Simon Bittlestone, FCMA, CGMA, began his one-year term in June as CIMA president and Association of International Certified Professional Accountants chair, and he joined the FM podcast for an interview in late July, discussing what he sees as three key opportunities for the accounting and finance profession.
In the episode, Bittlestone reviews his focus areas, explains the value of a technology background when leading technology initiatives, and details how seizing opportunity as it relates to today’s workforce can help to future-proof the profession.
What you’ll learn from this episode:
- Why he agrees that the profession faces challenges, which he views as opportunities.
- The area of accountants’ work that, according to Bittlestone, has understandable “pushback”.
- Three takeaways from Bittlestone on the ESG course offered in partnership with Oxford University.
- Why Bittlestone considers it important to focus on the profession’s future generations and accountants already in the profession.
- His thoughts on the retirement of AICPA & CIMA CEO Barry Melancon, CPA, CGMA.
Play the episode below or read the edited transcript:
— To comment on this episode or to suggest an idea for another episode, contact Neil Amato at Neil.Amato@aicpa-cima.com.
Transcript
Neil Amato: Hello, listeners. This is Neil Amato, an editor with FM. Welcome back to the FM podcast. Our guest on the show today is CIMA President Simon Bittlestone. His one-year term in that role began in June. We’re talking today about his background and also opportunities for the future of the profession.
Simon, thanks for being on the FM podcast.
Simon Bittlestone: Neil, thanks so much for having me. I’m delighted to be here.
Amato: First, in your inaugural speech, you mentioned three opportunities for the profession. Cynics might call those challenges, but I’m wondering if you could share what those opportunities are and why you see them as such?
Bittlestone: I wouldn’t argue with the cynics that say there might be a bit of challenge in there, too, but I truly and passionately believe these are great opportunities. There’s three things. There’s innovation and transformation, sustainability and value creation, and inclusion and opportunity. Let me just take each one briefly in turn.
Innovation and transformation: I think that the impact that we’ve already seen from analytics, from automation, and the impact we’re about to see from AI is going to be an absolute game-changing event for the world, let alone our profession. In that, the opportunity is to move up the value chain again. Yes, there’s some risk on an individual level because it will involve us retraining and changing how we do things. But I think it is an enormous opportunity if we grasp it.
Sustainability and value creation: The same. There are certainly some challenges that we’re seeing in the sustainability space. Businesses are under pressure. There’s been challenging economic times, but there’s huge value creation opportunity in sustainability and massively for our profession. The world is crying out for a profession to lead on reporting, on trusting in the numbers, and on ensuring the right action’s taken to achieve truly sustainable business models. That is an area that we have a one-off generational chance to take and almost redefine what we do and the value we add.
I think inclusion opportunity’s always a massive opportunity. Our profession is a broad profession. We have a diverse profession. We give great people great opportunities, and that must continue and will continue. Particularly, I think with the opportunity for the CGMA qualification. I know everything we’re doing in apprenticeship schemes where you don’t even need that university degree to gain a brilliant qualification that can open up huge opportunities for your career.
Amato: Thank you for that intro to those topics; we’ll hit on each of them in future questions. Starting with this one on embracing innovation. First, if you could tie in how you think your background in technology helps you lead on that topic?
Bittlestone: Of course. On my background, I’ve spent just shy of 20 years now in business. I recognise that probably makes me one of the less experienced CIMA presidents. But, certainly I have pretty deep experience now in technology and services industries.
I spent five years in a tech and services PLC at the start of my career. I spent 12 working in and then running a financial analytics firm, really helping large, complex businesses with planning, modeling, and essentially decision-making insight. The last couple of years I’ve spent working alongside tech investment funds.
How does that background help me lead on the innovation and technology topic? Well, as with all things, there is a big difference between having lived it and being part of it and done it. You really do understand the trials and tribulations of the topic. I think that helps me not only add some value in how the profession can take this opportunity, but also, hopefully, help people relate better: This isn’t just someone saying they think this is a “great opportunity”, this is someone saying they’ve lived this opportunity. They believe in it, they understand it.
I’ve been so privileged to have had some of the most fantastic opportunities to work with companies, at all stages and scales, achieve large-scale technology transformations. I’ve seen the value that that impact can have, and I really believe in it. Hopefully that helps.
Amato: It does. Tell me this, the specific importance of technology and data analytics: What does it mean or what can it mean to the profession?
Bittlestone: I think it’s fair to say that data analytics is now the single most fundamental thing to nearly every industry globally and absolutely to our profession. We are entering the age of data and AI. It’s that simple.
It’s almost the next stage in the evolution of humankind. I don’t like these comparatives to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, because I think this goes far further than that.
