Related Posts
When the team sends their deliverable draft.
Coach
Additional Posts in Audit Bowl
Audit lay off people during recession ?
New to Fishbowl?
Download the Fishbowl app to
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
People develop at different rates and some people just need a change of scenery. I got fired after a few years from a small firm for performance, and 12 years later, a few months from now, I make partner at a top 15 firm. That said, you can’t expect people to hold your hand through everything. Take it upon yourself to learn how to look some things up on your own, watch YouTube videos (like another commenter suggested) on topics you struggle with, study for and pass the CPA exam if you haven’t already, etc.
It will click after 2/3 years when you see the whole picture. Look into work papers you are working on and see how the numbers are flowing through to the financials. It will give you a better idea of the big picture and why you are doing what you are doing.
Try to learn as much as you can also outside of the job. On YouTube there are auditors that give tutorials on work papers and the reasoning behind each concept.
Did you take an auditing class at college? If you didn’t enrolling at an auditing class at a community college would be helpful?
Following! You are NOT alone!!
You learn the work by doing the actual work. Not by auditing someone's work. Learning in industry will be slower. But you will feel more confident in your work. If you are in public, it will take several years to master an item in the F.S. because no two clients are the same.
What kind of clients do you have? I see this as a more frequent issue when you have a giant engagement and only see a few areas. If that’s the case, talk to your coach about seeing if you can get a schedule changed to some smaller clients so you can get a much bigger picture.
It's time to find a new job
Don't wait until they tell you that you need to.
I started my CPA career in 2001, and I remember feeling the exact way. My first three years were awful as I had to teach myself what to do. In-house training was a joke. I stayed frustrated.
The key is to find a mentor that you will trust. Everyone who is honest will readily admit frustrations about this line of work.
Simply put, just stay focused and not fret over the small stuff. Take each day as a new learning experience.
This is how I was. it was always stressful & I was always shy when I had questions bc I never felt confident. It slowly started to click towards the end but by then I was burnt out lol
Choose industry
You should be understand the ideas behind it by now. sounds like your Seniors/trainers suck. If i hadn't reaearched things on my own i never would have understood things. When i was training new hires I always explained why we were testing things, and the law behind things. I knew they could think back to classes and it would make more sense.
Assuming you're in financial audit and have qualified, if its not clicked by now consider a sideways move into risk assurance work or transactional services (your firm may call this different things). When I was at your level I was both in financial audit and risk assurance. Financial audits bored me to tears (statutory accounts audits are a double whammy of being utterly pointless and thanklessly tedious). The technical hurdles were high and some things I didn't really get but I was not motivated to master them because I found them so dull. However I enjoyed working in Risk assurance so I moved my career in that direction.
Consider a move to industry too. After a secondment to Australia fell through at the last minute (my stuff was literally in a container with the movers ready to go on a cargo ship), I quit my firm and moved into industry as an Internal Auditor. Promotion was a bit slower but I learned A LOT and got to visit some seriously cool places. Being in the same business helps you develop a deep expertise that you miss out on when constantly moving around clients in the big 4. Doing away with the time sheets was also a huge positive.