A lot of thought goes into deciding the next step. By contrast, the leaving process itself is straightforward because there are clear rituals to follow.

Note that these rituals don’t apply if you have been dishonourably sacked. Instead of a ritual there is a choice: leave quietly or burn down bridges and curse the earth on which it stood.

Giving Notice

It is considered polite to tell management that you no longer wish to serve under their command. The notice period is several months. This is negotiated around client commitments. So the actual leaving date depends on how irreplaceable you are. For the exceptionally skilled, the leaving date can be several years past mandatory retirement.

Leaving Email

Writing the leaving email is next. The recipients are copied from the previous leaving email. BCC etiquette is unhelpful here. The email contains the future destination and an emotional thanks to special colleagues. Some will have funny stories. They finish off with a contact email address.

Leaving Drinks

Leaving drinks will be arranged by to say goodbye. The leaver will put up a tab that is in portion with how many free drinks they’ve had from company socials. The best part of the night is the leaving speech. It’s delivered by a senior manager or close friend. The leaver is praised for their hard work. Then there are stories of illegal acts, drunken adventures, inappropriate behaviour and gross incompetence.

An unintended consequence of the slowdown is that leavers are holding joint events. It attracts a good crowd. However, random first year trainees will arrive early and consume the tab. Leaving speeches can take over one hour.

Final Leaving Email

The final act is sending an email just before handing back the laptop. The staff pass is taken and utterly destroyed. The unceremonious end is the start of the final paragraph of this particular career chapter.

Leavers go with different feelings and for different reasons. But, they all say one thing in common – the people will be missed most. For a profession that has no value without its people, those leavers can be a good sign.

There are many stops for exams. Some passengers will be kicked off for failing. Others will get off even if the train is moving. With great incredulity and relief, the train makes arrives at its qualification destination. Strangely, it looks like Crewe.

Crewe is regarded as the railway nexus for Western Europe. Here, you can change your career journey. The first class upgrade is complimentary. If you are unsure about where to go, then staff (aka recruitment consultants) are ready to help.

Having this choice is a marked contrast from the fixed path trainees have been used to. It is probably the first major career decision. Going through the education system is a broadly fixed path. Choices were dictated by parents. Attainment came from parental pressure and self expectation.

A training contract continues this fixed path. The difference is that you pay more taxes than at university. It’s a valuable first-time experience of the business world. However, at the end of it is the time to decide and specialise on a career.

For the time poor qualified-accountant, this blog post is a quick guide to your career choices.

Take a Plane

The Big 4 is a good option for living abroad because of secondments to overseas offices. The interview process is less onerous because it’s internal. There is support for work visas and moving costs. You maintain a professional job without any retraining.

The disadvantage is that all countries outside Europe work harder and have less holiday. You’ll find that the inside of a plane is the same as a train, i.e. the work is all the same.

Change Coaches

This means trying a different function within the firm. This is possible because bean counters don’t actually count beans. The majority of the Big 4’s revenue comes from consulting and tax services, not audit. The main benefit is being able to stay within the firm and try something new.

The main hurdle is making a business case saying that it is better for you to work for to earn money for a different department. Secondments are the hottest trend in the audit fashion world. This reflects Generation Y’s desire to have a variety of experiences (and to put off major decisions).

Change Trains

Aka working in industry / the client side. That is to say, being the internal preparer of accounts rather than the external checker of accounts. Generally, the work lifestyle is more stable. You perform the same tasks for the same team in the same office.

A recruitment consultant can guide you to the right job. Magically, your telephone number becomes known to 25% of recruitment consultants as soon as you qualify. The remaining 75% get your number from chain letters.

Stay Seated

In the short term, most newly-qualified auditors will stay on. The most sensible (and depressing) piece of advice I’ve been given is that I will have a long career. Due to growing life expectancies and the future insolvency of social security, I will be working for another 50 years. Changing for the sake of change is silly.

Eventually, everyone will leave audit and will usually go to industry. The timing does matter. A year in audit is worth more than a year in industry. Those with long experience in audit can move onto very senior positions. That is, more senior than those who start in industry after qualification.

Is That It?

There are wider options available to the newly qualified auditor. One is becoming an anti-capitalist anarchist. However, if that was ever a remote option, then they wouldn’t have boarded the audit train in the first place.

Text Message Waiting

The Friday afternoon wait for results strains the nerves. Most trainees will try to find an isolated hole to hide in. We were stood in a circle outside a bar in Canary Wharf. Others were enjoying a drink. We clutched our phones waiting for that message.

There are 5 unforgivable auditor pranks. Hopefully, you won’t experience the worse – having “ICAEW” replace a phone contact and being sent a deceitful text. As general guidance, do not send nervous trainees any text messages between 4:51pm and 5pm.

The ACA exams aren’t the most important exams in our lives. We wouldn’t have been to take the exams without good GCSEs, A Levels and a 2:1 university degree. The consequences of failure aren’t so dire. Once the Advance Stage (last three exams) is reached, there is no time bar and unlimited attempts (link).

However, this particular text does have greater significance and meaning. Three years of grinding stress could be over. There is the prospect of life without the threat of exam bird poop over you. The great unattainable becomes certain. Qualification.

Failure means retakes, but a retake doesn’t mean failure. Many successful partners have failed an ICAEW exam. However, the disappointment is crushing and good heart is needed to go through the same process again. Having unlimited attempts is of no comfort. More than three attempts results in begging for an attempt-limit as an act of mercy.

At 5pm, the texts came through. Gasps. Cheers. Hugs. Another check. Handshakes. A text message audit to make sure. Calls to family. A smile.

Website Hunting

After your own position is secure comes the scramble to find out if friends have made it to the same happy place. The exam results are published publically on the ICAEW website. Inevitably, it crashes at 5pm. Fortunately, we live in the age of Facebook. The newsfeed is a crash-proof and reliable information source.

The website is eventually checked because it is an important source of gossip about who failed and what they failed. Confusingly, the results are published in two lists: a Pass List and a Credit List. The pass list is for those who have passed all three Advance Stage exams. The Credit List shows the exams that have been passed for those who have not passed all three. You hope to be on the Pass List, or at least on the Credit List. Being on neither is definitely bad. You may experience shock/elation depending on the permutations of number of sittings and number of exams taken.

