The death of compliance-based teaching: a new dawn for accounting educators

When I began teaching accounting, I equated excellence with coverage and exam success, designing courses around checklists, marking grids and exam technique drills. This approach rewarded accuracy rather than insight and encouraged students to ask “Is it examinable?” instead of exercising judgment. It suited large classes facing accreditation and other pressures, but it muted diverse voices and left graduates less confident when dealing with ambiguity, trade-offs and communication. I still value rigour, not rigidity. As the profession evolves with technology, integrated thinking and sustainability reporting, graduates need to work alongside analytics, automation and AI, while humans test assumptions, evaluate evidence and justify decisions. The focus is shifting from content delivery to developing competence: decision-making, digital fluency, relationship building and business acumen, as outlined in SAICA’s CA of the Future Competency Framework. Change is challenging. Legacy content, sunk costs, accreditation concerns and professional identity often hinder innovation. Yet AI is transforming routine tasks from execution to evaluation. We should redesign curricula and assessments to emphasise problem framing, evidence gathering, controls, scepticism towards AI outputs and narrative communication through multiple iterations that connect innovations to core outcomes. Embracing discomfort signals purposeful teaching. By addressing biases, pruning content and aligning time and assessments with human skills, we can develop accountants capable of challenging, controlling and communicating effectively, gaining trust and future-proofing the profession.