IFAC accountancy education summit, The Anticipatory Accountant: Global Trends Transforming Learning and Development, was a great success—reaching over 1,600 accountancy professionals in business, government, and academia. The Summit’s message, guided by world-renowned futurist Daniel Burrus and expanded upon by Business Learning Institute CEO Tom Hood, was one of shifting the future view of the accountancy profession from reacting to reflecting on key trends and anticipating how best to position the industry for future success.

The summit explored important key trends in TECHNOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, and SOCIETY, in addition to providing a platform for stimulating anticipatory thinking and re-imagining the nature of the profession and learning and development. While we can’t see exactly what the future of the accountancy profession may hold, the summit helped IFAC and professionals around the world identify key global trends, understand their influence on the next decade, and enhance their ability to transition ahead of time.

Using these key insights, the accountancy profession can move away from the constant and exhausting cycle of reacting to anticipating the future and gently evolving to ensure the longer-term relevance and value of our industry, planet and people. 

The Anticipatory Accountant summit is not an end in and of itself. Rather, it is a starting point for multiple working groups that will examine the key themes, discussions and outcomes of the summit to shape forthcoming learning and development thinking, guidance and resources for our profession.

A recording of the entire summit is available on IFAC’s YouTube channel.

Don’t have time to watch the full-length version of the event? Watch the event in easy to access  ~5-minute video shorts!

To continue exploring global technology trend, please to explore the Burrus Tech Trends Report. 

The Business Learning Institute seeks the best content, courses, and community to help accountancy professionals become and remain future ready. The BLI Anticipatory Leader Accounting and Finance Membership offers all of these components. To build on your experience this week and continue on your journey of anticipatory thinking, please visit the BLI website.

Gabriella Kusz MBA, MPP, CPA, CGMA

Gabriella Kusz was a principal, Strategic Initiatives, at IFAC where she supported accountancy’s leadership and innovation in the digital era.

Prior to joining IFAC, Gabriella worked with the World Bank Group Governance Global Practice where she was responsible for leading the Corporate Governance and Financial Reporting workstream for the Middle East and North Africa region.

Gabriella is a licensed US CPA (Virginia) and CGMA and holds AICPA Certificates in IFRS as well as the Global Reporting Initiative Certificate in Sustainability Reporting Standards. She holds a master’s in International policy and development from Georgetown University and an MBA and bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of Dayton.