Who says accountancy isn’t straightforward?

The After-Party

Qualification should be the perfect reason to party and acts of exuberant celebration, such as swimming in the Trafalgar Square fountains. However, results day is often an anti-climax. Relief, rather than joy, is the dominant emotion. The fear of failure means that nothing large is organised. The mood is dampened by friends who didn’t pass.

The day after qualification feels little different from the days before. There is a quiet satisfaction from the amazing achievement of passing all 15 exams. This grows over time and brings a joy that lasts longer than a boozy night out.

Footnote:
I passed.

Definition

Auditphobia is defined as the irrational fear and ignorance of audit and its associated persons. It affects both auditors and non-auditors (who are also known as nauds).

Symptoms

In nauds, auditphobia is characterised by ignorance and half-truths. Auditors will be confused with accountants. Subsequently, nauds will ask auditors to do tax returns. This can lead to dire financial consequences, because auditors know little about personal taxation. You’d be better off filling in a tax return with the results of a bingo game.

Nauds won’t know who Big 4 are, nor realise how big they are. In 2010, combined Big 4 revenue was $95 billion (source: big4.com). In comparison, the top 10 investment banks billed $83.4m (source: ft.com).

Among finance professionals, auditors are treated with fear, pity and disdain. Unfortunately, audits are as enjoyable (and expensive) as seeing a private dentist. You’d rather do without, but your teeth may fall out.

Taken as a whole, trainee auditors have low self-esteem. Few are openly proud to be an auditor. Conversations have a cynical tone. The work is not considered terribly worthwhile. Saying someone loves audit is used as a cheap taunt.

Diagnosis

The “Enron-Anderson” test establishes if a naud suffers from auditphobia. Three out of the following need to be satisfied for a positive diagnosis:
- Ignorance of the large companies tax rates
- Fear of spreadsheets
- Physical repulsion at the sight of an auditor
- Confusing auditors with ear doctors

Causes

Research into the causes of auditphobia is, sadly, very sparse. Nauds usually suffer from child-onset auditphobia. It is often triggered while doing long division. Auditphobia is more likely if both parents are accountants. Such children usually become musical prodigies or best-selling novelists.

Finance professionals develop auditphobia while being audited. The following situations are likely to cause auditphobia:
- Having your mistakes pointed out
- Answering questions from clueless trainees
- Working overtime to get your normal work done
- Requests to compile unfeasible reports
- Answering pointless questions
- Answering hard questions

Trainee auditors will suffer from adult-onset auditphobia. Audit work is stressful, monotonous and exasperating. The exams are horribly insane. Many graduates sign up for a training contract because they can’t decide on a firm career plan. This leads to the constant and unsatisfying feeling that they should be doing something else.

Prognosis

Auditphobia helps no-one. Nauds miss out on the benefits of spreadsheets. They lack financial skills, such as budgeting, investing and avoidance of bad debt. Such skills would have prevented the credit crisis and we’d all be in a happier place. However, the bankers also lacked these skills.

For finance professionals, audits become more painful than they need to be. A good audit should mean more accurate accounts. This prevents jail-time for directors.

For trainees, auditphobia prevents contentment in work. It doesn’t have to be this way!

The Cure

Nauds can overcome auditphobia by befriending an auditor. This fosters mutual understanding and trust. Nauds can also join a NAYG (Numbers Are Your Friend) group. In time, the fear will disappear and they will gain useful financial skills.

Trainees can overcome auditphobia by gaining a proper perspective. This could involve spending a month in a Chinese textile factory. For those short on time, you should go to a busy street and proclaim “audit is good!”

I feel strange. After finishing all the ICAEW exams I do not feel ecstatically happy, but oddly disorientated. My skin is not used to so much sunlight. I am re-learning how to cope with free time. One day, I may be able to have some fun again, but such drastic change does not happen quickly.

Qualification requires taking 15 exams over a three-year training contract. They have been long, tiring and emotionally crippling. I am in a strong shock of complete relief. Three years is a long time to aim towards a single goal. You dare not think about life after qualification because the route is so fraught. 15 exams is 15 chances to fail and get fired. The consequence is work in a different spreadsheet-less profession.

So I have reached my intended destination without thinking about how I would feel. It is like hopping on a random plane at Heathrow and arriving quite bemused at Baghdad/Manchester*. Eventually, I will feel satisfied and proud. Qualification is a fantastic achievement. The following is an overview of the last three years

The 15 exams are split over 3 stages, as demonstrated by this ICAEW chart (link):

1) Knowledge Stage

The Knowledge Stage is 6 multiple-choice papers that give a background understanding. The accounting and audit papers are taken as soon as you start the training contract. The accounting paper is terrifying. Understanding double entry is like riding a bike – at some point it becomes easy and natural. You hope that point is before the end of the exam.

The other exams are more straightforward. The material is not hard and the syllabus is manageable in size. This means that it is learnt to exhaustion for no reason. There are (literally) no prizes for first place.

The oddest part of the Knowledge Stage is the ICAEW’s insistence that students use an awful calculator for the exams. The buttons have the responsiveness of a slough. An abacus would be more useful.

2) Application Stage

The 6 Application Stage papers make the knowledge stage look as easy as taking a Facebook break. They are taken about 9 into the training contract.  You are introduced to the accountant’s bible – the IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards).

These are 3.5 hour written papers. 55% is the pass mark. 1.5 minutes per mark becomes a golden rule because most failures are down to bad time-keeping.

Wobbly tables are a threat but the invigilators will provide free cardboard. You must use a ICAEW mandated pen (black ball-point), however, you can use any calculator/abacus (hurrah!).

The material is harder and learning the whole syllabus is close to unfeasible. The tax paper is especially horrid. As before there is no point revising everything to death, but there are prizes for first place – link.

3) Advanced Stage

The Advance Stage consists of the two Technical Integration (TI) papers and the Case Study. Helpfully, the pass mark is reduced to 50%.

The TI papers combines the knowledge in the application stage plus harder technical material. The tax material is especially horrid. The TI papers supersede all other exams ever taken for difficulty and time pressure. The learning of the whole syllabus is measured tortoise lifespans. Again, revising everything is impossible, however, it feels necessary in order to pass.

