Prepared for Your Field?
Prepared for Other Fields?
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
I think there's something missing in the curriculum of many schools these days. Sure, they teach people about certain fields. But what seems to be lacking is communication of that field to others who need to know.
What I'm saying is that, in my curriculum as an accountant, I learned how to speak in the accounting language. But there was no course that taught how to relate that back to people in other fields, specifically managers. Now, in a college with accounting and business managment majors, one would think that they would do something to teach accountants to speak with the business management types.
I consider myself extremely lucky, because I became a tutor. Most of my tutoring time was spent with management students teaching them how to understand accounting. I assumed at that time that most of my working career would be spent keeping track of things and then telling managers what was going on with those things.
Of course, I didn't end up in that field at all. But now, I am in a field where I am constantly writing reports to people who don't necessarily have a good understanding of accounting. So I have to be able to break down what we did, why we did it, and how that's better than what the other guy did. A good attorney or adjuster doesn't need to know accounting, if we tell them what questions to ask us, and what documentation to ask for.
In the same vein, I believe others need to be able to explain their fields to people. I see it all the time in claims. Construction people need to be able to explain what the damage was and how much it would cost. If a highly technical piece of equipment is damaged, you need people who know about that piece of equipment. If people who know about stuff can't talk about it to people who don't really know about it, then there's going to be huge communication problems.
I once gave a presentation in my deviant behavior class regarding financial statement fraud. I don't think it went very well, because nobody asked any questions. Either I wasn't engaging (probably) or they just didn't care like I do about what happened at Enron and what it means to the accounting field, and to corporations in general.
But I had to go out of my way to do a report such as that in a sociology class. I'm pretty sure everyone else in most of my electives were criminal justice majors, so I ended up tutoring them too.
What I'm saying is that, in my curriculum as an accountant, I learned how to speak in the accounting language. But there was no course that taught how to relate that back to people in other fields, specifically managers. Now, in a college with accounting and business managment majors, one would think that they would do something to teach accountants to speak with the business management types.
I consider myself extremely lucky, because I became a tutor. Most of my tutoring time was spent with management students teaching them how to understand accounting. I assumed at that time that most of my working career would be spent keeping track of things and then telling managers what was going on with those things.
Of course, I didn't end up in that field at all. But now, I am in a field where I am constantly writing reports to people who don't necessarily have a good understanding of accounting. So I have to be able to break down what we did, why we did it, and how that's better than what the other guy did. A good attorney or adjuster doesn't need to know accounting, if we tell them what questions to ask us, and what documentation to ask for.
In the same vein, I believe others need to be able to explain their fields to people. I see it all the time in claims. Construction people need to be able to explain what the damage was and how much it would cost. If a highly technical piece of equipment is damaged, you need people who know about that piece of equipment. If people who know about stuff can't talk about it to people who don't really know about it, then there's going to be huge communication problems.
I once gave a presentation in my deviant behavior class regarding financial statement fraud. I don't think it went very well, because nobody asked any questions. Either I wasn't engaging (probably) or they just didn't care like I do about what happened at Enron and what it means to the accounting field, and to corporations in general.
But I had to go out of my way to do a report such as that in a sociology class. I'm pretty sure everyone else in most of my electives were criminal justice majors, so I ended up tutoring them too.
One thing that I got bit for early was that I wasn't talking to end users in a manner where they could understand me. I mean, come on, why should a highly intelligent person assume that everyone else that he speaks to wasn't his intellectual equal? Sarcasm aside, I was young and dumb (on an interpersonal level, at least). Nerds of the world UNITE!