Discussion 1

Q1. List 7 areas of strategy and confirm if there is anything missing.
Topic area / Comments
Advocacy /
  • Lobby group/government to maintain our professional interest, whether its givingadvice(be more like the AMA). Talk about transfer pricing issues, economic issues. As a PP back in he 80s clients could not get advice, and accountants were the main source of advice, they got better advice from what they got at the banks, cuz whole industry driven by policies, as opposed to integrity. We have governance laws to controls that. The other bodies don’ts. Just be a voice. Doing advocacy, you will bring the brand. The brand will give us strength.
  • I’m a member of a few professional organizations, one of which is OSAKA, its internationally accredited organisation specialises in IT governance, have annual meetings, meet smoothly, meet with national institute of accountant. I have to sit for annual accreditation exam and be re-examined. How we engage with other prof bodies.

Brand /
  • By building advocacy, you are building the brand as well
  • Global brand, CPA is not recognised much in other countries, think CPA is more focused local, not looking outside the boundary.
  • CPA is seen as more academic when we compare to the skillset of accountant in commercial with a CPA there is a huge gap in skill

Engagement between CPA Australia with members /
  • I struggle with CPA as a professional organisation, at times we are remined like children (study 3 months before exam email),I just think we need to get the focus back on us being a professional organisation.
  • CPA huge gap with PP knowledge.
  • Can’t have one size that fits all profession. You look at the medical profession, there should be a methodology to define us, we should have public practise, management account, info management, internal certification and internal segmentation that you are specialised in a certain area and you should go through CPD link to your specialisation and go through yearly assessment.
  • Talking about the international body, did you know IPA is associated with a British body. They have a UK affiliation. Given that IPA(former NIA), if you’ve been a member of IPA for 10 years, you can do a master’s degree, with a professional development, a recognise learning and get 6 of the 12 units of?. There should be some sort of affiliation? CPA was not interested to join. What kind ofnimwits thought of that.

CPD /
  • As a public practitioner, undertaking the Review program, I saw it as a benefit, but I had to go to the other bodies to get the templates to actually build my QA or update my QA because I had my old QA and it was out of date. But that QA was based on a significantly large firm, I could not get a template that suited me and nothing in the notes that addressed a small practitioner, it was all large practice. Give us the tool.
  • PP is a very small component, what are we delivering to the other members?
  • What’s the future what are the best tools, how we do we better job, what’s the best practice. It’s not how u growing the customer base but how you are developing the practise
  • There tools and things that CPA provides, publications that are old, templates that are out of date, all over the place some are bad or aren’t relevant at all.

Planning for the future /
  • CPA after about 20 years will be working in the information technology.

Discussion 2 – What can be changed?

Topic area / Comments
  1. Governance/CEO appointment (6 votes)
/ Negative
Positive
Ideas /
  • I was quite appalled that they do not have governance committee that is chaired by one board member, like an audit committee- to advise them.
  • Stop director remuneration, why do directors need to be paid, executive directors who work full time then yes, but non-exec directors why do they need to be paid?
  • Appoint anappropriate CEO(must be a CPA member)
  • I believe that the appointment of the new CEO should be through the AGM through the CEO.
  • Some organizations get an external CEO when they are in trouble.
  • Board minutes should be accessible to members(some confidential don’t need to be but should be available to members).
  • We do this model, we demonstrating to other what should be done.
  • There should be an annual survey for membership to get the net promoter score, the level of grievances the level of those to have a look at the number so we can understand how healthy our organisation.
  • Why can’t the members be represented by a subgroup – it is essential that there is a group of members that represent the membership that attend some part of the board meeting to discuss with the board to specifically address member issues.
  • DC to attend board meeting and communicate to members.

  1. Engagement between and its members(2 votes)
/ Negative
Positive
Ideas
  1. Engagement between members(1 vote)
/ Negative
Positive
Ideas /
  • Allow members to sight the members list? Don’t have to include names, member should be made aware and have access to emails through the agency of a third party.
  • CPA should be the agency. You can choice to advertise or not advertise. We can put a detail ‘release my info to members’
  • If you release a list, expect spam. I would want my member details to be shared with other members if they want to communicate they should have a channel that they can go through to communicate

  1. Program (2 votes)
/ Negative
Positive
Ideas /
  • CPA leaving now, the quality of CPAs – they are a lot of CPAs in the market, how we are going to govern them. Uni’s are not training them.
  • I heard rumbling about the quality of the CPA program- the actual methodology has been outsourced. The issue about who the program is outsourced too? Quality assurance of that process? Is the quality compromised?
  • If we have can have student reps(in uni), why don’t we have a member representative to sit on the board. why does every director need a company director qualification? You are cutting out 150k members that can participate on the board.
  • (Few members disagree) I think it is important that they need to qualify as a director to sit on the board, I not then you are not cut out to sit on the board. If you can’t pass the company director board then you can’t be in the CPA’s board.

