Paul Andon
Business Professor. Higher education leader.
UNSW has been my professional home for more than two decades. Over that time, I have had the privilege of contributing to the Business School’s success through senior leadership roles, including:
Interim Dean;
Senior Deputy Dean (Education and Student Experience);
Faculty Academic Lead; and
Head of School, Deputy Head of School, and Director of Engagement for the School of Accounting, Auditing and Taxation.
These roles have involved leading large teams, major education reform, and institution-wide initiatives during periods of both growth and change.
Alongside my institutional leadership, my academic career has been shaped by international research collaborations and visiting appointments that have given me a global perspective what a leading business school in global top-20 university should aspire to.
My career achievements and ambitions sit at the intersection of three passions: transformative education for the future of business, impactful research advancing the accounting profession, and harnessing rapidly advancing technologies for responsible business leadership and success.
Education Leadership
As a higher education leader, I've overseen substantial reforms across both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. This includes establishing a faculty-wide AI Direction with tailored discipline-level action plans, leading a comprehensive reimagining of professional accounting curriculum, and overseeing the development of leading-edge specialisations, including in Business AI, Sustainability and Social Impact, and a CPA professional pathway.
Throughout this work, one commitment has remained constant: preparing graduates for a world being fundamentally reshaped by technology and the evolving expectations of what employers expect, while ensuring their education stays rigorous, relevant, and grounded in real-world impact.
Research
My research has focused on sites of accounting controversy, to study how we can strengthen business practice and advance the accounting profession. This means exploring contexts like fraud, crisis and contested change to generate insights that help us better understand how accounting really shapes organisational life. Not through clean theoretical abstractions. But in the messy realities where practices meet people, pressure and context.
This research has immersed me in a range of business contexts. It has also has taken me into prisons across Australia, where I've interviewed serious fraud offenders to understand how and why people cross lines that cost organisations and society trillions of dollars globally each year. I've also examined issues in performance and algorithmic management, assurance in emerging domains, and critical questions of professional governance and accountability.
Partnerships and Engagement
I have extensively partnered with industry, government and professional bodies. This includes global and sector organisations such as BDO, CPA Australia, McGrathNicol and Xero, to address system-level challenges spanning business capability, financial integrity, regulation and workforce transformation.
I regularly contribute to senior professional and academic forums and engage with national media, to help shape important conversations about business education, AI, workforce skills, leadership, and the evolving nature of knowledge work.
I'm both proud and honoured that my industry connections extend through being a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand and a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