The TI papers (and the Case Study) are open book, so you can take anything and everything into the exam hall. To do so requires a trolley case. Unfortunately, the time required to look through it during the exam will probably result in failing.

At 4 hours, the Case Study is the longest paper. However, it is more straightforward than TI. The aim is to write a report about a company. The report uses information publish by the ICAEW before the exam and some new material during the exam. There is no technical material to learn. A few days of preparation is sufficient.  The hardest aspect is demonstrating the required report writing skills during the exam. Preparing the material to death actually increases the chance of failing.

The Journey

I won’t miss the exams, but I did enjoy college and I will miss that. The class of 2011 has journeyed through much hardship. It has cost much: in pens and paper; in evenings and weekends; and in stress and cholesterol. But for the cost, I do believe that the journey was very worthwhile.

This whole article assumes that I have passed before knowing the results. They come out in the Financial Times on 02 September 2011. There is a good chance to be an arrogant and vainglorious idiot.

*Apologies to the people of Baghdad for the Mancunian association.

We are now several years into our careers. The novelty has gone and the grind has set in. We have reached the destination of our extensive education. But we are not satisfied. Disillusionment is rife. Is anyone actually content in their work?

I originally called this the “post university mid-life crisis”. However, the press had already come up with a name that reflects a more optimistic life expectancy: the “Quarterlife Crisis”. It affects young professionals in the 22 to 28 demographic, who are the  so-called “Generation Y”¹.

Quarterlife Crisis Origins

Despite the damp, university was a great experience for Generation Y’s. Friends were close by and frequently seen. There was little responsibility and oodles of time. We could still hope to live the life of European monarchs and change the world. The sun shone brightly every day.

Then, we put down our books, left the library and started our careers. The mundane realities of life bear down. We worry about paying the rent, bills, loans and the government. Life’s possibilities become fewer. Quick home ownership seems unattainable. Travelling requires money. Time for friends, relationships, families, hobbies and recreational espionage becomes insufficient.

The expectation bar is high, especially in London. If you have not achieved the following by 30, you have failed: 3-bed house, 2 modestly priced cars, a happy marriage, local child-poverty elimination, a good career, dinners in Mayfair, skiing holidays in France and work from an up-and-coming artist whose name you can’t pronounce.

Sadness results. You do not need to use a qualified therapist to diagnose if you are having a Quarterlife Crisis. Just take this easy 25-question survey.

The Impact on Audit

Disillusionment is not confined to the audit industry. Nor is it worst in the audit industry. All types of graduate are affected. 10 minutes speaking to a junior doctor will make you feel that auditing better than a job testing tropical islands.

However, the Big 4 have the bad fortune of employing small armies of Generation Y graduates. Management struggle to meet seemingly ridiculous expectations: money, short hours, stimulating work, low stress, first class travel, learning, security, orphan outreach and organic fair-trade muffins on Fridays.

Historically, turnover after qualification is high. The training contract is like a train journey without any stops, who wouldn’t want to get off after three years? Trainees do, unsurprisingly, experience symptoms of the Quarterlife Crisis. The typical reaction is to seek other opportunities. It is akin to escapism. Options include: audit positions in different departments or countries; a stint in a different position, such as advisory; or working in the commercial sector. This creates retention headaches.

Quarterlife Crisis Progression

Science tells us that all major life events can be summarised in 5 steps. The Quarterlife Crisis process is²:

1. A feeling of being trapped by your life choices.
2. A rising sense of "I’ve got to get out".
3. Quitting the job / relationship / country and taking on a "time out" period where you try out new experiences to find out who you want to be.
4. Rebuilding your life.
5. Developing new commitments more attuned to your interests and aspirations.

The Big 4 are facing a lot of trainees who are in steps 2/3. Fortunately, you don’t need to use an MBA-consultant to find a solution, just follow the wisdom of the ancients³.

Be Happy Everywhere

I believe that the core issue is that expectations are too high. We thought that we could have it all. Life is hard – everyone knows this. What needs to be understood and intimately realised is this: life is suppose to be hard.

Proper perspective should be practiced. Being a trainee auditor is a very good job. At my age, my dad was stuck in a rice field in Communist China. However, that implies that well-educated graduates have no right to be dissatisfied, which is not the case.

Expectations need to be lowered. Auditing may not give ultimate and supreme life happiness with cosmic harmony and eternal justice. However, it is good enough.

I suggest an innocent idea – being content wherever you are. It is sweetly and annoyingly clichéd, but Prozac is expensive.

Footnotes and Suggested Reading

(1) Generation Y is elusive to define. I’ll make a vague assurance to write about it. Otherwise, use Google.

(2) Reproduced from the New Scientist.

(3) Philippians 4:12 – I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.

(4) Christine Hassler keeps an excellent blog about Twenty-Something’s issues (link).

(5) Times article about the Quarterlife Crisis (link).

This article will be unconventional and talk about the positives of audit. However, simply saying that a positive thinking is enough is insensitive. It ignores that reality that many trainees are not that happy. Is this an issue for the firm, industry, London living or life itself?

Start the excessive, arrogant pretention:

The Good

1) Cyclical Variety
Every week in audit is different. The clients and location change. You will work with different people. You could work in large or small teams. The dress codes varies from ties to jeans in college. Even during the hardest weeks, there is the prospect of change to tide you over.

2) College
Get paid for not going to work and gaining a valuable qualification. You can even return home during daylight.

3) Client Conversations
Auditors get a lot of contact time with the client. It’s good fun. Bonus marks can be gained by remembering the name of the client’s pets.

You also get the chance to talk with senior finance professionals, which is a rare learning experience.

4) Work Freedom
Trainees are given a lot of autonomy and responsibility in their work. Your tasks can be completed in any order you chose. Working hours can be flexible. It is possible to leave early for opera commitments because the time can be made up later. Managers are open to new ways to work more efficiently.

5) Socials
The large audit firms feel very youthful because they recruit many graduates. As a rough guide, 75% of the staff are under 30. This working atmosphere is fun and easy-going. There are many fun social events. The late weekday nights are a reminder of university, expect sleeping in is no longer an option (or, at least it shouldn’t be).

