Sustainability expertise is yours – for FREE

Sustainability is now a priority for forward-thinking businesses, and CAs are playing an increasingly important role in identifying, managing and reporting key risks and opportunities. Boards are turning to finance professionals to translate complex issues into meaningful business insights, supporting better decision-making and helping organisations navigate their path to net zero.

As a result, ICAS has launched a new series of sustainability CPD courses. All five are free and available exclusively to ICAS members. These practical learning opportunities will build your expertise in sustainability, ESG (environmental, social and governance) reporting, climate-related issues, nature and biodiversity, and sustainability assurance.

“Sustainability has become part and parcel of core business activities,” says course creator and ICAS Sustainability Committee member Rachel Jackson. “CAs are encountering it in more aspects of their work and need to understand the rapidly changing landscape. For example, in reporting, financial and sustainability information increasingly needs to be interconnected and consistent. If equipped with a good understanding of sustainability, CAs are perfectly placed to do this, supporting their organisation and boosting their own career development.”

“Sustainability is now part of mainstream accounting practice. The courses show how this is already happening, how the CA’s role is evolving and how members can apply their existing professional skills”

Rachel is a highly experienced sustainability consultant who specialises in advising the accountancy profession. “The relationship between sustainability and accounting has evolved enormously over the 25 years or so that I’ve worked in this field,” she says. “When I first became professionally involved, sustainability was often seen as the responsibility of a corporate responsibility team and viewed as an add-on. Today, it is much more integrated across organisations, and finance teams play a central role.

“Sustainability reporting requires strong data systems, and draws on skills such as measurement, judgement, reporting and assurance. As members of executive teams, today’s CFOs have the opportunity to influence board-level decisions on issues such as investment, risk and long-term resilience. Sustainability is now integral to strategy, performance and decision-making – and therefore to the work of the accounting profession.”

Pick and choose

Working closely with the ICAS sustainability and digital learning teams, Rachel has planned, curated and written the content for the five courses, ensuring the material aligns with the ICAS syllabus and policy positions. Together, the courses provide a broad understanding of the subject, but members are free to take them individually, choosing those most relevant to their role or interests.

Designed to be accessible and relevant across all sectors and career stages, the courses provide knowledge and skills that can be applied immediately and revisited regularly as a reference resource. They also help participants keep pace with sustainability and ESG expectations while contributing to CPD requirements.

“A key part of the process has been achieving consistency across the series – each course needs to work individually, while also fitting together coherently,” says Rachel. “The courses also need to be accessible to members who are relatively new to sustainability, while still offering sufficient depth and technical detail for those with more experience. Keeping participants engaged is obviously very important, so we include real-life examples and a wide variety of ways of presenting the material to make it relevant and appealing to CAs.

“The courses provide a broad and practical understanding of sustainability, its relevance to the profession and the important contribution accountants can make,” she adds. “The central message running through the series is that sustainability is now part of mainstream accounting practice. The courses show how this is already happening, how the role of the CA is evolving and how members can apply their existing professional skills to these emerging areas of work.”

As well as being the course creator, Rachel has been on the ICAS Sustainability Committee since 2016. “I wanted to join because ICAS has shown real ambition in this area,” she says. “Sustainability, for example, is now embedded within the education of ICAS students, helping them develop the knowledge and skills they need to make a difference.”

She also points to the the annual Sustainability Summit as core to building consensus in this space.

“They bring members together with businesses, policymakers and experts to explore emerging themes and developments. ICAS’ commitment to achieving net zero, along with policy positions such as its support for double materiality, has also been an important part of that work.”

These five sustainability courses are free and exclusive to ICAS members. Book your place on the courses here
ICAS Sustainability Summit 2026 is on 7 October. Book your place here