Cait: my journey to the Digital Audit team

Three words to describe my career

· Innovative – as a team, the Digital Audit Team fosters creativity and we always look for new ways to do things, thinking outside of the box and coming up with unique solutions to challenges.

· Supportive – the environment within the team allows me to feel valued, empowered, and able to perform my best work. Other members of the team always make time to help you with whatever challenges you may face.

· Dynamic – there is constant change, activity, and progress. There is always a variety of projects to get involved in and the opportunity for continuous learning.

A chance conversation leading to opportunities

When I was considering my future career opportunities, audit appealed to me due to the breadth of exposure that you get from working with a wide range of clients and on different parts of the file. I felt that this would help me learn more about the different aspects of finance, and understand where my strengths were and what areas I was most interested in.

It was through a chance conversation with a colleague that the opportunity to join the Digital Audit team arose. I studied economics at university and really enjoyed the more technical challenges I came across in audit, which required me reviewing large amounts of data and finding digital solutions.

The Head of Digital Audit heard me discussing this with a colleague, and as they had some openings within the team encouraged me to apply. I liked the idea of finding ways to automate more manual parts of the audit process, employing knowledge across a range of disciplines (both technology and finance). If you are driven in your career and take ownership of your personal development, the opportunities for additional training, secondments or exposure to different service lines are all available within the firm.

Life as a DAT trainee

It’s really unusual to change paths whilst on a training contract so I’ll always be really grateful for my previous team in Leeds, and the firm, for supporting this change, and it meant I could relocate closer to home in Manchester. Whilst I have changed paths, I am still studying towards the ACA which helps when I am training auditors or communicating product requirements. If the opportunity had been available to join as a Digital Audit trainee back in 2022, I know that’s the route I would have taken.

The firm has a strong commitment to quality and expertise, and as a team we help the auditors achieve the quality standards they require in the most efficient way by evaluating new and emerging technologies which can assist finance teams and auditors in doing their jobs.

Once we have an idea of how to help auditors out, we design a product or service to help them in this process. We then focus on making sure that the product or service is used properly across the audit practice. Seeing new products launched that I have been working on alongside the project team is a real highlight, and you can see the impact the work I am doing as a graduate is having on the wider team.

As the Digital Audit Team is still so new, the structure is much flatter than some of the bigger teams which brings more scope for responsibility and learning from others, as well as working with people from different teams within audit and across services lines within the wider firm.