[Anonymous]

Explain to me what exactly you do and what you enjoy about it. To be honest, auditing is not “exciting” to me anymore. I want to be more hands on with the client.

[herbert7890]

I work at a 50 person firm and I mostly do single audits (compliance and financial audits), commercial audits, tax preparation and some consulting services for local governments and entities. From my experience, all consultants do is to act as an intermediary between the client and the external auditors, Its different from audits, as you are not the bad guy. What you mostly do is prepare the necessary schedules, worksheets, reconciliations and financial statements to make life easier for auditors. Nonetheless a bad consultant is the worst nightmare for an audit firm. I have encountered cases in which consultants don't know the client or industry well enough (specially in hospitals) to prepare the information needed,

Side Note: My bible is the OMB-133 and the Compliance Supplement!!

FAR 88 - BEC 86 - AUD 90 - REG 85

[jelly]

Depends on what the consultant is hired for, i.e. internal audits/control/SOX work, IT implementation, A/R clean-up, or external audit support. A lot of the time, consultants dig a lot more deeply into the data, processes, and infrastructure than external auditors to find, correct or prevent errors. Sometimes consultants will do nearly the same testing as external auditors, but will more likely investigate extreme ends of the testing pool to figure out where, why or how something can go wrong, and sometimes this involves almost trying to “break” the system to make it better.

Couldn't pass again!

[NYCpat]

Just started consulting about 6 months ago. Big 4 alumnus, big banking alumnus.

Pros:

I generally don't work more than 40 hours a week since I get paid time and a half on overtime and client watches their billing like a hawk.

Definitely more a part of the team than the adversarial nature of being an external/internal auditor which I did both.

Cons: Just the security of the job. Engagement won't last forever.

BEC - 82
AUD - 65; retake Feb 2013
FAR - April 2013
REG - July 2013?

[Anonymous]

From what I've seen, you kind of have to fall into a niche area.

Also, once you're a licensed CPA, the aicpa has all kinds of neat little credentials/specialties you can get. Most require work experience in the area though.

If you're bored with audit, maybe try out tax. It will be a lot easier than happening to get placed on some unique prjects which might or might not offer the opportunity for niche specialization in the future.

[Author]

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