[mathattack]

Think of it as Accounting is how you keep score, Finance is how you justify strategy. For better or worse you have to learn financial accounting first. I’ve been unable to learn it on my own - I needed to take courses. If you don’t want to be a full time accountant, where you take the courses doesn’t matter. The material is the same. Finance my require coursework or book learning, but you can advance a lot on your own if you have the basics. Just apply NPV and ROInto everything you see. You didn’t mention Econ, but most senior execs think in terms of Micro. Supply and Demand.