  1. CPD (2 votes)
(including resources /templates) / Negative
Positive
Ideas /
  • Well they already announce they giving 28 and a half hour, god know where the half hours is from. Somebody is working on a strategy to deliver that, certainly they can give us free CPD, but what you want is 40 hours of CPD from your membership fee.
  • Also whatever governance you want the members to follow, have templates that you want the members to follow- makes sure you have the templates to guide your members.
  • I’m a retired member, and I don’t want that level of training. The training should be tailored to members. Specialisation - training needs to be specified into categories and with rightspecification and relevant.
  • Why can’t we get professional to prepare our templates or better than that why can’t we use what our members use andultimately use the best of what our members are using then we usewhich is the best, and then we are all using the best. We can reward our members and publish our members work. Use our own resources. We got some great members out there doing great things that we should be learning from them.
  • I reallywanna how much money the CPA generates from membership CPD. Since we have to pay for everything, how important it is to their bottom line, is profitable. I mean 40 million dollars out ofmembership fees.
  • I don’t go for paid course because it’s different from public practise, they are not many things you are getting a benefit from.
  • Paid course to get my CPD hours. I am on a reduce membership and I pay reduced fees.
  • Need to run a broader spectrum
  • And they run the same things over and over again. They have sector focus conferences, but my feedback is if you have been to 1 o 2 of those, I wouldn’t got again because there isn’t, I mean theyprobably focus in accounting standards maybe someone talking from an organisation, I sat there thinking why am I here, nothing that challenges me.
  • I go for the CPD hours because I get reduce membership price, I get the discount its ok. I see what’s going on.
  • I review the Congress videos each year to extract information and I am lucky to get 2 presentations a year that I think are relevant and worthwhile.
  • I think the model is wrong, need more specialise information, you can have online seminars. You don’t need to sit in the space anymore. (all members agree with online seminars). It saves me 2 hours drive.
  • CPD material are wrong, out of date, they don’t updateenough, and the quality is not there. Everything they do needs to be spot on. If not spot on my whole opinion of the administration falls down.
  • If you do online sector based training, the links can’t work- then you go can’ go the next questions.
  • Then when you ring them up and they don’t take you seriously. Last 3 times it was like a competition, they keep defending themselves, telling me I’m wrong - just takeit one, listen to me, write it down.
  • In example of that sort of frustration I whole aindustry license, I had to get a process in, some standard issues they had to access all my files, migration group for back end processing there as quality issues, standard issues. I rang CPA for advice and they had tell me to see solicitors now, cuz they couldn’t tell me when they should know and provide an answer in 5 minutes.
  • What do we get for free? I asked them to clarify one section of the contract, and they said go to the lawyer, and he would have got the standard and read it and advise me.
  • NTAA- 500 bucks 3 calls, if I got a tax problems etc, there should be services and experts that would be able to handle fees. Give us an option of like 50 bucks, that we can go in there, get your training, you stay in touch, you stay in date.
  • CPA is more admin oriented rather than members oriented. They should have expert knowledge. CPA needs to have that knowledge. Not like working in admin type service.

  1. Brand (4 votes)
/ Negative
Positive
Ideas /
  • Recognise for the wrong reasons at the moments
  • 5 out of 6 people would know what CPA is.
  • We need to promote how much better it is to have a CPA then not a CPA.
  • Brand recognitionshould come from excellence. Service provided is recognised.
  • I had a kid in the street, ‘oh you are a CPA’.
  • Do you want direct advertising?It need to be a blend of advertising and our jobs. Give resources to do out jobs right and how we do things, help us stand out. Needs to be used along a bit in the media space.
  • CPA no branding- whether it is cosly to get the branding but CPA should provide members branding, merchandise, a sticker, have it on the front of suburban officers. Or a stickers, have it on the front of a office.
  • Should be provide, here is a sticker, here’s a book, it should be provided to members.
  • Community festivals and stand at a public space and offer general advice and promote ourselves.. Giveour members a chance to go out and meet the community.
  • Paul darma tax go to person – they want input on tax matters yes you can provide advice but you need to be an experts.
  • Build the brand for the whole.
  • The issue with the brand previously with the previous execs was that the brand become a person.
  • We need to go back to basics.
  • I am comfortable saying I am the experts form CPA. The problem was t was more important for the individual than the brand.
  • CPA needs more voice in public like for example a CPA wants to be a business agents.
  • On a lighter note, I’minterested to know who would wear the badge in the public? I wouldlike a little professional oblong badge, not the new badge.

  1. Planning for the future (5 votes)
/ Negative
Positive
Ideas /
  • Globalisation is the most important- I work overseas US and other countries, they don’t recognise it.
  • CPA’s cant become a mentor to a CA. – have affiliations
  • CPA has affiliations with CIMA.CIMA has affiliation with CPA
  • Should be in partnership rather than membership
  • We should try and retains our current members
  • Next generation of members need skills that we are not providing them, like IT info. management, management of info is becoming a success factors in business development.
  • We gotta understand the skill requirement moving forward in 20 years. Do we know what the info requirement will be. In 10 yearsyou way may well find that it may be in China & India.
  • We not doing enough effort to address future. We should be setting the future.
  • Retraining current members- we need to be retrained,continue to refers skills- members need to do

  1. Advocacy , Policy work including other professional bodies (3 votes)

  1. International
focus/certification (2 votes)
  1. Association between accounting bodies (1 vote)

  1. Future of the Profession
(3 votes)