The Antonym of the Aforementioned

The title follows the modern business language trend of banning negative words. The audit crap is:

1) Unrealistic Expectations and Horrible Hours
While there is freedom in work the overriding aim is that the work is finished. Work becomes more important than dinner with friends, exam revision and, even the most sacrosanct of all: evening Excel classes.

2) Commutes and Hotels
No matter how centrally you live there will always be a client with a long commute. At worst four hours of the day can be lost to travel. You will stay in a hotel if the client is distant. Unfortunately, the novelty of room service wears off after a day.

3) Client Conflict
Not many companies would chose to have an audit. However, audits are mandatory for larger companies. There is less sense of client service than in advisory or medicine.

Most clients are understanding, co-operative and pleasant to work with. However, auditors are dependent on timely and appropriate information from the client. Without this, the work is very frustrating and stressful.

4) Bell Curve Pressure
A good appraisal depends on out-performing your peers. The hardest and best work may be merely average because it is measured against other equally brilliant graduates. The use of the “average” label is disconcerting.

The aim of the bell curve is to everyone work harder. To quote the Goldman Sachs work culture:

The pressure is not as obvious as the dog-eat-dog corporate world stereotype. It is subtly embedded into the work culture (especially London). It is easy to forget that there is a life beyond the audit bubble.

5) Friday Drinks
A consequence of working with different people and locations every week is that there are no regular Friday night drinks. This may or may not be bad, but does show that relationships are many and shallow, rather than few and deep. Or this might indicate my deep unpopularity.

Two-Sided Caveats

With the exception of college, most graduate jobs have the same good aspects of audit. Indeed, some may dislike working in different places every week.

Long hours, commutes and stress are common to most professional jobs in the 21st century. The death of the 9 to 5 is approaching its 30th anniversary. It’ll be celebrated by the abolition of final salary pensions.

The problems is not with audit, but with a general dissatisfaction with work. However, work is the unavoidable price of the lifestyle that we want and expect.

The Question

Do you enjoy the good parts of audit enough to tolerate the bad parts? Or is audit just a means to pay for your secret weekend opera addiction?

The Second Question

If audit is not to blame for my generation’s unhappiness, then why are we a little sad? This shall be answered in 1 to 10 weeks time in “How to Audit (Part 13)™: Quarterlife Crisis”.

This blog post will give you the words to mimic an experienced auditor. There are two types: business fads and audit vocab.

Business Fads

Use these words in quick succession whenever you realise that you know as much about the subject matter as next week’s lottery numbers. A first year will average 114.5 of these words per hour. This decreases exponentially with experience.

Touching base
You’ve been sent out on the business battlefield. I now want a progress report over a game of rounders.

It is what it is
Read: I have nothing more to say on the matter; there is nothing you can do to change the situation; and you will have to clean the mess. Goodbye.

For the win
Beat the offside trap, aim for the bottom corner, apply an accurate finish (to the accounts), three points and escape the relegation zone.

Like all fads, their inappropriate use only results in the speaker looking lame instead of looking knowledgeable. Avoid.

Audit Vocabulary

Not material
Auditors hate petty details and small numbers. Auditors ignore the small numbers and do allow a margin of error. Loudly declaring that a number is not material is an easy way to sounds learned and wise.

Reconciliation
This word is an example of good audit jargon because:

• Any financially literate person knows exactly what you mean
• It summarises a difficult concept in one word
• There is not a simpler substitute for this word

“Reconciliation” means the restoration of relationship. In the accounting world, it means showing how financial information from two sources can be matched to each other. The crucial point is that both sources should produce the same number. This is unintuitive because it seems like using only one source of data would be more logical.

This is not the case, and I shall show this by using an analogy. Note that bad business jargon originated from good analogies. Imagine that one blind man and one deaf man are both witness to a robbery. A policeman called Mr Accountant is asked to write a report. The blind and deaf man’s testimonies are adequate by themselves but it’s better to use both. Also, the discrepancies between the two accounts will need to be further investigated.

The next part of the story is that the public has not much confidence in Mr Accountant’s report. So, Ms Auditor(ess) is asked to examine the report and make a comment about the truth and fairness of that report.

The “bank reconciliation” is a classic example. A company will keep its own records of their cash transactions. This is called the “cashbook”. The balance in the cashbook should be the same as the bank statement. The differences are called “reconciling items”. Using both sources together gives the most complete information about a company’s cash position.

Note that this is shortened to “rec” in everyday conversation.

Outstanding
It does not mean that your workpaper is a glorious piece of art that belongs in the National Gallery rather than an audit file. An “outstanding list” summarises all the work that you weren’t able to finish. Every minute spent making an outstanding list substitutes for 0.7 minutes of actual work.

New Vocabulary

Gain respect in the workplace and home with these new phrases:

Reaping to the edge of my field
Use when being overloaded with work.

Headshot
Always aim for the most effective audit test.

Armistice
Declare one when there is an irresolvable accounting issue

Real guitar or Guitar Hero?
Does the manager want a full or simplified explanation?

Is it Facebook safe?
Confidentiality considerations

Goal side view or grandstand view?
If you are lucky enough to get tickets for the Olympics

Asymmetric dichotomy
When there are two options and one has greater consequences than the other

False asymmetric dichotomy
Not the above

Knot the rope
You don’t know what it means, you just know that you have to do it.

Zero sum synergies
???

At the end of the day

I dislike business jargon, but I do use it. Every profession needs jargon to for complex ideas and to save time. It makes you feel part of an “insider group”. But does the English language need to be slaughtered for a few extra pounds?

Sometimes, numbers do not need works, like RBS’s record £24.1bn loss.

It is more surprising when a trainee leaves given that they are locked into three year contracts. It is worthwhile to explore why trainees leave early.

In the beginning

We all start off with good intentions when we first join and no-one ever plans to leave. There’s enough effort just to get started. The graduates have stellar academic and extra-curricular records, well motivated, possess excellent communication and team working skills, and managed to beat 20 other similar graduates to get the job.

