Should you be worried about critical skill shortages in the accounting profession? The Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) recently asked me to do a guest blog post on solutions to this problem. Click here to read that post on how to prioritize your most costly talent problems.

My post on the Competency Crisis Blog describes seven talent-related risks that cause skill shortages and provides an exercise you can do with your leadership team, in any industry, to get traction on solutions. Here are two lessons from the accounting industry’s skill shortage problem that may help you.

Who Cares About Your Skill Shortages?

In my research across industry sectors, I’ve found lots of executives who care a lot about critical skill shortages in nursing, welding, mobile app development, petroleum engineering, technical sales, CNC machining, and hard-to-fill middle management roles. But no CEO I’ve interviewed has ever said, “And, yeah, I’m worried about skill shortages in my accounting department.” The truth is no one but accountants cares about skills gaps in their profession!

That doesn’t invalidate the problem. Skill shortages in accounting may end up being very costly for some organizations and could lead to major problems. But CFOs and accounting managers need to know they will have to deal with this problem themselves.

The lesson for others is to take a hard look at your own department or profession and evaluate how central you are to the organization’s mission and revenue stream. A sales manager should be getting a lot more attention than an accounting manager when they both complain to leadership about skills gaps. You may be feeling the pain personally, but how does the rest of the organization view your function?

Are Your Hiring Expectations Realistic?

One of the most striking things about the purported skill shortages in accounting is how high the bar has been raised for skill sets of entry level hires. It’s not unusual to hear that accounting managers want recent college grads to come with change management and leadership skills.

Are you serious? I know plenty of senior executives who don’t have these skills yet! (Or who have lost them.) Expecting recent college grads to have useful capabilities in managing change is unrealistic. They might know John Kotter’s change management framework, but they won’t have experience putting it to use. And some grads will come with basic leadership skills having filled roles on campus like team captain and sorority president. But hiring managers in accounting have developed unrealistic expectations about skill sets for entry level roles. The question is: Does your organization have unreasonable assumptions about skills available in the marketplace for the roles you’re trying to fill?

Of course, higher education has been notoriously slow in adapting its curriculum to the needs of today’s rapidly changing workforce. But that ongoing debate goes way beyond the accounting profession. Want to reduce the costs of talent shortages in your organization? Contact me and check out my blog post on the Competency Crisis blog.