I’ve always been passionate about working in Public Accounting…
Public Accounting is a great way to start your career! For one thing, you truly learn about the fundamental principles of accounting (accruals & deferrals), you get to know different types of industries (e.g. service, real estate, and retail), and also various business models (successful & unsuccessful ones). Another great benefit of starting your career in Public Accounting is the possibility of working on different types of projects (e.g. consolidated financial statements, buy- and sell-side due diligences, and credit ratings)
DRAWBACKS of working in Public Accounting:
There are a few challenges young professionals are facing in Public Accounting, namely workload, deadlines, client-satisfaction, and exams. Hence, we often face the problem that our work-life-balance is out of whack. More than that, I experienced that most people outside Public Accounting are not aware what we are doing („so you are working for the tax authorities?“), we can’t talk about our daily problems (client confidentiality), and the general opinion about our profession deteriorated significantly lately.
MEGATRENDS in Public Accounting:
Now, most of our young colleagues follow a quick exit strategy (leave Public Accounting after 2-3 years) and CPA-firms started reacting by disinvesting in education and investing in infrastructure to break down their attest engagements into ‚small manageable tasks‘. The benefits of this trend being a.) reduced time to train new staff; b.) lower cost for attest engagements; c.) sales&marketing potentials (#digitalization #innovation #automation). The associated risk is that the majority of the audit team does not understand the key WCGWs (what-could-go-wrongs) and hence may miss to identify material misstatements in the financial statements they audit.
LESSONS learned:
I think it’s time to quit working in the field to be able to focus on…
- amplifying the message that we (CPAs) are human beings and not ‚living spread-sheets‘;
- connecting with the new generation of CPAs to drive innovation;
- facilitating trainings for accountants & CPAs alike.
I call it „cooling-off period“ because I think I may re-join the profession in the future. After all, it’s a great job!