Fantastic opportunities lie ahead when you start. The ACA is an excellent qualification. You’ll work with great people. The experience you gain would proudly decorate your CV. It’s tough, but you’ll grow a lot professionally and personally.

Why leave?

In life, nothing worthwhile gets achieved without some pressure and trial. It takes three hard years to qualify as a chartered accountant: 15 exams and 450 days of work experience. It’s an impressive achievement because it is hard. But for some, the effort isn’t worth it and leaving is the right thing to do.

I believe people leave for four interconnected reasons:
1)    Stress
2)    Health
3)    Exams
4)    NFM – not for me

1) Stress

The hours are long: 40 to 50 hours a week during busy season. This does not including time spent commuting, eating and thinking up accounting jokes. Audit is stressful. People think it is just about the numbers. However, soft skills count for more than calculator abilities. A lot depends on the effectiveness, efficiency and helpfulness of the client. So teamwork and interpersonal skills are vital. You’re under pressure to deliver results and meet deadlines. Untypical problems do come up, which needs creativity to find a solution.

Experience matters a great deal for coping with stress. Auditing is done as a team, and seniors will be there to help. Whenever I’ve needed it, help has been available. People do understand that trainees start off with no audit knowledge and take that into consideration.

2) Exams

You will be fired if you fail the (retake) exams. This is how most trainees prematurely leave a Big 4 firm. It greatly adds to the stress of the job. Fortunately, the work calendar is designed so that you the main revision periods are during the quieter times at work. Managers are sympathetic if you have exams and will endeavour to minimise working overtime. However, there will be times were you have to work long hours and revise in the evenings and weekends.

Telling you to pass the exams first time is an obvious and unhelpful piece of advice. But failing means: paying for retakes, using up holiday time for revision courses and destroying your weekends prior to the retake.

3) Health

Audit comes with a health warning.  The typical audit room is cramp and furnished with high tables and unadjustable chairs. This is not good for your back. Fortunately, trainees are only out at the client for about a third of the year. The rest of the time will be spent in college stressing about exams.

However, the long hours spent sitting down and eating sandwich lunches do take their toll. Regular exercise is essential to your health and sanity.

4) NFM – not for me

To some extent, the first three problems can be overcome. However, audit does not suit everyone. Of course, we all get depressed / annoyed / angrier than a banker without a bonus from time-to-time, but for some that feeling never escapes. Their reasons go much deeper than the ones I have outlined. Perhaps the hours intolerably encroach onto family life. The commutes are too long. The firm is too large and impersonal. Maybe the work isn’t simulating enough.

Conclusion

Some trainees will love the work and feel no pressure, others will find it intolerable. Most of us fall in the middle, the pressures are they but we’ve found ways to cope and still manage to have some fun.

I don’t want to attach any stigma to those who leave early. Everyone faces the same pressures. I would say that it’s important to consider how you will cope and if you will be happy before starting any job. However, it is impossible to know that until you have joined and discovered this for yourself. After all, no wisdom was ever gained from a blog post.

Epilogue

I actually wrote this blog post at the beginning of my audit career but I refrained from publishing it might have given the impression that I was going to leave early. However, with one exam to go before qualification, leaving is unthinkable. In a poll of some peers, no-one would choose to leave even if they won the lottery.

I did write this blog post for my friend, Graham. He faced a lot of these work pressures that I have talked about. And, a year ago, passed away after a long period of mental illness. He was 24.

In his memory, we (Graham’s friends and family) are raising money for Mind, a leading mental health charity by running in the Bupa 10k race. Please, hit the link below and donate generously:

1. Exams

Never before has a generation been examined so much: Key Stage exams, GCSEs, A Levels, university and now the ICAEW exams. If I stack my accumulated textbooks and notes, it would reach one 232,830,406th of the way to the moon, i.e. 5’5”.

The exams are horrific but going to college is a refreshing change from work. It harks back to a simpler time in our lives: classrooms of 30; a teacher at the front; registers; morning, lunch and afternoon breaks; homework; and (best of all) finishing early. Also, we get paid for attending, and I get bullied less.

2.  Pencil Case

Despite being adults, we still need to carry a pencil and calculator. You don’t notice that it is odd until you produce a calculator when the dinner bill arrives.

3. Bully the 1st Years

New trainees start not knowing which way to hold a pen and thinking that “casting” is a way to listen to a briefly popular 90s indie band from Liverpool. Although, they are impeccably dressed.

In order to teach them the ways of accounting for a part disposal of a foreign subsidiary using the fair value method of non-controlling interest under International Financial Reporting Standards as adopted by South Sudan**, they must endure endless hours of photocopy and confusion.

Please note that this blog does not condone bullying. The 1st years are valuable, but the first year is always a hard learning experience.

Audit combines a genuinely open work atmosphere (reference to the last blog post about partners serving tea) with a clear hierarchy. Mistaking someone’s grade is a mild faux pas. A while ago I was mistaken for an intern and got asked to do some printing! The distinction is important because each year’s experience is worth a lot. Knowing someone’s grade gives an easy guide to the level of work that he/she can do.

4. Day Trips

Auditors lead a very active social life and the firm subsidises social events throughout the year. Except, your legal guardians won’t be phoned if you get lost on a night out. The post-social drop in productivity is balanced by department bonding.

5. Cliques

The value of professional firms is in its employees. How else can a audit report, which is just a some paragraphs stating that the financial statements are true an fair, be worth so much? Good relationships are vital for working effectively. Some interesting cliques do develop:

• Infernos – a club in London for the young professional who wants to relive their university partying days. Unfortunately it costs a lot more and you will run into other auditors.
• Geeks – these previous social outcasts become sought after for their intimate knowledge of auditing standards and Excel.
• Asian Kids – Recently, audit firms have recruited from Mainland China. The group is large enough for me to apply a meaningless label to them.
• Wantaways – Those who decided that audit was not for them and are just waiting to pass their exams and leave. Every auditor will go through this phase after a few hard weekends of work.
• Audit Lovers – A rare breed indeed.
• Jocks – A good deal of auditors play sports and go to the gym. Intra-department matches are popular, except the opposition may wear pink tutus.

Real-life auditors don’t necessarily fit into these categories. The audit lovers do still go to Infernos and the Asian kids aren’t always geeks.

