In my career as an accountant I faced both situations. My accounting knowlege is mostly self taught, I have a GED and some college. I had to take some accounting classes for a promotion in a bank and I did what was asked of me. Years later in a communications company I was facing another promotion situation and did not want to go to school again. Instead I took on more work without the promotion, taught myself Microsoft Access, data mining, report writing and improved my macro writing skills. Worked like a charm.