I spent the month of May being very busy taking my last class of my Masters degree: Forensic Accounting.

It was a pretty cool class. We spent about 3 weeks in class, with 2 weeks devoted to speakers from all areas of the profession from lawyers to one-man forensic accounting firms to ex-FBI agents.

Outside of class, we spent our time working in teams to solve a “fraud.” I believe the backbone of the case is used at several universities in similar classes, but basically we are given some financial data from a small company, and must try to figure out if someone is committing fraud. We could write “emails” to the characters in the fraud, which our professor and her TA would reply to in character. We could also “hire” private investigators to “follow” the characters and let us know what they saw.

It was way easier than a real fraud, of course, but then, we only had a week and a half to get it figured out, haha.

We were also encouraged to note any internal control weaknesses and errors when writing our report. I had the pleasure of working with a girl who worked in industry for 6 years before doing her masters, who was amazing at finding every tiny error. I’m not sure if it was the industry experience that helped, or simply that she pays keen attention to detail.

I would like to take the CFE (certified fraud examiner) exam eventually, but the company I’ll be working for in the fall doesn’t have a forensic accounting team, making it unlikely I’d be able to collect the necessary experience.

So, it’s something to think about for the future, and I know that sometimes partners at smaller firms will do some forensic work for their clients, even though they don’t have a regular forensic team, so it can’t hurt to take the exam just in case. (And apparently it’s waaaay easier than the CPA exam!)

Related posts:

1. Financial Crime
2. Back to the books
3. Big 4 vs. Regional Accounting Firms

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