Effective Articleship: Building foundation to excel your professional dreams

'The person who sweats more in training, bleeds less in war.'

Mary Engelbreit once said that, 'If you don't like something change it; If you can't change it - change the way you think about it.'

Articleship is the bedrock on which ICAI's distinction as an esteemed professional institution has been strongly built.

Industry, clients, employers and other stake holders expect a lot of competence from budding chartered accountants and ICAI has onerous responsibility to ensure it. Effective Articleship would certainly lay the firm base for ongoing development of professional competence throughout career of a CA.

Yes, the Articleship is sometimes boring, yes you might be scolded, yes you might face work pressure, yes you might make mistakes, you may find it complex, burdensome. But look at the after-effects of all these. They give you an insight into the real world, a glimpse of the challenges that you have to face as a professional and experience to deal with clients.

Over the last decade, industry has seen MBAs as immediate competitors to CAs apart from CS, ICWA & Financial Chartered Analyst (FCAs) because of their practical exposure and tremendous communication and management skills.

So in order to compete with MBAs, newly qualified CAs need to carry optimum practical exposure and learn management and communication skills which can be gained through Articleship only.

Madness to complete the work, meeting the deadlines, living up to the expectations of clients and bosses is a tough job. Here nobody teaches you like a kid(the school is over!!), it is you who has to grab the opportunities, explore them and learn as much as you can from the learned.

Ethics at workplace- Discipline, punctuality, patience, vigilance, carefulness!!-they define a professional and are being inculcated in the budding CAs.

Revised IES 5: Requirement of sufficient practical experience by the end of Initial Professional Development (IPD)

The International Accounting Education Standards Board (IAESB) of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) is an independent standard-setting body that serves the public interest by establishing standards in the area of professional accounting education. These standards are referred to as International Education Standards (IESs).

The IAESB has issued Revised IES 5 on practical experience, effective from 1st July 2015, which requires aspiring professional accountants (i.e. CA students) to undertake sufficient practical experience to demonstrate that they have gained (a) technical competence; (b) professional skills; and (c) professional values, ethics and attitudes necessary for performing a role as a professional accountant.

As per revised IES 5, 'sufficient practical experience' is one which has a blend of depth and breadth, knowledge and application and where appropriate, integration of material from different areas applied to a range of situations and contexts.

Professional Competence: Integration of three individual components

Professional competence is the ability to perform a role to the defined standard. The three individual components, namely, technical competence, professional skills and professional values, ethics and attitudes, together constitute professional competence.

Revised IESs 2, 3, & 4 lay down the desired level of technical competence, professional skills and professional values, ethics and attitudes, respectively to be achieved by the end of IPD. IPD continues until the aspiring professional accountants can demonstrate the professional competence required for their chosen roles in the accountancy profession.

Learn the outcomes through efficient training..!!

Get the exposure of corporate world through Industrial Training!!

What CA Parveen Sharma Sir has to say about practical training!!

'Articleship plays a very important role in the career of the student, they should take care of this thing and they should do their articleship seriously and properly.'

You can serve the entire period of practical training with a practicing member or partly with  a practising member and partly in an approved industrial establishment as an Industrial Trainee. The period of such industrial training may range between 9-12 months during the last year of the prescribed period of practical training. The Institute envisages the preparation of trainees, who intend to build their careers in industries, after becoming chartered accountants, in a manner mutually beneficial to the industry and the trainees themselves. Training in an industrial/ commercial/ financial environment provides the trainees with the opportunity to develop a problem-solving attitude and to have an insight into the functioning of the accounts department. It also diversifies their practical experience and helps them in developing the attributes of team work and correlation with members of other professions and disciplines.

Conclusion

Chartered accountancy is a dignified, vibrant and ever growing profession. Be it industry or practice, CA's have featured excellence in every nook. Whatever height the TATAS and Reliance may attain, their balance sheets will have no importance without a CA's signature. So be proud of your profession, respect it and strive to be a good professional, setting an example for others to follow. After all work is worship!

Yes, I know that the training needs to be made more meaningful and ICAI has been continuously reviewing the aspects of training through different committees. Right from 1966, ICAI has been publishing different modules and training programs for betterment of articles. Final publication of ICAI 'Training Guide', approved and adopted in 1994 has been revised and now it incorporates all aspects of practical training and industrial training.

At the end I would only like to say,

Articleship is not just a formality; it is a golden period of 3 years when you can discover your talent and expertise. We all have a mission, not just to be a CA but also to serve our nation and society better.

Live up to the motto of our institute:

Ya esa suptesu jagarti kamam kamam Puruso nirmimanah