The Accountant-May-June 2017

PEN OFF
DO YOU KNOW
HOW TO LISTEN?
By FCPA Jim McFie, a Fellow of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Kenya
The Institute of Internal
Auditors has extensive notes
on interpersonal skills. Why?
Because most of the work
internal auditors do requires
dealing with others, individually and in
groups. But the same can be said of external
auditors, management accountants, chief
financial officers and finance directors.
Interpersonal skills are not just the skills
involved in communicating with others,
but also self-awareness and the ability to
interpret information, manage change and
solve problems. Communication as a skill
is a ‘meta-competence’ underpinning your
ability to perform your duties.
The accountant needs skills in receiving
and interpreting messages from a range
of channels. There are two basic types of
channels: reading and listening: being
a good listener and reader will help you
interpret and respond to messages more
effectively. I want to concentrate on
listening.
The average human has an eightsecond
attention span. With electronic
distractions competing for your time and
an abundance of responsibilities at work, it
can make listening attentively to someone
else speaking difficult.
“We are living in a time when it’s
more challenging to be consistently aware
and intentional because so many things
are demanding our attention. Our brains
haven’t caught up with the technology
that’s feeding them,” says Scott Eblin,
author of ‘Overworked and Overwhelmed:
The Mindfulness Alternative’: the impact
of this leaves people in a chronic condition
of fight or flight.”
It is important to remember that one
acquires new data and new information
by listening. “Often, whether realizing it
or not, people listen to each other out of
generosity, not out of curiosity,” says Ajit
Singh, partner for the early stage venture
fund Artiman Ventures and consulting
professor in the School of Medicine at
Stanford University. “Listening is good,
but the intent has to be curiosity, not
generosity. True dialogue does not happen
when we pretend to listen, and it certainly
cannot happen if we are not listening at
all.”“Each day, ask yourself, ‘What am
I going to be curious about?’” says Hal
Gregersen, executive director of the MIT
Leadership Center. “Stewart Brand, editor
of the ‘Whole Earth Catalogue’, wakes
up every day asking himself, ‘How many
things am I dead wrong about?’ Both
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