Life with the calculator, accounting standards and financial statements.
Auditing, unlike accounting, does not only depend on theory or knowledge.
It requires practicality. It requires professional skepticism. That's the fundamental aspect seniors for saw in me as an amateur.
As a novice auditor, to be honest, my reviews from four supervisors were average.
What they notice as an issue in me was the lack of continuous communication with the team and accordingly due to that, a lack of continuous reviews with the seniors been done and creating an accumulation of the audit working mistakes.
This cycle of mistakes lead to incompleteness and lack of reviews as the final outcome of my audit workings conducted.
And also personally I find my knowledge in our firm's customized tailor-made audit software (e Audit), firm based audit methodology (KPMG Audit Methodology[KAM]), Sri Lanka Accounting Standards (LKAS) and Sri Lanka Auditing Standards (SLAuS) is very low making my scope on the relevant financials is low.
And also since the inception at the firm from our partner, senior manager to the current assistant manager what they highly request is accuracy and the completeness of the workings maintaining our firm's standards in the financial service providing industry.
Since audit firms are more of an independent entity unlike other organizations, Factors like due diligence, compliance, and business ethics have a larger weight in work creating a higher focus on the internal and external stakeholders.
Academical background from professional courses and academic institutions specializing in accounting and finance is highly required.
I struggled due to my operational level competence gained from CIMA (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants) and from my other academic courses not very much specializing into areas of accounting and finance.
Life for me as an auditor and accountant have been hard due to lack of experience and skills related to the field, which is auditing and accounting, where my quality of workings and functionality as an external auditor was extremely low, compared to the peers in the firm.
I was reviewed many times to finalize my workings and to re-attach them in the tailormade audit software.
Another flaw I made was not using the calculator and practice accounting, tax and other finance-related calculations as a studied attempt frequently.
But the beauty of it is when you love what you do... you fight for it.... right?
For me, since a child, I wanted to be an accountant or a finance expert and my first year was just the beginning, it was tough but I am surviving. And hope to thrive in the field of numbers...
Cheers !!!
References
· Image: Funny accountant. Format : (Jpg) Available at http://www.123rf.com/stock-photo/audit.html?mediapopup=40278608 (Accessed at 2017/02/12)
