Accounting Students' Reflections on a Course to Enhance their Interpersonal Skills

Abstract

Communication skills are critical for an accountant's workplace success; however accounting education research to date has mainly focused on the writing and presentation skills aspects of communication skills. Research on developing accounting students' interpersonal skills has received scant attention. This paper provides an example of how to incorporate interpersonal skills into the accounting curriculum. Details are given on how to execute the course to promote effective, positive student outcomes. Examining students' learning journal responses to the initiated course highlights potential problems associated with teaching interpersonal skills to accounting students. This information may assist educators in avoiding common difficulties and in facilitating favourable student learning. The study finds students' experienced initial apprehension and concern when practising their interpersonal skills. However as time elapsed, confidence grew, class dynamics changed, and significant improvements in students communication and attitudes were evident. The importance of laying an appropriate foundation for interpersonal skills development is also discussed.

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“…Students, practising accountants and, especially, the clients they serve would benefit. Furthermore, following Daff (2013) and Butler (2016) it recommends academic accountants to engage in and report on experiments to foster the inculcation of listening skills within accountancy courses.…”

“…The need is the more necessary in that accountancy students are shown to have lower emotional intelligence skills than students in, say, liberal arts programs, see Jones & Abraham (2009) and Cook et al (2011). Furthermore, accountancy students are more 'apprehensive' than others in engaging in oral communication (Daff 2013). Interestingly, a recent study found that graduating accountancy students regarded listening [and reading] skills the least important communication skills related to employability ('negating the views of employers who perceive them to be highly essential for new accountants' (Pia Patricia 2017)).…”

“…This appears not yet to have happened on an appreciable scale. Daff (2013) describes how a program to develop accountancy students' interpersonal skills was implemented. It took advantage of material on interpersonal skills in a leadership program devised by Caleb Leadership Ministries in which she participated; also from the author's study of methods developed over many years for medical students.…”

“…The voices of Daff (2013) and of Butler (2016) appear to echo in an international void. Other than these, Apostolou et al (2013;2015, 2016, 2018 record no treatment of listening skills in their content analysis of six leading accountancy education journals in recent years.…”

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“…Hence, the optimal choice of the learning place represents the most important decision while the optimal choice of the pedagogic instruments is secondary. Thereby, the paper further adds to the literature analyzing how soft skills can be enhanced in the classroom (see, e.g., Nealy, 2005, John, 2009, De Villiers, 2010, Shah, 2013, Daff, 2013, Gil, 2013, Thomas et al, 2014.…”