Internal Auditors
As part of the accountancy profession internal auditors are not the most glamorous but they are the most important practitioners. This may seem a little odd as we think of accountants as the people who work out whether the right taxes are being paid, or who prepare the information for stock holders and so on, but this is to miss the real point of having them (and why the whole subject was invented thousands of years ago) and that is to tell managers what is going on. Management accountants tell them what should be going on and help to make plans, but there still needs to be people who check that it is actually happening. That’s our internal auditors.
Training is just as with the other branches of the profession, almost always requiring a college degree which should be, if not in accounting itself, certainly include some semester hours in the subject. Traditionally it has been possible to enter without such a college degree, perhaps just with some experience of bookkeeping and then working up the hierarchy but this is becoming more difficult, even if there is substantial natural talent. Employers these days are much more fixated on paper qualifications than they used to be so that college degree is becoming ever more important.
As to our EQSQ personality tests and which personality type will thrive in internal auditing this is a rather difficult question. The real point of this job is to find out when people are lying and stealing: that’s what the auditing is trying to uncover. Now there are certain time hallowed ways of trying to do this but people are always inventing new ones so a certain empathy for the criminal mind is necessary. Given the attention to detail also required this is probably best for those with the balanced brain type.
June 7th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
If the job is to determine whether someone is lying or stealing, it might not be a good one for our empathizers. The black-and-white systemizers might be better at calling someone on the rug: they will less likely feel bad for the ‘bad’ guy. I know, firsthand, that I would not want the job of blowing the whistle, and thus getting fired, sending to jail, etc, on my colleagues, even if they deserved it.
Second, I think we should, on some level, protect our society’s empathizers. When guiding our young (as teachers, guidance counselors, career counselors, etc), one would probably not send a truly empathetic type into this field.
I realize, Tim, that you said ‘balanced brain types,’ and not empathizers, but I think there are some jobs (not many, but some) for which many people wouldn’t work out. And here, I think an extreme systemizer might be best.
Do you remember that long ago Cheer’s episode when Norm ‘moved up’ in his company to become the guy who fired people? At first, he got overly emotional with every lay off (even crying with the unfortunate firees), thus making them feel bad for him and not angry about being laid off. But after a while, he hardened up and it barely fazed him to fire people.
Strange example of my point, I know.
June 11th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
I agree that this is a slightly difficult one to pigeonhole. You need to have the systemizing intelligence and the lack of empathy to enjoy tracking down those who are stealing. But you also need to have the emotional intelligence to think like the potential criminal and work out how they might be trying to steal. One part requires one set of talents, the other, the other (as it were).
Which is why I thought that the balanced brain type was best.