Evaluation Of The Professional Competence Of Certified Public Accountants

The Chinese Institute of Certified Public Accountants promulgated the guide forprofessional competence of Chinese certified public accountant in October2007todetermine the framework of professional competence of the certified public accountant inour country, so as to improve the levels of professional competence, continuously meet theneeds of international and developmental strategy, and to guide personnel training beforeand after having qualification, as well as for the qualifying examination. However, thereare some problems in the process of promoting professional competence. For example,accounting firms and industry associations can not carry out effective training andfollow-up education because they can’t grasp the accurate professional competence levelof the certified public accountant. It leads to the existing the follow-up education andtraining not meeting the development and maintenance of professional competence.Meanwhile, there is lack of incentive evaluation system for different level of professionalcompetence. So, it is difficult to promote professional competence effectively. At the sametime, people pay little attention to professional competence measurement and evaluation.Nowadays, how to effectively measure and evaluate the professional competence hasbecome the hot topic in experts.Aiming at these problems, the author hopes to study the evaluation of certified publicaccountant professional competence in our country. The author analyzed the situation ofcertified public accountant professional competence in China take advantage ofquestionnaire and industry research data published by The Chinese Institute of CertifiedPublic Accountants. At the same time, the author studied and drew lessons fromaccounting and internal auditors, as well as other related evaluation method forprofessional competence and evaluation index system of building from the domestic andforeign. The author constructed a comprehensive and systematic evaluation index systemaccording to professional characteristics of the certified public accountant. The evaluationindex system includes six aspects. They are respectively professional knowledge,professional skills, professional ethics, practical experience, and other aspects. It contains atotal of33three-level evaluation index. Meanwhile, the author pioneering introducedanalytic hierarchy process (AHP) to determine the index weight, in order to quantify andevaluate professional competence. Pay attention to the problems found in the process ofevaluation as well as the advantage and shortage of certified public accountants for guidingtraining units, such as industrial associations, colleges and universities. At the same time, itcan promote and improve their professional competence. Through to explore and researchthe evaluation of certified public accountant professional competence in our country, thepaper provides the certain guidance and reference from two aspects of theory and practicein order to improve our country’s certified public accountants professional competence.