The Nature and Significance of Listening Skills in Accounting Practice - Example

Article Critique Student’s Name: Course Code: Date of Submission: Introduction Critical review of research articles presents an opportunity to enhance future outcomes. In this regard, it allows a third party to review and highlight the strengths of the study and equally poke holes on the study with the ultimate aim geared towards producing a refined document. As such, the premise of this paper is to conduct a critique of the study by Stone & Lightbody (2012) titled “The Nature and Significance of Listening Skills in Accounting Practice”. In this regard, the critique assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the study premised along methodology, findings and implication for accounting educators. The study According to Stone & Lightbody (2012), most studies in accounting focusing on communication skills tend to focus on speaking yet listening constitute a critical aspect in informing what one should speak as it is an integral aspect in internalisation of concepts. As such, their study seeks to establish the nature and significance of listening skills in accounting practice. By interviewing small business owner-manager using a qualitative approach of semi-structured interviews, the study established that verbal communication is the most preferred option by small business owner-manager and that listening is a core aspect of the communication practices. Therefore, the study recommends to accounting educators to address listening skills in accounting curricula more explicitly. Critique In critiquing the study by Stone & Lightbody (2012), the cornerstone of the assessment is limited to the strengths and weakness the study depicts. In analysing the study along these two perspectives, the core areas to be analysed and thus constituting the framework/ parameters for analysis are methodology issues, findings and implication for accounting educators. Strengths One of the strengths of this study is the findings that “communicating verbally, and listening in particular, is a significant aspect of the communication practices that the interviewed accountants adopt with their small business manager clients” and the implications for accounting educators (Stone & Lightbody, 2012, p.376). The study affirms the argument that it is not only technical skill that is requisite for success in a given profession, but also the soft skills. This is corroborated by realisations that most business organisation/ employers lament about lack of soft skills among graduates (Schulz, 2008, p.146). The cause for soft skill in an organisation is strengthened by Gillard (2009, p.725) who opines that most project mangers admits that soft skills top the list of competencies that one should poses as it is critical in managing people as opposed to five years back when technical skills dominated the scene. For instance, Gillard (2009, p.723) observes that in organisations, a leader – accountant is assigned subordinates that constitute team members that are under one authority and secondly, the subject matter that calls for the application of technical skills. As such, for accountant to be successful in attaining the desired objective, the person has to possess soft skills such as listening to allow him to navigate organisational behaviour. De Bancino & Zevalkink (2007, p.21) notes that a survey of 250 technical leaders observed that the justification for the failure of most projects is as result of lack of soft skills. The lack of soft skills has equally impeded the ascent of budding professions such as accounts to top leadership. The implication for accounting educators is also corroborated by other literatures. Bancino & Zevalkink (2007, p.22), notes that active listening is a core soft skills for most accountants. However, the concern relates to buy-in by students whose orientation is towards technical subjects. As such they call for presentation of soft skills topic in linear and tangible manner and after the concept is well understood, the teaching approach can be reverted to non-linear platform through role playing. Equally, Schulz (2008, p.153) calls upon educators to raise awareness among accounting students as a sure path of inculcating soft skills such as listening into accounting students through the incorporation of soft skills units into a programme’ s curriculum. The second strength of the study in regard to the integral role of listening in accounting is how it links with the concept of ‘sense making’ in accounting. According to Tillmann & Goddard (2008, p.81), the ultimate function of accountants is ‘sense making’ through structuring, harmonising, bridging, contextualising, compromising and balancing in the context of prevailing internal, external environment and within the framework of existing information and professional knowledge. Such functions is critical in empowering accountants to fill knowledge gaps in places of employment by applying accounting knowledge through synthesising of complexities to a logical conclusion by reducing information, insights and ideas into useful construct (Toit, 2003, p.27; Dervin, 1998, p.36). Sense making empowers accountants to increase their level of comprehension capability for strategic concerns so as to create an organisation that is transparent beyond reproach (Tillmann and Goddard, 2008, p.87). But then the question that lingers on one’s mind is how an accountant can engage in ‘sense making’ without thorough listening skills? The essence of the argument is that an active listening skill is skill in empowering an accountant to grasp and comprehend issues from various stakeholders. For instance, Bancino & Zevalkink (2007, p.22) established that employees who are able to effectively listen are able to grasp issues effectively, which subsequently translated to a well informed argument while one is speaking. In a nutshell, one cannot be a good speaker/ orator if he does not have active listening skills as one is only able to output what has been learnt through channels such as listening. Thus, for an accountant who principal essence is to make sense through figures or under strategic management accounting should be good listener where one is able to grasp perspectives, views and raw data, internalise them and draw insightful conclusions that ensure a transparent business organisation. Weaknesses One weakness that the study depicts is the choice of Small Business Owner-Manager clients. The plausibility of such argument is strengthened by the realisation that business organisation has diverse stakeholders that accountants should listen to. For instance, let us take the case example of Management Accountant. Cadez and Guilding (2012, p.486) indicates that Strategic Management Accounting is concerned with how accounting can be exploited to enhance strategic management process and strategic choices/ decisions. In this regard, an accountant cannot attain the desired outcomes by listening to Small Business Owner-Manager clients alone. An accountant has to listen to colleagues within the organisation and outside organisation –especially with those organisations partnering with theirs. An accountant has to listen to other professionals/ employees in other departments. To present a holistic picture of the significance of listening skill, the study would have done much better by using different cohorts of relationship in listening instead of focusing on Small Business Owner-Manager clients alone. In this regard, the researchers would have fared well if they could examine the difference in active listening skills between Small Business Owner-Manager clients, colleagues and other professions so as to establish not only the importance, but also the level of engagement while working with different cadre of individuals from different backgrounds. This is critical because the level of comprehension of accounting terminologies differs among these cohorts. Thus, utilisation of different strata of different stakeholders in business organisation would have created a stronger comparative study and not a generic observation. Additionally, as a basis for comparison, the study would have picked some large organisation owners to establish the mode of communication they prefer. Perhaps, it would have been different with the oral platform preferred by Small Business Owner-Manager clients. Second under the research methods, the study does not indicate the methodology adopted by the study. Instead, it only highlights the data collection method utilised – semi structured interviews. Methodology adopted in any study can broadly be categorised into experimental, non-experimental and quasi experimental (Gable, 1994, p.1). Additionally, since they claim that this is a new domain that has rarely been explored, instead of basing their study from diverse case scenarios, the study would have settled for a particular case study exploratory research. The rationale for such argument is supported by the fact that case study exploratory research is well suited for new research areas or research areas where existing theory seems insufficient (Gray, 2013; Gable, 1994). Conclusion The purpose of this paper was to conduct a critical review by assessing the strengths and weakness of the study by Stone & Lightbody (2012) titled “The Nature and Significance of Listening Skills in Accounting Practice”. The critique established that the study display strength in regard to the realisation that its findings and implication in regard to listening is affirmed by other literatures on the central role soft skills such as active listening plays in the success of an accountant. Secondly, the study findings links with the concept of ‘sense making’ by accountants since listening forms the core of comprehending ideas before translating them into insights that can be acted upon. On the other hand, the study shows some level of weakness in regard to the scope that is limited to small business owner-manager yet in business environment there are diverse players that accountants interact with. As such to present a diverse knowledge on a comparative basis, it would have been prudent to extent the scope and include other actors such as colleagues, other employees or board members in case of large organisations. Finally, the study does not elaborate the methodology adopted, but instead outlines the data collection method utilised. References Bancino, R & Zevalkink, C 2007, Soft Skills: The New Curriculum for Hard-Core Technical Professionals, Techniques: Connecting Education and Careers (J1), Vol. 82, No. 5, p. 20-22. Cadez, S & Guilding, C 2012, Strategy, strategic management accounting and performance: a configurational analysis, Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 112, No. 3, p. 484-501. Dervin, B 1998, Sense making theory and practice: an overview of user interest in knowledge seeking and use, Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 2, No. 2, p. 36-46. Gable, G. G 1994, Integrating case study and survey research methods: an example in information systems, European Journal of Information Systems, Vol. 3, No. 2, p. 112-126. Gillard, S 2009, Soft skills and technical expertise of effective project managers. Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, Vol. 6, 723-729. Gray, D.E 2013, Doing research in the real world. Los Angeles: Sage. Schulz, B 2008, The importance of soft skills: Education beyond academic knowledge, Journal of Language and Communication, p. 146-154. Tillmann, K & Goddard, A 2008, Strategic management accounting and sense-making in a multinational company, Management Accounting Research, Vol. 19, No. 1, p. 80-102. Toit, A 2003, Knowledge: a sense making process shared through narrative, Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 7, No. 3, p. 27-37. 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