An Examination of Accounting Students' Perceptions of the Importance of Communication Skills in Public Accounting.

Abstract This paper reports on a study of accounting students' opinions of the importance of communication skills to being successful in a public accounting environment. The method of paired comparisons was used to elicit students' rankings of a set of factors. The results show that accounting students perceive writing skills as being a relatively unimportant determinant of success In a public accounting firm. Oral communication skills were perceived as being moderately important. Previous research has shown that practitioners perceive both written and oral communication skills to be very important for being successful in public accounting. This apparent discrepancy between the views of practitioners and students may have important implications for the education of accounting students.