Analyzing eight emerging topics and their importance to career success

The inclusion of eight emerging topics on future Certified Public Accounting (CPA) exams challenges educators to prioritize these topics in the accounting curriculum. We analyze the emerging topics and discuss their importance and appropriate teaching locus in light of survey evidence collected from professionals. The results support the preeminence of data analytics above other emerging accounting topics and show the relative importance of other topics based on their statistically significant differences. The results are helpful as educators make decisions about where to teach particular topics as well as their relative emphasis. To augment the analysis, we also examine factors that influence professionals’ judgement of the importance of data analytics to career success and find a positive relationship between years of experience and data analytics importance.