Except

Audit is like high school, except for the work, which means the high school analogy isn’t appropriate. I have responsibilities and deadlines. If I stop working then I won’t be able to live in London. However, that is true of any job. Audit has its faults but you cannot say that it is not varied.

**For those who are interested, the answer to the problem in part three is a combination of IAS 27 and IAS 21. The South Sudanese accounting standards have not been written yet.

The Facts

This blog post will dispel the myths about the audit room. And it will provide useful advice.

1) Watch your back
I’m not talking about other auditors stealing your stationery. Audit rooms come with a health warning. The long hours unadjustable conference room chairs and high tables means your back takes severe punishment. The audit room air gets stale. Some trainees say that their eyesight gets worse after some time in audit. However, I consider this to be an urban myth.

Exercise is the key. However, long hours sap the will to exercise and, when combined with frequent snacking, means that it is easy to grow your waistline. Why does busy season have to come after Christmas?

2) 200 cm²
This is the average table space you have to work with. It has to fit your: laptop, mouse, working papers, coffee, pens and arms. Audit rooms get cramp. There is no easy answer. Not using a mouse increases the risk of RSI (repetitive strain injury). Using your lap doubles working space but hurts the neck. Stopping coffee reduces audit efficiency by 110.5%.

3) Fun
The audit room should be fun and usually is fun – at least when working with me. Their is plenty of banter, gossip, amusing reconciliations and the knowledge that, although the work is hard, everyone is in the same situation.

For the bored auditor, there is a list of fun activities:

• Mass email chains involving the whole year. It says nothing useful. The aim is to get 100 unread emails in the 10 minutes that someone has walked away from their desk. This provokes angry reply-all responses asking to be taken off the email chain.
• Sending emails from an unlocked computer.
• Changing the auto-correct options from an unlocked computer. Go for something that won’t be discovered for several months. For example auto-correcting “judgementally” to zzzzzz.

Remember: fun activities are sackable offenses.

4) Food
Managers will generously provide sweets, chocolate and cookies for their audit team. It’s always welcome but means that audit rooms get very messy very quickly.

The mess describes the auditors’ life: stray markers and unfindable staplers; piles of wanted and unwanted paper; wires, power cables and hubs; ladies shoes and headphones; empty sandwich packs and half eaten chocolate.

But the mess does clear and the reward for the good audit team is a meal paid for by the partner.

5) Etiquette
There are many unwritten customs and assumed behaviours in the audit room. All of them should be obeyed to ensure a smooth audit and reduce audicidal tendencies (audicidal is from the Latin “audicide”, which means to seriously maim ones auditor in the pursuit of better financial statements):

• Always offer to make tea. This applies to all grades. I was privileged and humbled when a partner made tea for me.
• Share your power. The socket to laptop ratio is never high enough. Shared power keeps the audit running.
• Don’t run away. You don’t want to be the trainee that runs away from an intimidating substantive audit test, doesn’t tell the manager, and sparks a police search operation.

Audit War Room Stories

I’ve made audit rooms sound unpleasant and unhygienic. But is it a bonding experience and has given me memorable stories. I’m certain that I will get more audit war room stories in the coming year(s).

The New Trainees

I have seen two batches of new trainees. Last year, I had the excitement of welcoming the new trainees and not being the fresh meat anymore. This year, although it is still fun seeing the new trainees, I do feel more distant. I have one solitary exam remaining, compared to fifteen for the new joiners. The age gap feels larger than it should. A lot of my peers took (multiple) gap years, whereas the majority of the new trainees have not. I speculate that this is because of the recession, but it would be easier to get over being older.

I’ve come a long way from the nervous first year in a ironed shirt and Windsor-knot tie. Now, I give audit lectures in an un-ironed disguised by a jumper. What advice can I give to the next generation of auditors?

1.) Ask For Help
Everyone starts off with zero knowledge. I struggled to work out which way round to hold a pen. The only way to learn is to swallow your pride and ask for help. Do use every person and resource available – except this blog, which does not comply with any International Standards of Auditing.

2.) Be Known
Auditors are extremely friendly and hold lots of social events. Attend as many as you can so that you get known by the department. It fosters good relationships and aids teamwork. This is more than a cynical networking exercise – it is a chance to defend yourself against any malicious rumours that might be spread.

3.) Know Your Rights
Being new and having no experience makes it hard to assert yourself. The tendency is to stay at work until everyone else has finished, even if your work was finished. I used to tentatively and nervously ask permission to go home, as if I was back at school. Know your rights: self-review your work, ask if there is any more to be done and then ask to go home.

4.) Do Your Homework
Trainees are quickly forgotten if they fail their exams and get kicked out. The best career advice I got given was to pass my exams first time. Also, try and pass by more than 1%. Although such trainees are paraded as examples of efficient revision, it is too fine a margin. I reckon that exam performance can vary on the day by ±5% due to nerves or lucky cramming. Unless you possess audit-jedi skills, don’t leave it to chance.

5.) Enjoy Today
The three year training contract is a treadmill that does not stop. It is easy to focus on the next deadline, whether it be the end of an audit or an exam date. There will be hard days. So you get through the pain of today to make it to a better tomorrow. However, there is always another target to get through and, before you know it, years have passed.

My best advice and most controversial statement is: enjoy audit. Smile at the reconciliations that add up, the days in college, the horrific Christmas party hangovers, the cool clients, the nice managers and doing something different every day.

The Circle

The new trainees bring a sense of renewal to the department. It’s a time to reflect on how much I have learnt in the past year. It is the Circle of Life Audit

I’m nostalgic about my first year, but would I do it again? Absolutely not. I never want to take those exams again. My tedious photocopying can be delegated to some First Year.

So this blog post looks at medicine as an alternative career path for the auditor. The two professions will each be judged on 13 scientific criteria. Then a winner shall be declared.

