When I sat down in my first accounting class, hands shaking with anticipation of starting what, at that point, was supposedly the rest of my life; if someone had suggested that I would be sitting here today writing about the good, bad and the ugly of the profession, I would have laughed at you and shaken my head.  

In fact, I had a professor that told us to look at our class and said that in five years most of the students here wouldn’t even be in accounting and we still all scoffed, why go into accounting if you didn’t stay? Looking back at him, he might have known a thing or two… I say sitting here having gone from governmental assurance, to commercial assurance, to financial internal audit, to IT and cybersecurity auditing, to now whatever this is. It turns out life is as much about the journey as it is about the ending and I wouldn’t change my path for anything. 

In 2019, I earned my degree in Accounting, with a specialization in Financial Planning, from Bowling Green State University. I continued to pursue further education and completed my Masters of Accountancy just in time to have passed three of the four CPA exams needed for the testing requirement. I would continue to pass the final CPA exam as I started my career in public accounting, not with one of the Big 4 (the largest public accounting firms in the world), but at a respected regional firm here in Michigan (Top 30). 

My decision to reject the offers I had received from some of the Big 4 to pursue a career within a regional firm was questioned by many but based on the direction I wanted to go and my life at that point in time, I needed a different direction than something that a Big 4 would have offered. Having met many folks that worked in Big 4 now, I think that decision was one of the best ones I could have made. 

My belief is that the accounting and assurance industry has been warped into something that barely resembles what it was, a true profession. I believe there has been a concerted effort to limit the knowledge of new prospective members of the industry and force them to endure the Big 4 pipeline, grueling hours, and pay that has not kept up with the rising costs of the world. They are expected to sacrifice precious years of their lives for the promise of better pay, hours, and balance further on into their careers when there are options for all types of lives.  

My mission is to educate these new prospective members on what auditing truly is and the real opportunities that exist within the industry. We are taught to have professional skepticism and I think it’s time we start using this same approach with the companies that supposedly teach us this skill.