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.

Key Words:

• Accounting education
• communication skills
• interpersonal skills

Acknowledgements

Research assistance for this paper was funded by Avondale College of Higher Education. The author wishes to thank two anonymous referees for their helpful comments as well as Professor Lee Parker for his constructive and thoughtful feedback on an earlier version of this paper. The timely completion of this paper would not have been possible without research assistance from Ms Amy Verhoeven. Thanks are also due to Dr Keith Howson for his support and encouragement over a number of years during the pre-project research and its later implementation. Appreciation is given to the following people: Mr Mark Young, Mr Greg Schumann, Mrs Luba Calculli, Ms Nina Hearn and Ms Kerstin Daff. Finally, the author would like to thank the guest editors of this special edition for their supportive suggestions.

Notes

1 Notable exceptions are Burns and Moore (2008) and Jones and Sin (2003).

2 The term ‘course’ used here refers to a single subject or unit within an undergraduate degree.

3 Caleb Leadership Ministries is now operating under the name Skill Builders Plus, the website skillbuildersplus.com is currently under construction.

4 The researcher completed the three-week leadership program, attended three trainer training programs and assisted as an instructor in the interpersonal skills component of the program on two different programs.

5 For a light-hearted commentary on successful and unsuccessful client-accountant communication see Daff (2010, 2011).