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- Oct 14, 2008
For those of you that did public audit, how long did it take till you felt like you actually understood accounting/technical stuff? When did you felt you could confidently say u knew how to audit a company and actually understood what is going on?
I'm at a big regional and started in auditing 5 months ago. Got a 3.9 GPA in my Masters program and 90's on all exams except REG. Yet, simple concepts evade me like crazy. I see people 1.8 years and they seem like they are speaking a different language and comprehension level. Yet, some of them have failed FAR 2+ times, or still are only done with 1 or 2 exams.
For example, I'm doing control testing for the 2nd time and a lot lot lot of stuff makes just the most superficial sense to me. Mostly, it feels like I don't get anything because I've never done any journal entries, reconciliations, etc in a bookkeeper/private company so when I'm discussing that sort of stuff with my team/client I feel pretty confused a lot of the times. Also, I'm used to looking at stuff in book format or written down. It is hard for me to follow people speaking about debits and credits using words.
Honestly, my biggest fear is they will promote me to senior way way way before I'm ready. They already view me as the "go to staff" and have had me on first year clients, doing the entire testing section myself, etc. I know it all sounds good but I genuinely want to learn...not in a rush at all to get ahead. I'm in this career for the long haul and think there is a certain base knowledge and "grind" that is necessary to drill in that solid base of technical accounting proficiency.
It takes times. I mean I work on the tax side so it's a little different but it seems general consensus from partners, SMs, and Managers, is that your first year you just do what you are told and do as much SALY as possible. After that year where you know how to do SALY flawlessly you sort of should start realizing why you are doing this and how it affects certain things. So just be patient, once you start running through some testing where it's more boring than anything else you should start understanding what affects it and where that might flow into affecting other areas. Again tax side things sort of different because everything affects income somehow so it's all interconnected. But audit should be similar to some extent. Just do your job and open your eyes more to get an understanding of just why you are doing what you are doing and you'll be fine.