The journey to becoming a well rounded accountant

The golden thread from our interview with Chwayita Deliwe about her career is that it takes more than just accounting skills to make an excellent accountant. Deliwe is a director and co-founder of CN Outsourced Finance, an entirely black women-owned accounting practice.  

This interview is part of a series of profiles Accounting Weekly is publishing in celebration of Women’s Month.   

On the best advice that Deliwe has received 

“Great advice often came from people who didn’t like me that much,” says Deliwe.  

One piece of advice was to heed soft skills, particularly people skills. “As accountants, we like sitting in the corner, focusing on spreadsheets, you know, number crunching. And you can be very mean to people because, finance has a lot of power in most organizations,” says Deliwe. However, this can be detrimental, especially when you have to rely on the goodwill of others when seeking promotion.  

Stakeholders can end up saying, “No, she’s very mean, she’s not relatable and all of that.”  

A complementary skill is to try and be more extroverted. “I was applying for a job, and I took this quiz which asked: ‘do you most often introduce people or do people introduce you?’ I thought I never introduced people.” This prompted Deliwe to rethink her approach. “I made an effort not to be an introvert but a people’s person.” 

Women that Deliwe looks up to 

Deliwe cites Dr Brigalia Bam, the former chairperson of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), as someone she looks admires. Deliwe recalls watching elections and seeing this powerful woman who converses with presidents and yet maintains her independence.  

Deliwe has gone on to meet and become well acquainted with Dr Bam. “What I’ve learned about her is she’s intelligent and that she’s very good with people.” She also admires the NGO work Dr Bam has done.  

On the decision Deliwe is proudest of 

Deliwe believes starting her MBA was one of the best decisions she has made because it expanded her professional world and manner of thinking. 

“I’ve always studied accounting, auditing and then gone on to work in that space for a corporate. You think finance people are the only people who exist in life. Then when studying an MBA, that’s where you meet doctors, engineers, people who are totally different to you,” says Deliwe, who credits this exposure with broadening her world.  

Even ten years after completing her MBA, Deliwe is still reaping the benefits. “They are actually still in my network. They give us a lot of jobs or refer us for work.” 

In addition, Deliwe explains the primary benefit of an MBA is not the technical skills learnt but that it imparts a particular way of thinking to you.