Julian Jones

BA, MSc, Ph.D

Business Partering -

In recent years, the ‘business partner’ role is gaining prominence within the profession, with mandates to create value. 

But how should we define ‘success’ in these roles? Do they seek to provide answers to the challenges you face, or might providing strict ‘answers’ to organisational challenges be counter-productive? Instead, should business partners be adept at navigating uncertainty, coordinate and mediate across multiple stakeholders?

Our professional understanding however of how expectations for value creation can be met, and the skills-set required by management accountants to be effective in these roles is relatively underdeveloped. 

This research commissioned by CIMA is part of a seedcorn funding initiative to preliminary investigate the merits and feasibility of an approach (called ‘Maieutic thinking^*’) to understand how finance business partners create value. 

BMAN 20140: Intermediate Management Accounting, first semester

BMAN 20812: Business Strategy, second semester

BMAN 31040: Advanced Management Accounting, second semester

BMSW61111: AMBS / Kelley School of Business, Indiana University- New virtual module

MBSW: Business Accounting & Finance, New in July 2017 

Best Lecturer, Faculty of Humanities (2016) organised by the National Union of Students

I utilise technology to enhance engage with large classes and to provide an additional route to provide formative feedback.  I also embed e-learning applications in the level-3 curriculum to help learners contextualise business prior to attending classroom based lectures.

Qualitative Research Techniques

Dr Julian W Jones started his career at the School, completing a Ph.D. in Financial Strategy whilst working on a number of research programmes for the ICAEW and teaching Management Accounting & Business Strategy. 

Julian then left academia to take up a position in practice. In this advisory role with Chief Financial Officers of corporations in +$1bn organizations, Julian worked with over 400 CFOs, advising them on a range of challenges from instilling cost discipline, M&A value capture, finance transformation, capital discipline, strategic planning and managing in a crisis.  He was the firms’ headline presenter at the firm’s prestigious annual executive retreats; a forum brining influential groups of CFOs who together, often with collective revenues greater than the GDP of entire nations.

He is focused on influencing the pedagogy of accounting education.  He constructs innovative ways of providing formative feedback to large classes. He is also a firm advocate of using in-class polling as a means of better engaging with groups of largely international learners, and helps learners contextualise their learning via e-learning apps that showcase live business and accounting challenges prior to attending class.

In addition to creating and delivering bespoke programmes for executives, Julian has devised and delivered accounting based education across the School’s global centres. He also teaches on a range of undergraduate management accounting and strategy programmes, and has created a new virtual MBA Accounting module to support the School’s joint venture with Kelley School of Business, Indiana University.