Auditor

What the job actually is

An external auditor is hired by a company, paid by the company, and works for the people who read its accounts. That tension runs through the whole job. The deliverable is a short opinion at the front of the annual report saying whether the financial statements are fairly presented, and every page of working papers behind it exists to justify that one paragraph.

Most of the work is gathering evidence that doesn't come from the client. Auditors write to banks to confirm cash, to customers to confirm what they owe, watch the stock count, read contracts to see when control of the goods actually passed, and recalculate the estimates in depreciation, bad-debt allowances and inventory values. A balance is only accepted once something independent of management supports it.

The judgement is about materiality: whether an error is large enough to change a reader's decision. Small errors are listed and left alone. Material ones must be corrected, or the opinion changes. The hardest days come when a correction would hurt: it breaks a loan covenant, misses a profit target, or upsets the firm's biggest client. Those are the days the signature is for.

The calls that define it

• Whether the evidence supports each material balance, or more work is needed
• Which errors are material enough to insist on correcting
• Whether management's estimates fall within a reasonable range
• Whether to sign a clean opinion, or qualify it, or walk away

Works in teams at accounting firms, from the four largest to small local practices, usually starting as an associate and qualifying as a CPA or chartered accountant along the way. Busy season, the months after the December year end, is long hours and hard deadlines.

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