Critical thinking: Stakeholder expectations and challenges for Accountancy educators

Developing future accountants who are critical thinkers, able to adapt in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world, remains one of the biggest challenges facing accounting educators. Competency frameworks of professional accounting bodies do provide some guidance in terms of the competencies and skills graduates should possess when entering the profession, but lack the inclusion of a clear, consensus-based definition of critical thinking and its related skills. The present study sought to explore the extent to which critical thinking and related concepts are present in and align across the competency frameworks of four professional accounting bodies. Employing a content analysis, the results indicated no agreed-upon definition for “critical thinking” or related terms. The term “critical thinking” only appeared in one framework with “decision-making”, “judgement” and “problem solving” serving as surrogate terms across the frameworks. Variations of “analyse”, “explain” and “evaluate”, that are considered to be core critical thinking skills, were extensively used in the frameworks, albeit not clearly defined. Professional bodies are crucial when creating a more mature demand for critical thinking acumen in graduates and workplace professionals. The researchers therefor advocate better agreement among accounting educators and professional bodies about the definition of critical thinking.