Last Spring, I was fortunate to be selected as one of the 2023 Coleman Center and Chair Fellows Award for my efforts to integrate entrepreneurship content into my class, Career Management for Accountants. In this class, we incorporate a number of activities designed to help students prepare for a career after they complete their accounting degree.
One of the most important objectives of this course is to make sure students are aware of all of the career possibilities available to them. To this end, I invite the students to meet with accounting professionals from all walks of life through mentoring assignments, class visits, and a career panel.
Beginning last year, I expanded the career exploration to include entrepreneurship opportunities. I invite entrepreneurs with an accounting background to be part of the career panel or stop by during one of my classes. I also have staff from the Coleman Center visit with my class to explore events and opportunities available for my students to further investigate entrepreneurship as a possible career path.
Adding entrepreneurial content to the class has made a significant impact. The students have had a chance to meet several entrepreneurs with an accounting background and hear first-hand how they used that background to successfully launch or grow a business. The message we heard over and over again is how important accounting skills were to the success of the various businesses. Equally impactful, students were impressed with the range of businesses started by these entrepreneurs. One entrepreneur discussed his involvement in launching a business related to funeral planning. Another described his work launching a medical device company. Several entrepreneurs discussed their efforts to establish their own accounting practices.
The entrepreneurs who visited identified three ways that accounting skills were vital to their businesses:
- Raising capital and giving potential lenders and investors confidence in the financial information provided by the business;
- Making decisions about how to use available funding and evaluating the competing uses of these financial resources;
- Evaluating possible expansion or exit opportunities from a financial point of view.
The list of specific ways that these entrepreneurs used their accounting expertise goes on and on. Overall, though, it was clear that accounting competence was critical to their entrepreneurial success.
An added benefit to including the entrepreneurship content is the connection students can make to the other skills important to starting or running a business. Each of the entrepreneurs described how they combined their accounting skills with marketing, communication and relationship skills. In fact, the entrepreneurs helped me make the case to my students that these skills areequally important to success in traditional accounting roles. In order to progress in any career, accounting professionals often have to sell their ideas and solutions to upper management or to prospective clients. Individuals who approach these activities with an entrepreneurial mindset are more likely to be successful.
As a result of the relationship between entrepreneurial skills and career success, I am convinced that any course on career planning should invite entrepreneurs to meet the students, or to find other ways to introduce entrepreneurial content into the course.
Contributor Bio:
Kenton (Kent) J. Klaus – Faculty, DePaul University (Retired Partner, Deloitte)
After retiring from Deloitte, Kent accepted an appointment to join the faculty of the College of Business at DePaul University. In addition to his teaching responsibilities at DePaul, Kent is the director of the Master of Science in Taxation program and he co-leads the Ability Alliance for employees with disabilities.
At Deloitte, Kent was the managing partner of the Chicago Global Employment Services (GES) service line and was responsible for professional development and technical quality for the national GES practice.
In addition to his leadership activities at DePaul, Kent is also on the boards of Disability: IN Chicagoland, Disability: Lead, Access Living, and the CPA Endowment Fund of Illinois. Kent received his Bachelor of Science degree from DePaul University and an MBA from the University of Chicago. He is also a licensed CPA in the State of Illinois.