Chartered Accountant in the context of Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales

An accountant is a practitioner of accounting or accountancy.Accountants who have demonstrated competency through their professional associations' certification exams are certified to use titles such as Chartered Accountant, Chartered Certified Accountant or Certified Public Accountant, or Registered Public Accountant. Such professionals are granted certain responsibilities by statute, such as the ability to certify an organization's financial statements, and may be held liable for professional misconduct. Non-qualified accountants may be employed by a qualified accountant, or may work independently without statutory privileges and obligations.

Cahan & Sun (2015) used archival study to find out that accountants' personal characteristics may exert a very significant impact during the audit process and further influence audit fees and audit quality. Practitioners have been portrayed in popular culture by the stereotype of the humorless, introspective bean-counter. It has been suggested that the stereotype has an influence on those attracted to the profession with many new entrants underestimating the importance of communication skills and overestimating the importance of numeracy in the role.

Assurance service is an independent professional service, typically provided by Chartered or Certified Public Accountants or Chartered Certified Accountants, with the goal of improving information or the context of information so that decision makers can make more informed, and presumably better, decisions. Assurance services provide independent and professional opinions that reduce information risk (risk from incorrect information).

A professional accounting body is an organization or association of accountants in a particular jurisdiction. Usually a person needs to be a member of such professional body to hold out to the public of the jurisdiction as an accountant. The designations for qualified accountants vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, such as Cost and Management Accountant (CMA), Chartered Accountant (CA), Chartered Certified Accountant (CCA), Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA), Certified Public Accountant (CPA), Certified Practising Accountant (CPA), Certified Management Accountant (CMA), Chartered Management Accountant (CGMA) or Chartered Public Finance Accountant (CPFA).

Some countries have a single professional accounting body while others have several. If there is more than one body, such bodies may or may not compete with each other; in some countries, professional accounting bodies are divided according to their field of activity.