I met Kuvanya Pillay on Tuesday night at my post-Davos presentation in Johannesburg. She has the bright eyes Benjamin Zander harps on about – the spark, excitement and ambition that seems to be built into smart young people. Pity so many lose it with the cynicism of age. As you’ll read from her first contribution for Biznews, this young lady might have set her heart on becoming a CA, but that hasn’t affected her ability to string words together well. Our future will be shaped by the young. Hopefully Kuvanya’s contribution will encourage more of her peers to share their perspectives. – AH
By Kuvanya Pillay*
Growing up, I’ve always loved nature, my father would watch National Geographic with me every weekend. I’ve also grown up socially conscious, my mum is a social worker and she ingrained in me the hardships of others and why we had a responsibility to help them if we had the resources to do so.
However, after finishing matric, there I was, solid distinctions in the gateway subjects and unsure of what to study. It was a toss-up between engineering and law. I remembered spending a day at one of the Big 4 audit firms in grade 11, and how a fellow student (A brave young fellow) inquired if we could see the parking lot of the partners- As expected, there were shiny German Luxury cars and even a Bentley if memory serves me correctly. My friend remarked to me, “If you study engineering, you’ll be designing these beauties, but, if you study accounting, you’ll be driving them.” And so I picked accounting, at Wits. I was chasing the prospect of money.
By the beginning of 3rd year, I needed more; VAT, deferred tax, present value and the dreaded ISA’s (international standards on auditing) were… “Stomachable” but my peers in engineering were designing solar powered alarm systems, over at med-school they were cutting up cadavers and my friend who’d taken up studying education was excited at making a difference and moulding South Africa’s young minds.
The only difference I could hope to achieve was from my 2nd year ethics class; (a five month course, hosted by a philosophy lecturer who adopted a disdainful view of the corporate world, and his social skills were most uninspiring.) His message was clear, “Whistleblowers were good, corporations bad. Don’t indulge in insider trading and if you witness it and stand by, you’re just as bad.” Nice one, sending an ethics philosophy lecturer to teach us for 5 months  out of a 3 year degree and expecting us to have enough ethical stamina for the auditing and finance world.
Then came integrated reporting and King 3- I was blown away. This was how I would make a difference. This was the type of accounting I could go to bed thinking about. This was the theoretical framework of how I would one day do business and assess businesses by.
King 3’s triple bottom line was incredible; assessing a company on three indicators:
-financial
-environmental
-social
It gave meaning to the numbers and my academic endeavours. It made analysing a set of financial statements more holistic. Numbers will always have preference for me, they’re familiar, but how a company fairs on the GRI (Global Reporting Initiative, the current framework used for integrated reporting) matters tremendously in assessing the long term viability of the company. You can find more information about the GRI by clicking here.
Looking back, I’m glad I picked the Chartered Accounting (SA) route: Company reporting is changing rapidly and it is a very exciting field to be in, business can definitely make a difference (click here to watch the debate on “ethical capitalism”) discussed at Davos this year.
And if there’s a nice financial perk in this field too, well, we all need some self interest and motivation, auditing is hard work!
* Kuvanya Pillay is currently completing her Accounting honours at the university of the Witwatersrand, an amateur world traveller, who has a keen interest in sustainability, humanity and numbers.
