GUEST EDITORIAL

If I could do it over again …

By Susan McGrath

I keep hearing that college students and young graduates don’t believe that a career in auditing is challenging enough. They see the auditor’s work, especially in the early years, as endless, mind-numbing drudgery—maybe suitable for people with the patience and discipline that enables them to master the nuances of arcane rules and the willingness to squander their youth in a dark basement poring over dusty corporate records and files—but not for anyone with a little spunk and imagination. I don’t know how this misconception got started, and I couldn’t disagree more.

I always felt challenged during the 12 or so years I spent as an auditor in the field at a Big Five firm, and I like to think that I am not particularly dull-witted. In Robert Colson’s May column, he talks about the “elegance of a theory so well modeled that it can distill the essence of millions of transactions into three pages that summarize the history of a business and provide insight into its future.” That image, of three tightly distilled pages of financial statements, reminded me of what I liked about auditing.

What could be more challenging than being handed three pages of numbers and figuring out whether those numbers are materially accurate—numbers that supposedly reflect the results and assets and obligations of a company that may have operations all over the country or even all over the world? As Colson describes them, three pages of numbers crystallizing millions of transactions compiled under an elegant theory or model, yet subject to a voluminous and often complicated set of detailed rules. As an auditor, how would you go about it? Where on earth would you start? At the top of the page or at the bottom? Looking up from the detailed transaction level at a third-tier subsidiary, or looking down from corporate headquarters? What would you look for? Where would the mistakes likely be? You are free to look anywhere—all of the company’s records and personnel are available to you—and you can ask any and as many questions as you want. What a compelling puzzle!

To the prospective auditor: I don’t mean to make you nervous, but remember that your job and professional reputation are riding on your ability to catch any significant errors in those numbers, and quickly. Plus, you may be very young and inexperienced the first time you’re handed those pages and put in charge of the day-to-day audit. You may even find yourself surrounded by a gaggle of youngsters assigned to the job—even greener—asking you what they should do.

I always found that puzzle and challenge engrossing. I would wake up in the middle of the night, wondering what I was missing, where the “blow” in the numbers might be. It was not unpleasant, even if there was more than a little fear prompting the constant review of strategy. So much of the job is deciding where to place resources and what to focus on. And in deciding where a higher-level review is insufficient, one must be able to size up people and determine whether they are forthcoming and how much corroborating evidence is needed to support their explanations and representations.

After a while I became good at it. I knew just where to start and what to look for. I knew exactly where the mistakes in those numbers would most likely be, sometimes even before I walked in the door. But in every audit engagement, the numbers always had enough that was new or unexpected to present a challenge and prevent me from growing overconfident.