Training in practice guidelines
The Big Four professional accounting firms represent the largest and most successful providers of business and financial services in the world today. In recognition of the fact that our qualification is used increasingly by a number of these firms as one of the main professional qualifications for their business and financial advisers, we have produced training guidelines for CIMA students and their training managers.
These guidelines are intended to assist you in identifying the areas in these firms that provide opportunities to obtain relevant practical experience, and to plan training programmes accordingly. They consist of three downloadable documents:
Practical experience opportunities within larger professional accounting practices (PDF 22KB)
A chart showing activities performed by the various firms, indicating within which areas our various practical experience elements might be obtained. The practice areas are described in general terms rather than in the particular terminology used by individual firms.
Examples of practical experience opportunities in specific areas (PDF 65KB)
Three examples of how appropriate experience can be gained in specific practice areas (audit, management consultancy and corporate finance). Individual elements of experience have been further classified into the following categories:
- core skills/activities that are an integral part of your day-to day work
- experience that can be obtained on specific types of projects/assignments
- experience that cannot be obtained as part of your everyday activities, but can be gained through a secondment (either to another area of the firm or to a client)
Achieving practical experience in a professional accounting practice – training outcomes (PDF 29KB)
In planning your practical experience programmes, you should take account of the purpose of our practical experience requirements rather than just using the activities quoted, as these are simply examples of suitable experience and are not exhaustive.
We recognise that the work of a professional firm is structured very differently from that of an industrial/commercial company, being largely project-based rather than function-based. It is therefore more likely that you will gain experience of a range of activities through a particular project, which may be of short duration, rather than by spending significant blocks of time performing a specific function. This will be taken into account when assessing your career profile.
