116,000.

That’s about how many CFA level 1 exams will be taken in 2017.  For the first time, the curriculum includes introductory material in corporate governance and ESG analysis.*

Snooze-city! you are saying. I barely followed the CFA curriculum when I was a candidate; why should I care now?

Sometimes the most innocuous changes have the biggest long term effects. Look at the classic Dana Meadows Leverage Points framework: the most powerful mega-layers like “goals of a system” and “mindset out of which a system arises” are the hardest to pin down. How do you change a norm?

One way is, you test for it. Within the year, if you don’t know what ESG means, you will be one step behind in earning the finance profession’s official expert designation.

When I was studying for the exam years ago, the pension accounting standards were still pretty new, and a big new section of the test was based on that material. You can bet that I studied it, and that folks around the office expected all of us to understand it.

So boring.

And maybe, over time, a Big Deal.

 * CFA = Chartered Financial Analyst.  ESG = environmental, social, governance.