Judgement is not a soft skill
Judgement is not a soft skill
By Rowan Malherbe, Academy Principal, BDO Academy
There's a quiet assumption running through most graduate training in finance: get the technical foundation right, and the rest follows with time. I don't think that's true, and I think believing it costs firms more than they realise.
The graduates I meet are, on the whole, technically well prepared. They know the standards. They can recite the frameworks. Most have been drilled on exactly the kind of scenario-based questions that show up in professional exams. What's far less consistent is something exams don't really test: judgement. Knowing which framework actually applies to the specific, slightly messy situation in front of you. Knowing when a textbook answer is technically correct but practically useless. Knowing how to explain a decision to a client who has no interest in the standard behind it, only in what it means for their business.
That's not a knowledge gap. It's an experience gap, and the two get treated as if they're the same problem, solvable with the same fix: more content, more modules, more hours of instruction. They're not.
Judgement is built differently. It comes from being in the room when a client pushes back on an answer and watching how someone more experienced handles it. It comes from getting something wrong in a low-stakes setting and having someone senior explain not just what was wrong, but why. It comes from repetition across real, varied situations, not from a well-structured syllabus, however comprehensive.
This is a harder thing for the profession to plan around, because it's an uncomfortable thing to admit. It means a strong academic record isn't a reliable predictor of who'll actually be good at the job in year two or three. In my experience, it often isn't. I've worked with graduates who were exceptional on paper and genuinely struggled in front of a client, not because they didn't know the technical answer, but because they'd never had to defend one under real pressure, with real consequences attached. I've also worked with graduates who were far less polished academically and became, within a couple of years, the people junior staff went to first, because they'd built the judgement that only comes from doing the work.
None of this is an argument against technical training. Standards and frameworks matter, and nobody should be practising without a solid grip on them. But if firms want people who are genuinely ready for client work, not just qualified for it, the conversation needs to shift. Less energy spent debating what should be taught, and more spent examining how it's taught, and critically, who's doing the teaching.
There's a reason this matters more now than it did a decade ago. The pace of change in this profession, regulatory, technological, has made the old model, learn the theory first and pick up judgement later on the job, slower and more expensive than firms can really afford. Clients expect competence earlier. Teams are leaner. The runway to figure it out on the job has shortened, whether the training model has caught up or not.
I don't think there's a single fix for this. But I do think it starts with treating judgement as a skill to be built deliberately, not a byproduct that eventually shows up once someone's technically qualified. That's a harder thing to build a curriculum around. It's also the thing that actually determines who's ready for the work, and who just looks ready on paper.
There's a quiet assumption running through most graduate training in finance: get the technical foundation right, and the rest follows with time. I don't think that's true, and I think believing it costs firms more than they realise.
The graduates I meet are, on the whole, technically well prepared. They know the standards. They can recite the frameworks. Most have been drilled on exactly the kind of scenario-based questions that show up in professional exams. What's far less consistent is something exams don't really test: judgement. Knowing which framework actually applies to the specific, slightly messy situation in front of you. Knowing when a textbook answer is technically correct but practically useless. Knowing how to explain a decision to a client who has no interest in the standard behind it, only in what it means for their business.
That's not a knowledge gap. It's an experience gap, and the two get treated as if they're the same problem, solvable with the same fix: more content, more modules, more hours of instruction. They're not.
Judgement is built differently. It comes from being in the room when a client pushes back on an answer and watching how someone more experienced handles it. It comes from getting something wrong in a low-stakes setting and having someone senior explain not just what was wrong, but why. It comes from repetition across real, varied situations, not from a well-structured syllabus, however comprehensive.
This is a harder thing for the profession to plan around, because it's an uncomfortable thing to admit. It means a strong academic record isn't a reliable predictor of who'll actually be good at the job in year two or three. In my experience, it often isn't. I've worked with graduates who were exceptional on paper and genuinely struggled in front of a client, not because they didn't know the technical answer, but because they'd never had to defend one under real pressure, with real consequences attached. I've also worked with graduates who were far less polished academically and became, within a couple of years, the people junior staff went to first, because they'd built the judgement that only comes from doing the work.
None of this is an argument against technical training. Standards and frameworks matter, and nobody should be practising without a solid grip on them. But if firms want people who are genuinely ready for client work, not just qualified for it, the conversation needs to shift. Less energy spent debating what should be taught, and more spent examining how it's taught, and critically, who's doing the teaching.
There's a reason this matters more now than it did a decade ago. The pace of change in this profession, regulatory, technological, has made the old model, learn the theory first and pick up judgement later on the job, slower and more expensive than firms can really afford. Clients expect competence earlier. Teams are leaner. The runway to figure it out on the job has shortened, whether the training model has caught up or not.
I don't think there's a single fix for this. But I do think it starts with treating judgement as a skill to be built deliberately, not a byproduct that eventually shows up once someone's technically qualified. That's a harder thing to build a curriculum around. It's also the thing that actually determines who's ready for the work, and who just looks ready on paper.