An army would not go to war without a full complement of weapons, munitions, food and maps. Similarly, an auditor would not go into the audit room without some essential kit.

1) Blue, black, red and green pens – The most standard of audit tools, since the staple work involves marking up of schedules, invoices and other paper-based evidence. A red tick against a particular number says clearly that:

• it agrees to the same number somewhere else in the accounts
• it agrees to some other firm evidence
• all is well in the accounting world

Auditors can demonstrate their creative side by using different coloured pens for different tick marks. The height of the auditors art is a multi-ticked and multi-coloured A3 Excel spreadsheet. However, the art is dying with the introduction of paper-less audit.

Before then, the debate rages between owners of single four-coloured pens and owners of four pens of different colour. The four-coloured pen is more useful, but it is more expensive and the auditor becomes impotent if it’s lost.

2) Second screen – Immensely useful. Second screens can be used to compare two documents, transfer information, or display different windows – like having email on one side and the internet on the other.

Unfortunately, carrying around a second screen on your back, in the tube on the way to a client is not practical. However, a second screen has other fringe benefits. Colleagues will wonder how you can use both eyes to focus on two separate screens (like a fighter pilot). It will make you appear 10% more intelligent and advanced.

3) Numpad – On average, an auditor will type out 1,456 numbers a day. Using the numbers at the top of the keyboard takes 0.4 seconds longer than using a numpad. That’s a potential saving of 9.7 minutes a day.

Auditors probably shouldn’t make up facts and numbers.

4) iPod – Music helps you audit, especially Taylor Swift.

5) Jedi powers – Fancy equipment makes not an auditor. It is his experience and knowledge that add the value. Good auditors work out where the adding error occurred without use of a calculator. They manipulate Excel spreadsheets by the keyboard alone. They instantly recall the most obscure of numbers from one page out of a thousand in a five year old audit file. They bring calm to the audit room. They are the Audit Jedi Masters.

The audit profession is easily misunderstood and unjustly feared. The “How to Audit” series aims to give an insight into the world of audit while abiding by professional, legal and ethical standards.

Picture the scene: You are at a party and meet someone new. You ask for their name, which is pointless because you forget it instantly. You move onto the next question: “Where do you work?”. Fortunately for you, the person is not unemployed but does say that they are an auditor.

Suddenly, you have no intelligent follow up questions, and are struggling not to make a joke about calculators. You force yourself a polite smile and comment that it is a “nice” job. However, you actually end up communicating that you think the other person is as interesting as beige. Talking stops and you both separate and get on with the rest of your lives.

This is where you need “insider questions”. Every profession has its own vocabulary, key concepts and idiosyncrasies. Learning a few key questions will make you sound intelligent and have great conversation. However, use insider questions sparingly before you are discovered to be a fraud. Do move the conversation on to mutually interesting topics, such as the weather.

The insider questions for auditors

1) Busy season – Auditors will do a great deal of their work from January to April, often without holiday. This is because audits are conducted after the end of the financial year. This is 31 December for most companies. Mentioning these two words to an auditor will either get them talking enthusiastically or crying endlessly – be prepared.

2) Exams – This is a classic question. Every auditor has gone / is going through exam trauma. Myriad questions can be asked: Which institute?; How many exams they have passed so far?; How many exams left?; How many attempts before getting fired?; Which calculator they use in an exam?

Be sure to mention that you couldn’t work and study full time and that they are making the noblest of sacrifices.

3) Longest hours worked – Every auditor will have their personal story of the nightmare client with the 100 hour week in a tiny conference room that smelled a bit. These are the scars of audit and are worn as badges of honour. Do ask an auditor about their worst job.

4) Funny audit room moments – Cramped conference rooms, long hours, stress and green pens have a strange effect on the auditor’s brain.

5) Cool clients – Not all clients are widget manufacturers. There are interesting audit clients. Just think, for every chocolate factory and theme park there is an auditor having fun.

Pens – the key to audit. Photo taken by atomicShed

Questions to be avoided

Certain questions will annoy the auditor. Use these with care:

1) Jokes about counting beans – This instantly shows your ignorance of what auditors actually do. Bean counters are actually “mere” bookkeepers. Audit is more interesting than that. We check that the annual bean report is correct in terms of number, size, type and weight. And only the larger beans are checked, the small beans are ignored.

2) Asking for confidential information – This is illegal. However, if the auditor acquiesces to you “well-intentioned” joke then immediately phone the Metropolitan Police on 0300 123 1212. Make sure you take a photograph and then run to the nearest safe house until the danger has passed.  

3) Mentioning the tax year – There is merit in knowing that the personal tax year runs until 05 April. However, this date is irrelevant to auditors because they are only concerned with companies. If you try to work this date into a conversation the auditor will start a long and uninteresting ramble on the meaninglessness of 05 April.

4) Posing maths questions – Friends have yelled a series of numbers at me and expected rapid mental arithmetic/calculus. This is a no-win situation for the auditor. Either we’ll get it correct and it is nothing special or get it wrong and look incompetent. Reality is that these days, auditors rely calculators and Excel spreadsheets, even mental calculations are double-checked using a calculator. 

5) Why audit? – Auditing is not a traditional childhood aspiration. This question might expose a graduate’s lack of imagination in choosing a career or a personal desire for a stable income. However, numbers are the great desire for some, but would that be admitted in public?

Do insider questions work?

Insider questions are useful. Last week, I tested out some over dinner with 11 junior doctors and a dentist. I asked questions about the hours and interesting/dangerous patients. After a while, I did try to move the conversation beyond work by asking about non-work activities.

This is important to avoid being exposed as a fraud. But more importantly, no-one really wants to talk so much about work. It’s a Western cultural quirk that the second question we ask is: “where do you work?”. We define ourselves by our work but it is not where our passions lie.

Sadly, the reply to the question was: “I don’t have any spare time”.

The insider questions idea is taken from “How to Talk to Anyone” by Leil Lowndes.

The whole Monday afternoon got wiped out getting home to Liverpool. All due to some small errors:

• Not leaving enough time to go to the post office and then finding a queue of ten people with only three staff working. This gives a ratio of 3.3. My personal rule is, if the ratio is more than 2 then it is not worth waiting. This rule does not apply at theme parks.
• I got to New Cross station and found late and cancelled trains. I really should have checked the National Rail website before I set off, but I had got used to the trains being very reliable. However, the combination of a new timetable and icy conditions meant that New Cross station had been like this all week. Ironically, the new timetable increased the frequency of trains.
• And I should have got a taxi back home. The train was slow and the walk home was covered in ice. Not easy with a suitcase.

Actually, writing about the journey home is an excuse for me to publish a photo which I took today:

While admiring the view, I asked the question: who got my work Secret Santa gift?

A bet for Liverpool to win the FA Cup AND for England to win the World Cup. I should be £125 richer at the end of July. As a clue, the accompanying card reads: “Miracles do happen at Christmas”.