Depending on the company you work for, sometimes learning to code as a designer IS good business practice :-) But I have to agree about understanding business and its importance. In a lot of ways, user experience design is not so much a practice of “empathy” as it is “good business”. …I’m sure I will get slack for this comment, but I’ve been a business-minded designer before entering this area of expertise, and the parallels are pretty clear. It’s also good leveraging to explain design decisions and UX processes in business terms, especially if you’re unable to convince decision makers by way of “empathy evangelism”.