How Do I Become an Auditor?
The steps needed to be completed in order to become an auditor can be rather straightforward and simple to complete, but can take a lot of time. The first step is meeting the educational requirements, which will include an advanced degree of some type. The second step is often to get certification. If both things are achieved, the question is not then how to become an auditor but rather what particular field you are interested in. In most cases, the job of an auditor involves checking financial information and reviewing that information for any inaccuracies or errors of fact. While the most high profile of cases actually involve uncovering cases of fraud, most of the time the job of an auditor is simply checking facts and verifying information. If discrepancies are found, these are likely mistakes, rather than attempts at fraud. Those wanting to become an auditor should have a strong attention to detail, like working with numbers, and be able to offer their findings in an authoritative
There are different areas of specialization in the field of auditing. A common misconception is that you need to be an accountant to become an auditor. While it may be true that having a background in accounting is beneficial in financial statement attestations, it might not be the best background if you are doing operational/performance type audits or government auditing task such as federal compliance. If you plan to be an auditor for one of the Big 4 or for a regional CPA firm, then accounting classes would definitely help. Some jobs actually require a certain number of units in accounting for you to even be considered. A general rule of thumb would be take accounting classes until you meet the requirements to take the CPA exam for your state. The number of credits needed vary from state to state. Since you are a business major, you might actually be qualified for a lot of entry level auditing jobs out there. Generally accepted certifications that would help you in your career inclu
There aren’t really any rules as such. In general, the audits happen to help the auditee, so if it doesn’t help them, it has failed. However, we are all a gang of helpful people, and we are here to help each other develop as writers. How we do this is up to ourselves, so we just kind of make up the rules as we go along. If you have a field of speciality (most people do, whether it is Magic: The Gathering, fire, mathematics, comic books or space exploration), you may be a particularly valuable auditor, in form of being a specialist auditor, as you can help noders who are writing on these speciality topics along. This means that you can audit a noders’ writeups on a specific topic.
