Professional skills and experience

Professional skills

What are the benefits of professional skills?

• Equips you for lifelong career success
• Develops key transferrable skills such as communication, critical thinking and leadership
• Provides a personalised view of your key strengths and opportunities

What are professional skills?

ICAEW Chartered Accountants are known for their professionalism and expertise. Professional skills are about how you advance your career through improving yourself by learning and training.

The ACA equips you with professional skills that will prepare you to handle a variety of different situations you will encounter throughout your career. You will develop skills within the exams, through Specialised Learning and in the workplace

ACA students are required to demonstrate proficiency in 25 skills across five key competency areas throughout their training:

Communication

• Active listening
• Feedback 
• Clarity and impact
• Confidence
• Digital security and communication 

Critical thinking

• Analysis and evaluation
• Curiosity
• Decisions and recommendations
• Adaptability
• Digital literacy

Professionalism

• Professional scepticism
• Reliability
• Professional judgement
• Self review
• Accountability Leadership
• Collaboration
• Developing others
• Project management
• Developing self
• Digital capability and innovation Emotional intelligence
• Self awareness
• Empathy
• Appreciating other viewpoints
• Values
• Resilience

How will you showcase your professional skills progress?

There are three proficiency levels for each professional skill within the ACA.

• Aware
• Experienced
• Accomplished

By the end of your training agreement, you will need to be assessed as meeting the ‘Aware’ and ‘Experienced’ thresholds in all skills.

You will need to meet the ‘Accomplished’ threshold for at least five skills. You will discuss your skills development in six-monthly reviews with your employer and record progress in your training file.

Professional experience

What are the benefits of professional experience?

• Develop your professional judgement
• Develop your personal effectiveness
• Develop the technical knowledge learnt from your studies within your workplace
• Develop your business awareness skills

What is professional experience? 

Professional experience is gained as part of a training agreement with one of our authorised training employers. You need to complete at least 450 days of professional experience, which normally takes between three and five years. The knowledge, skills and experience you gain as part of your training agreement are invaluable, giving you the opportunity to put what you’re learning into practice.

During your training agreement period, you should accumulate and show evidence of at least 450 days of professional experience. This does not include sick leave, holidays, study leave, off the job training or office administration.

Professional experience is undertaking real-life work of a financial, business and/or commercial nature. 

You are required to relate your professional experience to at least one of the following six categories: 

• Accounting
• Audit and Assurance
• Tax
• Financial Management
• Insolvency
• Information Technology 

Your six-monthly reviews

Key to the professional skills and experience element of the ACA are six-monthly reviews. It is a requirement of the ACA training agreement that you and your employer meet at least every six months. These meetings are to discuss and monitor your progress towards your professional skills and experience, Specialised Learning, and exams. You will also discuss an ethics in practice scenario at each six-monthly review. It is your responsibility to update your records within your online training file.

Once you have discussed your professional experience progress with your employer, you will need to confirm the number of days in your training file. When you have done this, your six-month period will be locked and stored within the file. If you need to update the record once it is locked, we can amend it. Please speak to your employer, as they will need to contact us to amend the record.

ICAEW provide a six-monthly review guide to give more information on how to prepare for your six-monthly review, the topics to cover during a review and how to submit your training file at the end of your training agreement.