Without trying to oversimplify my answer to your question, I would say it is totally integral to the profession. If you think of data as being totally integral, technology is the thing that enables us to take advantage of data. It gives us power to use data in ways that improve value and achieve growth and achieve outcomes for people, for businesses, and societies.
I cannot really underestimate how fundamental I believe that they actually both are, and I think we’re seeing that today. I’ve just come back from the Association board meetings last week and had several updates from practitioners around the world. There are businesses who have already implemented AI to complete all of their historical data reporting processes. They now no longer have any of their finance team working on getting the numbers right. Imagine that 30 years ago in the finance function.
Amato: You mentioned that board meeting. We’re recording in later July, for publication in the summer.
Onto the next opportunity, sustainable value creation: I thought it was notable that you didn’t stop at calling it just sustainability, but added value creation to the equation. What’s your perspective on the topic, which in your introductory speech, it was mentioned as having some “pushback?”
Bittlestone: Firstly, I think there is some pushback. Secondly, I think you can’t really focus on one without the other. Let me explain why.
We’re at a really crucial and I think defining stage on ESG and mainly the sustainability angle of that and, specifically, the climate piece where, to use a totally inappropriate analogy, the rubber is essentially hitting the road on action.
Why is that? This hugely varies by geography, but many companies have set Scope 2 emissions targets by 2030. That’s really not that far away now, given the scale and fundamental nature of the business model transformation they have to achieve, often, to hit these targets. Actually when you layer in the average tenure of these large companies, particularly FTSE 250 in the UK, that’s about five years for the CEO.
[When] you start to look at that, what this is telling us is this action is now getting very real. It’s come at a time when firms have increasing challenges just to hit numbers and deliver shareholder value, given all the economic uncertainty and the challenging economic times. That is creating friction and I think it’s important we recognise that.
And so for me, I don’t think you can take the two and divorce them. I think the key is few people would argue that sustainability and value creation, in the long term, converge. If you push your time horizon out far enough and you accept that climate change can have a hugely detrimental impact for everybody, every business, and every country. It’s very hard to argue that the creation of value doesn’t go hand in hand with ensuring we’re doing that in a sustainable way. That’s often a much more challenging dynamic in the short term.
But I think here, from my perspective, the profession – and specifically the management accounting side – really holds the keys to help companies tackle this problem and this challenge.
When you think about we need to do, you’ve got to get your reporting in place; you’ve got to collect the right metrics to really understand what it is that’s going to help you drive your business forward, delivering value but in a sustainable way. Then, you have to take some very tough decisions on what you maximise and what you back. That is essentially the role of management accounting.
Yes, I think it’s key that we see these two things as going side-by-side. I see the management accountant at the heart of achieving the right balance.
Amato: On that topic of sustainability and management accounting — now, you have a degree from Oxford, and I understand that you’ve completed the Oxford ESG and Sustainable Finance Strategy course offered in partnership with AICPA & CIMA. What did you learn from that experience?
Bittlestone: I did complete the course and I took a lot from it. I think its first point, I just think it’s an absolutely excellent course. I’m really proud of the work that our organisation is doing in partnership with Saïd Business School at Oxford. I think that can go a really long way.
But in terms of what I took the course, I’ll pick up three things. There was an awful lot I would say I took away from it. The three main points: ESG is a huge and complex area, and the course really helps provide significantly more information than you’re simply going to pick up as part of your experience and does it in a way which is structured, which provides real-life examples and covers some of the actual science behind some of the challenges of ESG. I would say simply the core content and the breadth of the content I found hugely useful.
I think the second thing the course does well is it provides you with a practical approach on how to actually go about implementing an ESG strategy. Now, in my instance, that’s probably more useful from a board, an advisory role. But it was great to be part of a course with people in lots of different roles. I think many of them were in roles where this would be in their day-to-day role. I think that was hugely helpful. Where you start, what steps you take, how you engage stakeholders. There’s a real practical side to the course, which is brilliant.
Of course finally, it was just great to meet lots of other people in the network that that course then gives you in this area particularly was very valuable. I learned loads. They’d be my three key takeaways.
Amato: Those are good ones, thank you. Now, onto the third opportunity we mentioned at the top, growing an inclusive profession. In your speech, you called it the ”great launchpad” that is becoming CGMA-qualified. Tell me more about that, and tell me why it’s something you’re passionate about?
Bittlestone: Well, I found it personally a great launchpad when I started my career in the tech and services business. They didn’t actually have a graduate training scheme, and they didn’t sponsor people to take courses. I put a business case together for the CGMA qualification, and I was grateful to them for agreeing to do it.
