Career counselling for chartered accountancy

Never call an accountant a credit to his profession, a good accountant is a debit to his profession- Sir Charles Lyell To acquire sound knowledge and be able to pursue a career in chartered accountancy, a career counselling session was conducted on 14th December 2015 for the students of classes IX to XII by Mr. Prakash Gurbuxani, a practising chartered accountant. Mr. Gurbuxani is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) and has been active in the field for 35 years. Through the years, he has not only undertaken leadership roles in companies such as BPCL, Indraprastha Gas Limited and other leading public sector undertakings, but has also been involved in the finalisation of annual accounts, taxation, pricing and treasury management and is a visiting member of the International Management Institute. The session commenced with Mr. Gurbuxani telling the students that ICAI is the second largest accounting body in the world, a fact which was not known to most of us! ICAI currently has a membership of 2,50,000, a sky- rocketing figure. He then stated the vision and mission of ICAI. Some of these were to become a leading world class accounting body, a regulator and developer of trusted and independent professionals and a multi-national service provider.

He told the students accounting was essential for the good governance of a nation. The benefits of e-commerce as an online marketing portal which is fast becoming popular in todays technological and computerised world was evident in his presentation. He elaborated on a well-defined course structure for chartered accountancy comprising three different levels, the first being the Common Proficiency Test (CPT) which is the entrance test, then the theoretical level particularly the Integrated Professional Competence Course and the last is the Final Course Examination after successful completion of practical training. He emphasised the objectives of this scheme, one of them being to inculcate professional ethics and attitude among students. Towards the end, he addressed and doubts, queries and questions put across by the students. We thank Mr. Prakash Gurbuxani for sharing his knowledge, skills and expertise in accounting and giving us the opportunity to discover more about the various courses available in order to pursue chartered accountancy from the ' horse's mouth' as it were. Sidhant Bansal (11B).