How to communicate complex financial information

Students undertaking the postgraduate course in business communication for accounting professionals at Melbourne’s Monash University are asked to complete a rather unusual exercise.

The assignment is straightforward – describe what it means to be a professional. However, instead of writing an essay or delivering an oral presentation, the accountants have to express their take on professionalism through the medium of photography.

If this seems difficult, it is supposed to be. associate professor at Monash Business School, says the idea is for the students to “think in a visual way, which many of them haven’t done before”.

It helps them to think more broadly and, in doing so, they are understanding a different language, and they get to learn more about how they can communicate visually,” says McGuigan.

The course is a new addition to the curriculum, first offered in 2020, as part of the masters in professional accounting degree, reflecting the rapid changes in the accounting profession and the need for accountants to develop their “soft” communication skills.

“I think communication is often what is missing with accountants,” says McGuigan. “We often get so excited about the numbers, we forget that there are many people – our clients included – who are fearful of numbers.”

McGuigan and his colleagues encourage accountants to develop a “reflective practice”, where questioning the numbers, and the story behind them, becomes more important.

Many of the 300-odd students who undertake the course each semester struggle with it, McGuigan says, because some of the concepts are so foreign to them, but they also enjoy it, because their minds are “opened up to a new way of seeing and doing”.

“We try to transform them into being better communicators,” says McGuigan. “But some of them are uncomfortable with those different experiences. They don’t want to go outside their comfort zone, don’t want to draw concepts or take pictures – but many find that it really does shift them into a new way of being and action.”

Creative communication

Few accountants know the need for creativity better than Sarah Lawrance FCPA, a Sydney-based public practitioner and founder of Hot Toast, an accounting practice that specialises in working with clients in the creative industries, particularly film production.

Lawrance might also be the only accountant in Australia who describes herself as “chief dreamer” on her email signature.

When she founded the firm five years ago, Lawrance says her business model was to replicate many of the functions of the accounting department of a small to medium-sized creative production company, and to make that available on an outsourced basis.

Comprehension is key

Elizabeth Stratford FCPA works in a very different role to Lawrance, but shares many ideas about communication.

Stratford works in the public sector, as chief financial officer at the New South Wales Department of Communities and Justice, where she says the key to communicating financial concepts is to present them in the context of service delivery and outcomes.

“When we are talking about budget decisions, we try and link that back to what the mandate is and the outcomes we have been charged to deliver,” says Stratford.

“What I ask my team to do all the time is look at something and then think about it from the perspective of someone who has no idea about what all those terms and acronyms stand for.”

Stratford says that a major conduit for better communication is the way her finance team is structured, with business partnering teams embedded directly with frontline service delivery units.

These team members, she says, become “interpreters” and her “eyes and ears” in a two-way discussion, which is both about finance and operational issues.

Stratford acknowledges that she works in an area full of jargon, both financial and public sector, and makes a conscious effort to recalibrate her communication depending on the person or the audience she is speaking with.

Unlike Lawrance, Stratford sees a difference between her spoken and written language, particularly when it comes to reporting.

Source: intheblack