Accountancy in general

In two weeks I will find out if I have qualified as an Accountant throught the AAT (Association of Accounting Technicians). This will be the cumulation of three years hard study and on the job training. When I left school I did not want to be an accountant, it probably was the furthest thing from my mind - I was thinking more along the line of Pilot, Journalist or even Teacher (diverse? yes I know!). You will find that a lot of people who work in accounts just 'fell into it' as I did. It doesn't seem to be the job of choice for many people. But, once you're in, you're hooked! Accountancy is a statisfying career for people who are very logical ...

Accountancy has got itself a bad name recently following saga's like Barings and Enron and others, however a closer look will show the uninitiated that it is actually Auditing that has the bad name and not the broader category of accounting. Accounting I like to compare to Doctors. You have your General Practitioners and you have your Specialists. Now you don't tarnish the heart surgeon or the ENT specialist with the same brush as certain notorious GP's I could mention. The same with Accounting. There are the General Practitioners who sit quietly in back offices compiling accounts and management reports for the individual companies ...