The Audit Agony Aunt

Sections

  • Should You Change Audit Job in 2022?

    There’s no denying that we're currently in a ‘candidate-driven market’ where the demand for audit, assurance, risk and compliance professionals is comfortably buoyant. But from a career-perspective, is it the right time to be changing jobs? Let’s consider…
  • Audit Advice from my Future Self

    What advice would you give to your younger self when you were just starting out in Audit? We asked Carol McLachlan, our Audit Agony Aunt and qualified accountant with over 20 years of experience, what she would tell her fledgling self about a career in audit.
  • The Auditor Dossiers - Profile 4: Audit and Assurance Big 4 apprenticeship

    When Dalian Paul qualifies as an ACA, in around 3½ years’ time, not only will he have dodged the dreaded student debt, he will have been earning for 5 years, visited around 50 different organisations, built relationships...
  • The Auditor Dossiers - Profile 3: The Quality Assurance Professional

    Jane’s story provides a valuable case study for identifying personal motivators, finding a passion and then carving out a career in a service that she really cares about. So, let’s find out how she has gone about it…
  • The Auditor Dossiers - Profile 2: The Audit Senior

    Claire was just coming up to the end of her ACA training contract when we first met. I wanted to find out how she had made her initial career decision on graduating and how she had found the experience of working in a smaller, local firm...
  • The Auditor Dossiers - Profile 1: Big Four Audit Director

    AG is your complete audit specialist. External audit is what she does, has always done and even after twenty years of honing her expertise, audit, remains, to this day, her professional passion. As a big four audit director, her technical abilities in audit and financial reporting compliance and...
  • The Auditor Dossiers: Profiles & Interviews

    The Audit Agony Aunt, Carol McLachlan, interviews four different audit professionals at different stages of their careers. Read their candid interviews and advice for newcomers to the profession.
  • Audit Advantage: Self Esteem

    Self confidence, self belief, self regard, self assurance, self worth and self efficacy. We’ve discussed all of these previously on these pages. But how are they different from self esteem and why does self esteem merit its own article?
  • Audit Advantage: Project Management, the Life Blood of Auditing

    Audits are projects. From the most junior trainee up to director or partner level, we all manage projects or aspects of projects in some shape or form.
  • Audit Advantage: Meetings - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

    Meetings…the bread and butter of our business; the glue that holds together our organisations; grist to the mill for each and every one of us!
  • Audit Advantage: Impact

    You need to make an ‘impact’ with your CV, at a job interview or when you are doing a presentation, this, we all know. But have you thought about all the other instances where impact matters?
  • Audit Advantage: Self Management - me, myself and I

    Self management is one of the four fundamental quadrants of Emotional Intelligence, which is as, if not more, important to personal success than IQ.
  • Audit Advantage: Communication Styles and Flexibility, THE 21st Century Core Competency

    Communication skills are important in every career, but for auditing they are a fundamental competence, critical for accurately and effectively collecting, interpreting and disseminating information.
  • Audit Advantage: Work overload

    Over the many years I have been coaching and mentoring, the standalone, hot, personal development topic of all time, has been, and still remains, the profound angst of the impossible workload.
  • Audit Advantage: Self-Confidence

    If you’ve ever struggled to find your voice in a meeting, held back when you know you are truly capable, or felt under pressure to conform to something you know isn’t really you, then you know why self confidence matters.
  • Audit Advantage (Special Edition): Email Execution - the Essential Edit

    With the explosion of diverse messaging tools and channels that we have at our disposal right now, understanding the best etiquette for e-communication is vital.
  • Audit Advantage: Anxiety, the Auditor’s Ally?

    This article will suggest some diagnostics, tips and techniques to manage your anxiety, but also pose the vexing question: when, if ever, can anxiety be an auditor’s ally?
  • Audit Advantage: The Problem with Delegation

    Delegation - It’s an essential tool in our armoury of rendering our work physically doable, protecting the fragility of work life balance, safeguarding us from overwhelm and ensuring the investment in skills and experience for the future.
  • Audit Advantage: Impostor Syndrome

    How do you describe your progress, your success, your achievements? Ever ascribe them to ‘just good luck’, ‘being in the right place at the right time’, ‘sheer hard grind and hanging on in there’?
  • Audit Advantage: Resilience, Rebooted

    Resilience - What does it mean to an auditor? Join us as we run through our 10 step programme to being a resilient auditor.