I never looked back from that. That was fundamentally a hugely valuable learning experience for me at an early stage in my career. I understood the finances, but much more importantly, I understood business models and how companies report value, how you engage around key decisions. These were hugely valuable to me, personally, and very much underpinned a career in which I spent actually really only a few years in a finance function. Most of my career has been in operational roles, in chief executive roles, now in board advisory roles. It’s a great launchpad for many directions.
Not to speak only about my experience, I spoke to many members and every member has said the same thing about this as a launchpad for their career. It’s not a case of really just taking my word for it, I think that is something that binds us all.
Why am I passionate about it? I think as a profession and, frankly, just as humans, we do have a duty to help open the doors to others, particularly those who may not have had quite the same levels of privilege as us. For me, the CGMA qualification in particular is a wonderful opportunity to do that. You don’t need to have gone to university. You don’t need to have 10 years of business experience. With the FLP, the Finance Leadership Program, offering that we now have the cost is a lot lower. We’re really breaking down the barriers to give people this opportunity. I think that is the right thing to do in any scenario.
It’s just a great opportunity to change careers, change lives, and improve the world, so [I’m] hugely passionate about it.
Amato: On that opportunity, growing the profession and then the first two, can they work in concert to help future-proof the profession?
Bittlestone: Absolutely. When you think about the first two: innovation and transformation makes our profession more exciting, gives us the chance to add more value, and to do that for a much longer time horizon. It’s moving us up the value chain.
ESG expands our breadth of coverage. We’re taking on a whole new area of reporting and of business management and it’s the right area for our profession.
Yes, it future-proofs it. But I think it also makes it so much more attractive to the generations coming into the workforce now. By all accounts, Gen Z are the most focused on purpose over pay than any other generation before them. I think this puts our profession right at the heart of purpose, of an exciting career, and of relevance for a long, long time.
Amato: Those opportunities that we’ve discussed, how were they invaluable for the established professionals?
Bittlestone: I think this is probably one of the only times I would use the word “challenge”. I think it is a critical challenge for us, and I say us as an organisation, to ensure we are continuously focused on. That is helping our membership base and the broader profession build up the right skills for people who are experienced in the workplace already to move with the impacts of AI and take advantage of those.
It is somewhat easier for people entering the workforce today to adopt these skills. They often come through courses or have built up their own data analytics skills, their own Python skills, all of these important and highly relevant skill sets. On the one hand, that is much harder for people who are already in the middle of their career or wherever they are, but who are essentially already working in a specific pattern.
However, those people have something else which is invaluable, which is experience. Not only that, but they have experience built up from the start of their career in businesses. Some of that experience will never be achieved by graduates entering the workforce today. Because some of those roles will no longer exist in the next five to ten years, partly due to AI.
There is also a massive opportunity here. I think the Association is doing a fantastic job with the resources, the additional courses, the partnerships we have with several top-tier firms to support our members’ retraining and taking advantage of AI and ESG and that broader finance transformation. But it is something we have to stay vigilant on and continue to offer.
Amato: I mentioned you’re CIMA president. You’re also Chair of the wider association, AICPA & CIMA, and your year as Association chair coincides with the retirement of long-serving CEO Barry Melancon. What does this change mean for the future of both the organisation and the profession?
Bittlestone: First point I’d just like to make is what an incredible job Barry has done and what great service he has given, not just the Association but the profession over the last 29 years. It really is a mammoth task to take on helping to find his successor. But we should feel hugely proud as an organisation to have had Barry at the helm.
Look, every change comes with opportunity. That’s just the reality.
However brilliant Barry is and has been, his successor will come with new ideas and bring some new perspectives and strategies. I think that’s healthy. The great thing is that Barry will still be there as an adviser for us and in the broader accounting world. We, in some senses, have the best of both.
I see the change as an opportunity. There were 28 predecessors, not quite, of the Association board who managed a year with only one CEO, so I’ll have one with two [CEOs]. I’m looking forward to that challenge myself as well.
Amato: Simon, this has been great. What did I not ask you about today that maybe I should have that you’d like to address?
Bittlestone: I think you’ve done a pretty good job, Neil.
Amato: Well, good.
Bittlestone: I would end with only this: I think it’s a really exciting time. Yes, it’s a challenging time, but there’s so much opportunity in our profession and I think for our broader Association. I’m honoured, obviously, to be in the role both as Chair of the Association and CIMA president.
I’m excited about helping others achieve the opportunity our qualifications provide. That’s the thing I’m most passionate about. I just hope I can add some value this year and I’m grateful to everyone for their support.
Amato: Simon Bittlestone, thank you very much.
Bittlestone: Thank you, Neil.
