ICAEW, a training and certification organisation for accountants, asks a bold question, “What should be the role of the accountancy and finance profession in helping businesses transform and deliver on the UN sustainable development goals?” Currently, accountant education does not have any content related to sustainability, and the ICAEW sustainability business training was removed due to outdated contents. We find opportunity to provide quality education platform to create new generation of sustainable accountants and world authority of best practice in sustainability accounting.
First Mover is an education platform asking for accountants and the businesses to help build the new frontier of sustainability accounting, being a training centre and the hub for best practice of sustainable accounting. The main element will come from GRI trainers, experienced sustainability consultants and accountants. The accountants will go through phase 1 to gain basic knowledge of sustainable accounting, and phase 2 to apply the knowledge to practice. The partner businesses will come to the workshop with sustainability challenges and the accountants will develop sustainability measures and strategy with their knowledge. After finishing phase 1 and 2, accountants will get ‘CPA-S’ certification which gives them qualification to add sustainability commentary to the business risk profile. This will help them build on their career and move on to more strategic role inside their organisation. CPA-S who has 5 years of industry experience can apply to join the panel for creating new uniform standard.