For the finance function, closing the business guidance gap — between what the function delivers and what the business needs for supporting decisionmaking — has become crucial. This is especially important as the World Economic Forum has said that more than a billion people worldwide will likely see radical technological change in their job by 2030. Even as modern finance is being asked to step up in the face of this evolving change, the demand for digitally savvy finance professionals is already outstripping supply.
Against this backdrop, AICPA & CIMA have been refreshing the CGMA Professional Qualification (PQ) annually since 2019 to address the needs of modern finance. AICPA & CIMA moved away from a traditional five-year cycle overhaul generally adopted by many professional accounting bodies to an approach of continuous improvement to meet the rapid pace of business transformation.
Critical thinking skills
AICPA & CIMA’s 2025 PQ upgrade is based on our Future of Finance 2.0 research and its white paper, Re-defining Finance for a Sustainable World. The upgrade addresses and further strengthens the problem-based learning approach, combining it with a greater focus on critical thinking or power skills, such as professional scepticism, making recommendations, problem-solving, and communication. These skills are embedded through the business simulations presented in the Case Study exams, which reflect the evolving business landscape that includes generative AI and the adoption of sustainability reporting regulations.
The updates apply across all three levels of the PQ, with a notable focus for management accountants on business partnering performance outputs: insight generation, influence, and impact. This expanded focus ensures that CGMA-qualified finance professionals can effectively contribute to their organisations’ success and drive value creation.
Improving decision-making
The last decade has been defined by rapid technological advancements, evolving market dynamics, and increasing stakeholder expectations. As a result, finance teams have experienced profound transformation, significantly improving financial reporting, cost control, and governance. However, there is now growing complexity around business decision-making with additional dimensions that finance must consider to help close the business guidance gap.
What does this mean in practice? The finance function now needs to go beyond financial stewardship and play a strategic role in improving decision-making to guide organisations toward long-term value creation. AICPA & CIMA’s Future of Finance research points to four key shifts finance leaders and their teams need to make to successfully navigate this evolving landscape:
- Adopting a longer-term time horizon: Finance needs to make effective resource and capital allocation towards innovative strategic projects for transitional business models and a circular economy, which requires significantly longer-term forecasting and perspective.
- Expanding stakeholder relationship management: Beyond investors, regulators, and boards, this relates to employees, suppliers, distributors, customers, and the impacted communities where the business operates.
- Managing intangible capitals: This encompasses the management and investment in human, intellectual, natural, and social and relationship capitals to drive intangible value creation.
- Partnering across the entire business model: Finance should move beyond the measurement and reporting of costs and revenue and work with other teams to create value across the business model by shaping strategy, culture, innovation, technology, and the customer value proposition.
By enabling these shifts, finance leaders can move from being stewards of financial resources to also becoming drivers of innovation and architects of lasting business growth and long-term value creation.
Preparing for the future
The CGMA PQ 2025 upgrade tackles these four shifts head-on by delivering learning outcomes demanded by modern finance in three key areas:
- Technology and automation: The skills that finance professionals need are changing. An oversupply of both data and automated reports drives a need for professional scepticism and judgement to determine useful information for generating actionable insights. This requires higher-order human skills, such as critical thinking and problem-solving.
- Changing perception of value: How value is perceived and defined by society has undergone a significant shift. Value creation is not just about shareholder profits but also sustainable value for multiple stakeholders.
- Increasing business decision complexity: Business models are in transition to incorporate sustainability, and businesses are moving their focus from shareholder value to sustainable value creation for stakeholders. This adds multiple dimensions, longer-term views, and balancing competing outcomes that make decision-making more complex. The finance team must navigate these complexities and bridge the business guidance gap.
The refined focus on these areas in the CGMA PQ ensures that qualified finance professionals are ready to tackle real-world challenges and drive their organisations forward.
CGMA designation-holders understand the importance of continually evolving and adapting to new circumstances. Read more on the PQ landing page of the AICPA & CIMA about the 2025 upgrade and how AICPA & CIMA are developing and preparing the finance professionals of tomorrow.
Ash Noah, CPA, FCMA, CGMA, is vice-president and managing director–Learning, Education & Development at the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants. To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Oliver Rowe at Oliver.Rowe@aicpa-cima.com.
MEMBER RESOURCES
Articles
“CGMA Beyond Scholarship Programme Expands Finance Education Access in China ”, FM magazine, 19 March 2025
“CGMA Designation Gains Formal Recognition in Shenzhen”, FM magazine, 23 January 2025
Resource
“CGMA PQ Blueprints Update 2025–2026”, AICPA & CIMA, 10 November 2024
