By Dr. Liad Ortar
Over the past decade, sustainability reporting has undergone a remarkable transformation. What was once a largely voluntary exercise focused on corporate responsibility narratives has evolved into a highly structured and increasingly regulated discipline. Today, sustainability reporting sits at the intersection of corporate strategy, governance, risk management, accounting, data management, and assurance. Yet while reporting requirements have matured at extraordinary speed, the education and training ecosystem supporting the professionals responsible for these disclosures has not kept pace.
As a senior manager engaged in various educational initiatives in EFRAG, I have the privilege of engaging with a diverse range of stakeholders across Europe and beyond, including companies, auditors, consultants, educators, regulators, and aspiring sustainability professionals. One observation consistently emerges from these interactions: demand for sustainability reporting expertise is growing exponentially, but the pathways to acquire that expertise remain fragmented, inconsistent, and often inadequate for the complexity of the task at hand.
The time has come to acknowledge a simple reality: sustainability reporting is no longer merely a competency. It is becoming a profession. And professions require professional education.
A new reporting era requires new professionals
The implementation of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), the ISSB standards, and the growing expansion of assurance requirements have fundamentally changed the nature of sustainability reporting.
Organizations are now expected to produce information that is decision-useful, reliable, auditable, and comparable. Sustainability disclosures are increasingly scrutinized by investors, financial institutions, regulators, customers, and civil society. Errors, omissions, or poor-quality reporting can create significant financial, legal, and reputational consequences.
This is no longer a communications exercise.
Preparing sustainability disclosures today requires mastery of materiality assessments, data governance, internal controls, value-chain considerations, environmental and social metrics, regulatory interpretation, and assurance readiness. These are not skills that can be fully acquired through a two-day workshop or a collection of disconnected online courses.
Nevertheless, this is precisely how many practitioners are currently expected to develop their expertise.
The fragmentation problem
The market today offers many various sustainability-related certificates, training courses, webinars, executive programs, and learning platforms. Many provide valuable insights. Many are developed by highly qualified experts. However, taken collectively, they resemble an educational marketplace rather than an educational system.
Professionals frequently build their knowledge through a patchwork approach: a climate course from one provider, an ESG reporting certification from another, a webinar on double materiality, and perhaps an assurance training program from a third organization.
While this approach may provide exposure to individual topics, it often fails to cultivate the integrated competencies required in practice.
No one would expect a financial accountant to become qualified through a collection of unrelated short courses. We would not rely on a fragmented accumulation of certificates to certify the competence of auditors, lawyers, engineers, or medical professionals. Yet this remains the dominant model for sustainability reporting education.
As reporting requirements become more sophisticated, this gap between market expectations and educational preparation becomes increasingly difficult to ignore.
Sustainability reporting is inherently interdisciplinary
One of the reasons sustainability reporting education remains challenging is that the discipline itself is inherently multidisciplinary.
A modern sustainability reporting professional must be capable of understanding and connecting diverse fields of knowledge.
They must understand reporting standards and disclosure requirements. They must comprehend sustainability impacts, risks, and opportunities. They need familiarity with governance structures, risk management systems, internal control frameworks, and assurance principles. Increasingly, they must also navigate digital reporting, data management systems, and emerging technologies.
In many respects, sustainability reporting professionals are expected to bridge the worlds of sustainability, accounting, finance, law, and technology.
The breadth of knowledge required today is substantial. More importantly, the challenge is not merely acquiring knowledge in each field but integrating them into a coherent professional practice.
This integration is largely absent from most current educational offerings.
The emergence of the sustainability accountant
Perhaps the most important shift that needs to occur is conceptual.
We need to stop thinking about sustainability reporting as a collection of skills and start recognizing it as a professional discipline.
Financial reporting gave rise to professional accountants. Financial assurance gave rise to auditors. Legal compliance gave rise to legal professionals.
Sustainability reporting is now creating the need for another distinct professional identity: the sustainability accountant.
The sustainability accountant is more than a sustainability expert and more than a traditional accountant. This professional understands sustainability impacts and business strategy while simultaneously mastering reporting frameworks, governance processes, data quality requirements, and assurance expectations.
Their role is to translate complex sustainability realities into decision-useful, reliable, and transparent disclosures.
Importantly, sustainability accountants do not replace sustainability experts, environmental scientists, human rights specialists, or financial professionals. Instead, they serve as the integrators who connect these disciplines within an organization’s reporting and decision-making processes.
As organizations continue to strengthen their sustainability reporting functions, the demand for such professionals will only grow.
Building an educational infrastructure for the profession
If we accept that sustainability reporting is becoming a profession, then we must also accept that it requires the educational foundations of a profession.
This means moving beyond isolated courses and developing comprehensive learning pathways.
Universities should begin establishing dedicated undergraduate and graduate programs focused on sustainability accounting and reporting. Business schools should integrate sustainability reporting into core accounting, finance, governance, and management curricula rather than treating it as an elective topic.
Professional bodies should develop structured qualification pathways with clearly defined competencies and learning outcomes. Continuous professional development should become an integral component of maintaining expertise in a field characterized by rapid regulatory and technical evolution.
At the same time, employers should begin to reconsider how they evaluate sustainability reporting expertise. Rather than relying solely on lists of certificates, organizations should focus on demonstrated competence against recognized professional standards.
Most mature professions are built upon four pillars: a defined body of knowledge, formal education, professional qualification, and continuing development. Sustainability reporting should be no different.
A call for collective action
This transformation cannot be achieved by any single institution.
Universities, professional bodies, standard setters, regulators, employers, and training providers all have a role to play in creating a more coherent educational ecosystem.
The objective should not be to replace the many valuable training initiatives that already exist. Rather, it should be to integrate them into structured pathways that support professional development from entry-level education through advanced specialization.
As someone working at the intersection of sustainability reporting standards and education, I am increasingly convinced that the next major challenge facing our field is not the development of new reporting requirements. It is the development of the human capital necessary to implement them effectively.
The reporting frameworks are advancing rapidly. Assurance expectations are increasing. Regulatory requirements continue to expand.
Our educational systems must evolve with equal ambition.
Conclusion
The sustainability reporting profession stands at a critical moment in its evolution. Over the past decade, we have focused considerable effort on developing standards, frameworks, regulations, and methodologies. These achievements have laid the foundation for more transparent and reliable sustainability disclosures.
The next stage of maturity requires an equally important investment: the professionalization of sustainability reporting education.
The future cannot be built on fragmented learning and disconnected certificates alone.
If society expects sustainability information to reach the same levels of rigor, reliability, and accountability as financial information, then the professionals responsible for preparing that information deserve equally robust educational pathways.
The profession of sustainability accounting is emerging before our eyes.
Now it is time to build the educational infrastructure that will allow it to flourish.
The author is Senior Technical Manager, EFRAG
