The Learning Process (#226)

In this podcast episode, we discuss the continuous learning in which an accountant can engage. Key points made are noted below.

Accounting Standards Updates

This is a large topic, because it’s so broad. Let’s start with just accounting learning. Most people are going to find that, for their chosen industry, the accounting doesn’t really change that much. To stay on top of anything that might impact you, go to the accounting standards updates that the Financial Accounting Standards Board posts on-line. If you check the updates maybe once a quarter, you should be fine.

A larger problem is how to advance your overall knowledge. As you become more senior, other people are going to start judging you based on your knowledge and also on your opinions. So if you stop trying to educate yourself, outside of the occasional accounting standards update, you may find that people stop considering you for higher-level positions – because you don’t behave like someone who deserves to be in that kind of position.

News Sources

There are a couple of ways to deal with this. At the most minimal level, it helps to be generally aware of what’s going on in the world. My main source of information for a quick scan of the headlines is Google News. I check it first thing in the morning when I get up, just to see if there’s anything that I should know about. I might click on one or maybe two of the articles and spend a few seconds to see what’s going on. The intent is to appear reasonably informed if the people I deal with bring up a news item. If I don’t spend five minutes on this scan each day, I’m going to appear ignorant.

Podcast Sources of Information

There’s lots more learning that I do, but a major consideration is how much time it takes. As you’re going to find out as you advance in your career, there’s nowhere near enough time in the day. So one thing I do is sign up for podcasts that I can listen to when I’m in the car. A good one is The Economist Radio podcast. They put out maybe a half-dozen episodes per week, mostly short ones, where they talk about business and politics. Another possibility is the HBR Ideacast. It’s put out by the Harvard Business Review magazine, which I’ll get back to in a minute. The Ideacast comes out once a week and each episode is about 15 minutes. I find that these can be a little too professorial and abstract, so maybe one episode in three is really informative.

Another podcast that’s quirky and really informative on odd topics is Planet Money, which is produced by National Public Radio. The general scope is absolutely anything involving business or money. For example, recent episodes were about the old monopoly on cheese in Switzerland and interviewing some of the staff at Wells Fargo about the issues that were going on over there during the recent scandal. Those episodes run about 20 minutes.

Another possibility is the Entrepreneurial Thought Leader series, which is produced by the Stanford Business School. They bring in business leaders, usually very senior-level managers or investors, to talk about business startups. Every episode is good, but they’re also long. These run for an hour.

And my last podcast recommendation is The World Next Week, which is produced by the Council on Foreign Relations, which is a Washington think tank. You get doctorate-level people talking about the most important foreign events – and it’s just great. Their perspective is not conservative or liberal. It’s more from a practical or maybe a pessimistic viewpoint about what’s going on in the world.

Travel as Education

I happen to like The World Next Week because I think the greatest education is traveling all over the world. Once I spend the time to really get to know a country, I remain interested in it for life. So far, that means I’m always digging through the news to learn more about the 36 countries that I’ve visited – so far. I try to add on a couple of countries every year.

I also find that experience is the best form of education, because those lessons really stick. The next best form of education after experience is a really deep dive on a specific topic – something that runs for several thousand words, and which comes from a reputable source.

Recommended Magazines

Which brings me to the next form of continuous learning, which is magazines. And when I say magazines, I also mean their on-line sites. First, business magazines. I’ve subscribed to Fortune, Forbes, and Business Week at various times, and eventually dropped Fortune and Forbes, and kept Business Week. The problem with all of these magazines is that some of the articles seem to have been written by the public relations departments of the companies that are being spotlighted. There’s some investigative journalism, but not a whole lot. So I keep Business Week around just to be informed at a modest level about the most current business topics.

I also subscribe to the Harvard Business Review. The articles are always well-written and they go pretty deep on business research topics. Each edition has a different theme, so one edition might have nothing but product development topics in it, while another one might have nothing but marketing articles. By and large, I really like what they do, but that’s partially because I write business books and they’re a good source of ideas. Some people may find that HBR is too much information. It may not be for everyone.

Another source of deep information is not a business magazine at all. It’s the New Yorker. A good thirty pages of each edition is about local New York activities, which may not be of much use. However, there are usually one or two amazingly detailed articles in the middle of the magazine that make the entire thing worthwhile. For example, they just ran a long article about the political situation in the Philippines, and the week before that they did the same thing for Venezuela. So if you have an interest in foreign affairs, the New Yorker is a good bet.

ProPublica

This may seem like a lot of good sources of information, but actually things have gotten a lot worse over the past few years. Newspapers are not profitable, so they’ve laid off many reporters, which means that the quality of reporting has gone down. And this is where I’m putting in a plug. There’s a nonprofit website called propublica.org. They’re based in New York, and at the moment they have 45 reporters who all do investigative reporting. They’ve already picked up three Pulitzer prizes, so they’re good. They’re also non-partisan, so they will investigate anything. You’ve probably already read their stories, since they have dozens of partner news organizations that distribute their articles. Take a look at propublica. If you like them, consider sending them a donation. I send them money every month.

General Impact of Learning

I’m going to finish up by describing how this lifelong learning has impacted me by talking about – Turkey. I traveled pretty extensively through Turkey years ago, met a lot of people, and have a very high opinion of the country. I’ve rarely seen that level of hospitality anywhere. Since that opinion was experience-based, I’m probably going to keep it for life. It also means that I’m quite interested in what goes on there.

A couple of years ago, Wikileaks posted a massive number of State Department reports on its website. Even though I’m not a great fan of WikiLeaks – separate story – I went to the site and looked up what they had on Turkey. There was an amazingly detailed analysis of Prime Minister Erdogan that spotlighted his personality and how he might react to opposition, and lots of other things. Since this was a deep analysis and it came from a reputable source, that affected my opinion – not of the country, but of its leadership.

And then there was the coup attempt a short time ago, where now-President Erdogan cracked down all over the country and also demanded that the United States extradite a cleric who was based in Pennsylvania, but who he claimed had initiated the coup. Having read the earlier State Department report, I was skeptical about the claim.

But then the New Yorker put out another one of its great articles about this Pennsylvania cleric, and it turns out that there might be some truth to Erdogan’s allegations. At a minimum, there are a couple of very large egos battling each other.

So what does that example have to do with the continuous learning experience for a CPA? On the face of it, nothing at all. But what you should be getting out of my story is the process I went through. I initially formed an opinion based on personal experience and then added to that opinion based on some very solid information sources. I did not rely on those one-paragraph news snippets that you see so much of these days.

Now this does not mean that I’m an expert in everything – I’m probably just an expert in accounting and nothing else. But what I do have is a fair amount of learning on topics that interest me. And if anyone wants to hear my opinions on those topics, then I can hold forth pretty well.

Now, remember what I said earlier about how people will judge you based on your knowledge and your opinions. If you follow the path I’ve described – going out and getting experience, as well as learning from the best news sources – you’re going to come across as a much more interesting person – and probably a more influential person – and that will most definitely help you in your career.