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June 15, 2022

Harness Your “Soft Skills” — Build Your Accounting Career— Before Next Busy Season!

Executive presence. Public speaking. Critical thinking. Business development. Negotiating. Time management. Branding. Marketing. These are abilities you may not immediately associate with accounting and auditing, but they’re exactly the sort of skills that will help propel your accounting and auditing career. A recent report from The Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) and Robert Half proclaimed, “Soft skills are the new hard skills." As the accounting field continues to grow, with more than 96,000 new accounting and auditing jobs expected to be created by 2030 (according to estimates from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics), a strong portfolio of soft skills will set you apart with others in the field and help you take the next step in your career.


And now is the perfect time to focus on getting the training you need to build those skills. While many accountants and auditors use the summer and fall months to earn their Continuing Professional Education (CPE) credits, many view this training merely as a way to maintain their license and stay up-to-date with respect to the technical aspect of the field. This is a mistake! Instead, accountants and auditors should view training as an opportunity to build important soft skills that will help them advance their careers.


Depending on where you are in your career — and where you want to go — here are some soft skills you should develop to the next level.

 

If you want to become an in-charge auditor: Get training in critical thinking.
Most organizations view critical thinking as a necessary skill for auditors. Think of it this way: When you see a spreadsheet, does your brain automatically begin calculating the numbers on it, or do you spot a deeper story? When it comes to audit planning, the ability to think critically can help you determine the most important areas for audit capability to focus on given limited time and resources. And when it comes to reporting, those same critical thinking skills can help you determine which issues should be included in the report and which can be safely excluded. Simply put, critical thinking can help auditors provide actionable insights on how their clients can mitigate risks and reach their objectives.


If you’re thought of as a critical thinker on the team, your value increases exponentially. To build your critical-thinking skills, invest some time taking in person or e-learning. Also, consider working with a mentor or coach, who can provide exercises for you to learn how to think “outside of the box.”

 

If you want to rise to the level of manager: Hone in on your public speaking and persuasive skills.

Great auditors need to be great communicators. Indeed, a recent study by PwC revealed that good communication is one of the keys of successful leaders in the profession. The report concluded that communication is crucial because auditors must relay key messages to both internal and external stakeholders who may have different expectations.


At the same time, it’s been shown that auditors with strong persuasive skills are able to reduce push-back during the auditing process, promote a greater understanding of the audit’s important role in the business, and increase the speed at which information is shared in response to audit requests.


Also, strong managers need persuasive skills to get team members to work together and achieve a goal. The upshot: Invest some time in public speaking courses, focusing in particular on the art of persuasion.

 

If you want to become an audit partner: Build your business acumen and executive presence.

It’s a fact: Audit professionals with the strongest career paths do not just do their jobs with excellence, but they’re able to connect the dots and understand the business impact — and convey that information to the other stakeholders. In a survey conducted by the Institute of Internal Auditors, “business acumen” was ranked as one of the most desirable skills by chief audit executives.


As an audit partner, in addition to overseeing all financial audits of the firm, you’ll need to develop additional skills, such as business development and negotiation and have executive presence. An understanding of business ledgers and tax procedures is also an important part of your job.

 

The bottom line:

Invest in yourself! Spend the next few months working on some of these skills via in-person or e-learning courses, or contact Collemi Consulting at (732) 792.6101 so we can develop a training program suited to your individual needs. By strengthening your soft skills, you’ll put your accounting career on a faster trajectory to the top!

 

Collemi Consulting provides customized, one-on-one and group training to help members of the public accounting profession build their skills and stay up to date on the newest accounting and auditing standards. We regularly develop courses and training materials customized to each client and can help spot and correct training deficits. Contact us so that we can survey your firm’s training needs and offer a customized solution.

 

 


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There’s Only One Year Left to Implement the PCAOB’s New Quality Control Standards

November 18, 2024
ADDITIONAL GUIDANCE: Since this blog was first published, the PCAOB released two new guidance documents. The Nov. 26 updates can be found here: An additional overview of the requirements of QC 1000 and staff guidance for firms about how to comply with the standard. This document provides additional staff insights on scope and applicability, responding to engagement deficiencies, and documentation for AS 2901, Responding to Engagement Deficiencies After Issuance of the Auditor’s Report. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) recently announced a new set of quality control standards designed around a risk-based approach. And there’s only one year to design and implement them. The PCAOB’s new QC 1000 standard is more than two decades in the making, as it replaces the quality control standards it adopted on an interim basis back in 2003 from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). The new standard is intended to make independent registered public accounting firms significantly improve their quality control (QC) systems. QC 1000 applies to all PCAOB-registered member firms, with more extensive requirements for those that audit more than 100 issuer clients annually. It has been approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and goes into effect on December 15, 2025. The new requirements and the work required to implement them will be extensive, and the larger public accounting firms require external oversight of the QC system. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that firms do not put it off until the last minute. At its core, the new standard is intended to enable firms to identify their specific risks and design a quality control system including policies and procedures to guard against those risks. The overall goal is to establish what the PCAOB calls “a continuous feedback-loop for improvement.” In this, the new standard differs from the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board’s (IAASB) International Standard on Quality Management No. 1 (ISQM 1) and the AICPA Statement on Quality Management Standards No. 1 (SQMS 1). An extensive but not comprehensive comparison document of the three standards may be found here, but is presented only as a reference tool. New requirements QC 1000 has requirements that do not appear in other QC standards. They can be more prescriptive or more specifically tailored to the U.S. legal and regulatory environment. There are 10 main areas in which the QC 1000 standards go beyond other, existing standards. These are: Evaluation and Reporting: QC systems must be evaluated annually and reported to the PCAOB. They must be certified by specific individuals with responsibility and accountability for the firm’s QC system. Governance and Leadership: Firms must create and maintain clear lines of responsibility and supervision. Larger firms must have outside oversight and a confidential complaint system. Ethics and Independence: Quality objectives must be tailored to the U.S. regulatory environment. Larger firms must implement an automated system for identifying securities investments that could impair independence. Monitoring and Remediation: QC 1000 divides monitoring into engagement and QC system levels. Engagement and QC deficiencies are defined, including requirements for their determination. Larger firms must (and smaller ones should) monitor in-process engagements. Quality Objectives: The firm’s personnel must comply with its policies and procedures Information and Communication: Quality objectives for communication with external parties are established at the firm and engagement level. Communication of the firm’s QC system’s policies and procedures must be communicated in writing. Resources: The firm’s personnel must adhere to standards of conduct. Policies and procedures must address both enumerated and circumstance-specific competencies. Mandatory training, licensure and technological resource requirements are established Risk Assessment Processes: Quality risks must be identified and assessed annually. Roles and Responsibilities: A single person must be assigned responsibility for each role and responsibility in the QC 1000 standard. Documentation: With respect to the QC system’s operation, documentation that allows an experienced auditor to evaluate the operation of quality responses must be provided. Documentation must be retained for at least seven years. That’s not an exhaustive list, but it does give an indication of how much work will be involved. And it’s happening at the same time as the AICPA extensive new Statements on Quality Management Standards (SQMS) requirements are coming into effect . Collemi Consulting leverages nearly three decades of experience to provide trusted technical accounting and auditing expertise when you need it the most. We regularly work with CPA firm leadership to help them reduce risk and maximize efficiencies. To schedule an appointment, contact us at (732) 792-6101.
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