Trainee auditor's blogs

Summer, performance management and mocks!

4 May 2009

Another month another blog – firstly – SUMMER!!!!

The weather is fantastic – just a pity I’m auditing (joking) – but seriously – one ‘minor’ downer in audit is that you spend most of your time indoors during the summer months when everyone else is outside enjoying the sun ... oh well.

This month has been chaotic, bordering on ridiculous but its all part and parcel of the Commission. Firstly – heath clients. I’ve been completing what is often referred as ‘Use of Resources’ work. You may know that at the Commission you do not just financial but non financial audit, where you assess the performance of key organisations based on key lines of enquiry – I have had the joy of looking at ‘risk.’ The more I did this work the more I admire the work undertaken by social workers, performance specialists and such like; the ability of these people to make conclusions based on analysis of evidence, interviews and qualitative information was a huge eye opener. It’s not like simply black and white like financial audit where the numbers either agree or don’t agree, but where you need to make an assessment about an organisation based on interviews, key indicators and analysing and scrutinising complex pieces of evidence. It was v. hard!!! Performance audit is tricky, but is a vital element of our organisation, and I’m keen for another opportunity to give it another go. Watch this space.

I also had my performance management review. Bravo! It’s always an interesting period and generally quite a nervous time. It’s when we find out our scores for the year based on our performance and progress. I’m always nervous about this – perhaps because you are your own harshest critic and you hope in your heart of hearts that you are progressing as expected, or exceeding as expected. Thankfully the report came up positive – some development points and some areas where I needed to improve upon; but all in all was very happy – phew!

I have also arrived back at my London borough client. At the moment we are short staffed so a little hectic – but also a lot of opportunities to take on work which would not always be offered to a trainee. I have had my first engagement meeting in relation to performance work – where I am responsible as the team leader of small audit which fits into the Comprehensive Area Assessment. This work is ongoing and at the time of writing this blog, still not finished. But it’s exciting. I will outline more next month.

College wise I have finished and just had my mocks. I always use this as a dry run for the real exam. I’ve had one result back (which I passed – surprisingly as I thought I had bombed it!) and one which I’m waiting on. Exams are on June 4th and 8th.

We also have our final accounts audit – known as post statements – for our health clients. This is a manic time of testing the figures in the final accounts and confirming whether they are accurate. All I will say is “have you seen the size of an NHS trust and their accounts?” They are truly huge and these audits take many weeks to complete, just because of their sheer size. It’s not like auditing a small company in the firms which makes steel or has 5-10 staff; these are organisations which employ 1000s and have many £100s of millions going through their books. No rest for the wicked is all I can say.

Ok I need to leave you to it I guess. Exams are coming up – so you won’t hear a blog from me till mid June now. Best of luck everyone and catch up soon”.

Posted by: LW