1.) Pay

They say money does not make you happy, but you’d be very unhappy doing either of these jobs for minimum wage. To dispel a myth – medicine is not any more lucrative than auditing. The average starting salary of £27k (£22k plus 20% supplement) for junior doctors is comparable to audit. The chart of salary against years of experience is also similar:

Accountant’s Salary:

Median Salary by Years Experience – Certification: Chartered Accountant: ACA (Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales) (United Kingdom)

Compare your salary: Get a free Salary Report

Doctor’s Salary:

Median Salary by Years Experience – Job: Physician / Doctor, General Practice (United Kingdom)

Compare your salary: Get a free Salary Report

However, doctors will have spent two or three extra years in university before they can start their career. They will have extra student debt, but more crucially, they will be behind on the career pay ladder. There is also a much lower ceiling on maximum pay. While a good consultant can earn a six figure salary and a celebrity plastic surgeon may earn up to £1m, the best partners at a Big 4 accountancy firm could earn in excess of £1m. There is fat cat money available if the auditor makes it to the boardroom of a large company.

There is one caveat in that accountants can only earn the big money if they obtain the Chartered Accountancy qualification. Then they will inherit the riches of the Earth – or £79,100 to be more exact (this is the average ACA salary).

Doctors 0 – 1 Auditors

2.) Working Conditions

This is the standard public versus private sector debate. We pit the fat, ugly and lethargic NHS against the lean, competitive, fierce and beautiful audit stallions.

Doctors face the difficulty of working with diverse professional groups. They have authority over nurses but need their co-operation to keep the wards running smoothly. They have to work with pharmacists, without whom drugs cannot be obtained. There are even differences between doctors – medics and surgeons do not get along.

The doctor’s incentive to save lives has to compete with the bed manager’s priority of saving money. The hated bed manager was probably an accountant in a previous life. There are not many jobs where there is such divergence between management and staff. Friction is constant.

Auditors are very monocultural. All partners started off doing the endless hours of photocopying and invoice checking. Respect and knowledge of competence is, therefore, instant. Auditors tend work with other auditors. Even when they don’t, they will work with like-minded finance professionals. This fosters a greater sense of teamwork and there is less inherent friction.

Doctors 0 – 1 Auditors

3.) Information Technology

It is the joy of thousand-line Excel spreadsheets against the notoriously bad NHS IT. It is over-priced, doesn’t work and is based on MS-DOS. Medicine is constantly progressing, but that is at odds with a culture of tradition and status quo. Doctors don’t even use email that much. On the other hand, auditors cannot function without their laptops.

Doctors 1 – 0 Auditors (because huge Excel spreadsheets are bad for the eyes)

4.) Travel

Auditors face commutes to inconvenient client sites and hotel stays. But do enjoy occasional foreign travel (to Slough). Doctors live close to their place of work but face the risk of superbug infections.

Doctors 1 – 0 Auditors (because I believe in NHS hygiene)

5.) Airplane Situations

Every time they board a plane, doctors have the chance to be a hero or get sued horribly. It is usually the latter because there is little a doctor can do without his charts, drugs, stethoscopes and bed manager by his side to hold his hand.

There is a reason that auditors will never be asked to identify themselves on a plane – no-one ever needs an emergency stock count that badly.

Doctors 1 – 0 Auditors

6.) GMC verses the ICAEW

Accountants and medics are ruled by their respective professional institutions. For the qualified accountant you get a monthly magazine from the ICAEW for £300. For a new doctor, £400 gets you the right to be severely punished by the GMC. The value of membership is not an unread and unloved magazine, it is the right to call yourself a chartered accountant and the resulting salary increase.

Doctors 0 – 1 Auditors (because it is cheaper)

7.) Boredom

Work is varied for both the doctor and the auditor. Junior doctors will see different patients and work in different fields. Auditors will work at different clients throughout the year. They will return to the same clients year-on-year, but they will audit more complex areas and have more managerial responsibility.

The work can also be boring. Doctors could be on the same ward for months and years. There are only so many variations on a sore throat. Auditors do have to face the dirty work of checking endless near-identical invoices.

Doctors ½ – ½ Auditors (it’s only fair)

8.) Exams

Doctors study for longer. They face even more exams when they want to progress in their career (from junior doctor to registrar, and from registrar to consultant).

Auditors need to pass 15 exams to become qualified. It doesn’t feel like university has finished and they also have to work full time. Doctors can have as many attempts as they want, but auditors will get fired for failure.

However, the pain only lasts for three years and there are no further exams after qualification. Text books and exam entry fees also get paid for and (ample) study leave is provided.

Doctors 0 – 1 Auditors (because it is cheaper)

9.) Consequences of Failure

No-one has ever died from a bad audit, but the partner can be sent to jail. The corollary for medicine is more fatal. But who wants to focus on failure? Success in medicine means better quality and length of life. Audits are mandatory, so success means the (mere) fulfilment of the law.

Doctors 1 – 0 Auditors

10.) Flexibility

Doctors will always be doctors and escape from that career path is quite impossible. A Chartered Accountancy qualification opens up many different career paths in finance and business. Working abroad is also more feasible. Although, you will always need to carry a calculator.

Doctors 0 – 1 Auditors

11.) The Hours

In practice, the medicine and accounting professions do not recognise the European Working Time Directive 48-hour weekly work limit. Both work long hours without overtime pay.

However the auditors lot is much better, neither night shifts nor weekend working are mandatory. Auditor’s also have greater flexibility with their time. If you need to take time off work, as long as there is internet, you can catch up later. It takes a brave doctor to leave a sick patient and they can’t be carried home.

Doctors 0 – 1 Auditors

12.) Job Security

There will always be work for doctors and accountants in any civilised society. But you feel that people will choose health over accurate bookkeeping. This is despite my argument that accounting was more important than medicine during my interview.

Doctors 1 – 0 Auditors

13.) TV Shows

The TV industry will have run out of good ideas when they make a show about auditors. Medicine is spoiled for choice: House, Grey’s Anatomy and Scrubs (and I can go on). I believe that a show about recurring manual controls failure without a compensating control can be made but it will never happen.

Doctors 1 – 0 Auditors

The Final Score

Doctors 6 ½ – 6 ½ Auditors

A draw! The blog post is somewhat irrelevant, because the decision to be a doctor needed to be made over 8 years ago. The grass is never greener on the other side because it is actually a sheer-faced cliff. But I will return to work on Monday and hear moans about the job – and I will be one of them. Shouldn’t we learn to be happy where we are or should we still chase the dream of retirement by 26?

