[Anonymous]

Hello!

I’ve recently started my journey towards becoming a CPA – Got a job as an auditor with a smaller regional CPA firm and am studying to take my first CPA Exam coming up! I had no prior accounting experience, other than my 150 credit hours in accounting for a good university.

I’m a month into my new job and I’m getting basically no training at all. I am given tasks to complete on audits and usually I am simply directed to last years work to figure out how to do it.

I realize a lot of this type of work is really hard to teach, and a lot of it you have to work yourself through and teach yourself. But even just a verbal walkthrough, guiding me through the steps and what to keep an eye out for would be so helpful. Every time they give me a task I ask them, “Can you walk me through this?” or “What should I look for when doing this?” or etc. what I get back it just look at last year.

When I ask questions while I’m working on the tasks about something specific, I get a specific answer without much elaboration or explanation.

I also understand that its the end of the busy season, and the two I’ve been working with both have a lot of things going on, so their time to train me is limited. But it wouldn’t take a whole lot of time just to verbally walk me through a task they’re assigning to me. But even when things slow I don’t see this changing much at all.

Is this common in public accounting? Is it just expected that this is the way you learn and you’ll come out a better accountant once it all makes sense?

I guess what makes it all an insult to injury is that the firm is obviously having turnover issues with auditors, so you’d think they would want to invest a bit in training someone new.

but anyways, I apologize for posting a downer post that’s not even on topic to the CPA exam. Been reading through the forums as I study, and I guess I’m just looking for some encouragement / advice. It worries me that I’m not getting training. I want to do well and I wanted to stay in Public, but I can’t imagine staying if things stay like they are so far.

[Anonymous]

Phew, I'm relived to hear from you all. Thank you!

It makes sense that public accounting firms suck at training, we're accountants, and our partners and seniors aren't trained in training or human resources or anything like that. They know their accounting!

I honestly think I'm not getting the training because they don't know HOW to train me, so they just give me stuff and let me struggle through it.

It's frustrating not getting help even when I ask and ask and ask. But, I'm glad to know I'm not alone and I will keep struggling through till I get my CPA! 🙂

[rfc63]

I just started at the beginning of the year at a small firm and have found it to be trial by fire. I'm finding that mistakes yield improvement–just be sure to have thick skin when they review your work and don't make the same mistake twice.

[rfc63]

I just started at the beginning of the year at a small firm and have found it to be trial by fire. I'm finding that mistakes yield improvement–just be sure to have thick skin when they review your work and don't make the same mistake twice.

[Author]

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