Many people consider accountancy to be a boring profession. It can be of course but one thing is certain and that is that there are many hundreds of thousands of accountants, probably more like millions, working away around the world. Many people do not know what they want out of their career and end up falling into the role of an accountant. You do not need a formal accounting degree and many firms and organisations will provide accountancy training to staff coming from many different backgrounds. Eventually after a few years of hard work, you will become a qualified accountant and wonder how you every got to where you are!
Like any job, accountancy can be boring. It is likely that flying fighter jets as a career has many dull moments! Becoming an accountants does not mean that you are restricted to adding up columns of figures or ticking invoices from a list. A forensic accounting career is an interesting corner of the accounting profession that can be both interesting and exciting.
A forensic accountant can undertake financial investigation work that will lead to an expert accountants report for use in litigation or prosecution. Such an accountant will be acting as an expert witness in a whole range of different types of cases. Expert accounting witnesses are called upon in court to give evidence in matrimonial disputes, share valuation diputes, loss of profit claims, professional audit negligence enquiries and personal injury insurance claims. However, the biggest and arguably the most exciting area for a forensic accountant acting as an expert witness is when asked to investigate cases of fraud. Here an expert accounting witness must investigate the fraud, present the facts and figures in such a way that the court will readily understand, and then be prepared to answer questions about the financial and accounting aspects of the case presented by the barrister or counsel. Very often the judge will also ask his own questions.
Becoming an expert accounting witness requires experience. As a qualified accountant you can gain this experience by joining a forensic accounting team and helping out with the investigations and report writing. However, you must not worry – you will not be asked to present your report in court until you have quite a number of years experience!