From The Same Crop

Yes, auditors are human. What other answers are there?

The trainees are currently at college studying for exams. We can wear what we wish and take leisurely one hour lunches in the park. At first glance, we just look like a group of unemployed students. The bulk comes from regular universities: Manchester, Nottingham, Bristol, Warwick and Durham. We support the same football teams, listen to the same music and talk about the same things. Our mundane aim is to lead secure, quiet lives with a stable income – all the same as everyone else.

A Breed Apart

But look more carefully at the unemployed students you will notice some differences: the designer sunglasses (Ray Bans inevitably), the insatiable appetite and ability to pay for daily Starbucks Lattes, the intellectual conversations about the merits of taking two calculators to exams. It is not the same.

So, auditors are human, but of a distinct kind. To explain, all dogs are dogs, but only some are Border Collies (who incidentally rank number 1 in Coren’s Intelligence of Dogs).

These characteristics set apart auditors:

1) Devastating Scrabble Players
Auditors are clever. I said earlier that they came from ordinary universities. But the true meaning of that is they come from good families, came the top of good schools, scored a 2:1 degree from a good university, passed the psychometric testing and beat other good graduates. How can this not be scrabble playing elite?

2) Tidy Bedrooms
Auditors are organised. This gives them the foresight to apply for a graduate job before actually graduating. It also gives them the ability to manage work, exams, social lives and lip reading classes without the need of a time machine.

3) Keen Runners
Auditors are hard working. The industry has a reputation for long hours. This attracts auditors to the discipline, grind, pain and sheer satisfaction of running. On the basis of the regular emails requesting sponsorship for some run, each auditor runs 3.7 marathons per year.

4) Safe With Your PIN Number
Auditors are reliable and accountable. In the face of all adversity and danger, the audit work will always be complete.

The Change

I have described the model of professionalism, but I am not close to that. Everyone still makes mistakes and still learns, even the partners. However, that process of change from student to professional is most stark among the trainees. I’ve gained a lot of knowledge and experience in my two years so far. My expectations have changed – Pizza Express has turned from a treat to a chore. Yet, a lot of trainees still hold their student-dreams of travelling, pursuing their real passions and making a difference to society. Change is natural with or without a job, but working for a professional services firm makes it much faster.

So in just one article I say that auditors are like everyone else, but are an elite, and the trainees are transitioning from studenthood to the elite. It’s a flaky, unsatisfying conclusion. But (in a pretentious and noble-sounding way), that is life.

There are 286,000 qualified accountants and 169,000 accountancy students in the UK (source: FRC). That means you can’t avoid them for your whole life. This blog post will explain where accountants come from and what motivates them.

The Defensive Play

It was once believed that accountants were delivered by storks while sucking their thumb and clutching a calculator. Modern biology proved that accountancy is not a natural career choice. Show me a child who aspires to be an accountant and I will show you the telephone number of a good therapist.

Accountants are actually produced from the “Big 4” accountancy factory (the four largest firms who dominate the industry). Fresh university graduates are the raw materials and they take three years to process. They are lured through the gates because the training contract offers:

• Stable employment
• A free chartered accountancy qualification (the “ACA”). Qualification means a large pay rise and near-guaranteed job security for life.
• Good work experience with exposure to many different aspects of a business

For these reasons, accountancy is a defensive play for 90% of trainees. It is a safe option for the graduate who is unsure about their long terms career goals. By simply doing as you are told for three years you will end up with valuable work experience and qualifications. No thought is required and the long-term serious career decisions are deferred.

It is a safe and pragmatic career choice. But that’s the way accountants should be.

The Machiavellian View

The cynical view is that trainees are entirely self-serving and leave as soon as the training contract ends, having conned the ACA from their employers.

However, this Machiavellian view is acceptable to the Big 4 because they easily extract enough value from their trainees. They perform a great bulk of the fieldwork at the client.  Even though the ACA is a great expense the cost is recovered many times over. A trainee is charged out at over £100 for every hour that he works at the client. A trainees will earn around £350,000 in profit for the firm during their contract period.

A lot of trainees do leave after qualification but the business model is not designed for all of them to stay. Otherwise, there would be too many assistant managers.

However, the three years are not just a relationship of convenience. The firms do want you to stay after qualification even if it is not as an accountant. They will make efforts to find placements elsewhere. Possible destinations include other business areas of the firm, such as advisory, placements at the client and placements abroad.

Trainees are not solely treated as a resource but as valued members. This is why the Big 4 do well in employee satisfaction surveys.

The Meaning of Audit

Accountancy is a good career – but why do any work at all? Accountants do have dreams of lying on a beach for half the year and skiing for the other half. But that would be a waste of immense talent. Also, modern civilisation would collapse if there was no-one to audit the accounts.

We agree that work is necessary. On the basic level, we need to earn money for food and shelter from bandits. However, should we expect fulfilment and satisfaction from our work, or is it just a means to an end?

Inevitably, accountancy is just a 9 to 5 job for a lot of people. I have joined in the bitching and moaning sessions while at work. But I have also met those who do enjoy auditing. It is more satisfying to work with them. They get the unpopular label of being “keen”, but it is the geeks who do well at school, not the jocks.

My Story

I wanted to become a chartered accountant after doing some work experience while I was in school. I did the usual amount of photocopying and filing. But I spent the bulk of the summer making over 100 archive boxes to store old files. This proved to be valuable experience because I won the first year trainee box making challenge. I was impressed by the importance of my bosses work and the respect that he got from his clients.

During university, I did some summer work in a chemical factory. I spent many 8 hour shifts lining up plastic bottles and stacking them on pallets. I vowed never to do any more menial work and to go for a challenging career. That’s why I am an accountant.

I didn’t know about the dire days I would have counting things on pallets and sifting through endless invoices. But I like the people and the work can be interesting. It’s pleasing to understand and apply a complicated accounting standard while at work. So like most people, I fall between the pragmatists and idealists on the purpose of work. Like most trainees, I’m still deferring the decision on what I will do after I qualify. But I will enjoy the time in between.

Work isn’t meant to fulfil your Ultimate Life Purpose™. It isn’t your whole identity. But it is OK to have fun auditing.