing what it means to be an accountant and a leader.
CB: Rolling forward to the beautiful future, then – do you see ‘sustainability finance’ as an integral part of a management accountant’s professional training?
JO: Yes, it will be integrated into the professional qualification, but that’s just a starting point. You can learn theory as a trainee, but until you’ve got experience inside a business, you don’t really know what it’s like. For the moment, then, this course is specifically for experienced accountants and finance professionals, to plug a gap in their knowledge.
CB: Great. And can I just add, it’s excellent value for money! It’s £1,900 for six weeks of high quality, online teaching in your own timezone, including some live sessions (so you get to talk to those leading thinkers); a course created by Oxford University Saïd Business School and AICPA & CIMA; and the opportunity to be part of a cohort of switched-on business leaders. As much as this is on paper a commercial venture, it sounds to me like you’re also doing it for the good of the profession…
JO: Well yes, right on both counts. We’ve deliberately made it good value for money and career-enhancing – because we care about the profession and what accountants can achieve!
The Online ESG and Sustainable Financial Strategy Course
Starts: 27 September 2023; then running quarterly from 2024 in January, April, June and September.
Duration: 6 weeks
Time commitment: About 8-12 hours a week, fitted around your work schedule
Location: Online, delivered by the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School (Ranked UK #1 and World #5 for open executive education)
Taught by faculty drawn from Oxford Saïd Business School, the University of Oxford and industry experts
Six modules:
1: Drivers and Fundamentals of Sustainability
2: Strategic Planning and Long-Term Value Creation
3: Risk Management and Finance
4: Regulation and Reporting
5: Governance and Stakeholder Engagement
6: Transformational Change
Cost: £1,900
Amir Amel-Zadeh, Associate Professor and Academic Director of the course, comments: “The roles of the CFO, corporate finance professionals and accountants are changing in profound ways, with the profession needing to integrate sustainability considerations into corporate strategy and financial decisions. Our course will equip business leaders to do this, and thus respond to the changing demands of customers, regulators, employees, investors and society at large.”