I realized over the last two weeks, that the reasons audits are so much more stressful for me than tax returns are because there is much less of a filter between myself and the client. If I'm working on a tax return, at least two people above me review it before it ever gets handed off to the client. On an audit, this isn't feasible. There is constant back-and-forth with the client, us sending questions and templates, etc. Not all of this can be reviewed.

But, I'm going to make an effort to ask my senior/manager to review as much of this stuff as I can from now on. Especially when doing something for the first time (for example, determining materiality and then selecting a sample), while my senior and I might assume this is simple enough for me to get right, I've realized that when doing something BRAND NEW, it is very difficult for me to check my own work. My brain doesn't know what mistakes to watch out for.

So, I'm making a little resolution for work - even if my boss/senior/manager doesn't ask me to give them something to review before sending it on to the client, I'm going to send it to them to review anyway.

Also, every time I do something, I need to think about what questions I can ask to help me better understand what I'm doing!

Other things about busy season to keep in mind going forward:

• Don't pack multiple pairs of shoes. No one notices if you wear the same shoes for 4 days, and the extra pairs take up a lot of space in my suitcase.
• Don't pack multiple jackets. I packed my typical cold weather jacket, plus one that is not as warm, but looks nicer. I wore the one that looks nicer to the client, and I didn't have any opportunity/time to wear the other one.
• Not going to have time to blog in the hotel in the evening - need to write blog posts the Sunday before!

Have you ever made mistakes at work that you realized later you could easily have avoided by simply asking someone? What tips do you have about making mistakes?

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We recently had our annual reviews at work, and as part of the process, we were asked to set some goals for the upcoming year. By all accounts, these goals are not really followed up on by management, but I put some thought into my goals anyway, because they're MY goals and it's MY responsibility to follow up on them.

After setting my goals, I thought I'd share some tips on setting your own goals, whether it is for your annual performance review, or just for your own benefit.

Setting professional goals forces you to think about your career, and to broaden your view from the here-and-now, to the future. You may be scrambling to do all your work well in the moment, but take a minute to think about 5 years from now, or 10 years from now, and what you need to do to get where you want to go.

Maybe just doing your work each day isn't enough. Maybe you need to become involved in the community, find new clients for your company, seek out training events that you can attend, and then teach your coworkers about.

Figure out what your overall objective is first

Is your goal to make partner in the next 10 years? Is your goal to move into more of a business development role? Do you want to specialize in one industry?

Before you can set your goals for the upcoming year, you need to put some thought into your ultimate goal over the next 10 years. (Or 20. Longterm. However far ahead you think you can handle.)

If, deep down, you don't plan to make partner, then your annual goals now may be completely different. You don't need to point out to your boss that you are not attempting to make partner, of course!

Some of our former employees were interested in part-time work when they became parents. They handle monthly bookkeeping for some of our clients now, rather than working for us full time doing audits. It would also be possible to transition to working as an individual tax accountant - but our firm does more corporate taxes, while an individual practitioner would likely handle more individual and partnership returns.

Even if you don't work in accounting, you can still apply this to the job you are currently in. What direction do you want to go in from where you are now?

Figure out what your short term objectives are

Okay, now that I have set my long-term objective, I can figure out some short term objectives are.

Let's say I picked the  "partner" route. I'm going to want to make sure I'm assigned to some of our biggest clients, I'm going to want to network with other people at the levels in between me and partners. It depends on your firm what other objectives you might have.

Set goals that will help you achieve those objectives

You can't just set your goal to being assigned to the biggest client - you need to set goals that will help you get there. Maybe you'll attend an industry conference, to gain more knowledge about that client's industry in the upcoming year. Maybe you'll check with managers on that project first every time you're out of work to do during the year, and then make sure you do that work promptly and well.

At this point in the process, you are figuring out the actual steps you can wake up and do every day that will help you achieve your objectives.

How I applied this to my annual review

I set a goal to learn how to do a particularly tricky type tax return well - and then I laid out steps I can take to get there. I will read the regulations referenced in the form instructions. I will find a good example of how to do the return properly, and study the example. I will actively ask for more of this type of return to practice on.

I also set a personal goal to work more efficiently; I want to get my chargeable hours in and go home earlier this year. This is not a goal I shared with my boss, because I don't want to suggest that I haven't been using my time efficiently already... but that doesn't mean that I can't set it as a goal for the year anyway!

Your annual review

Does your employer have you set annual goals? Do they follow up on these, or leave them up to you to keep track of? What were your career goals this year?

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This month not only marks the one-year anniversary of Accountant by Day (join in the giveaway fun - win prizes all month!), but it has also been one year since I started working in public accounting. Actually this is also the sixth anniversary of my US citizenship too. (Which reminds me, I need to change my voting address...)

Thank you everyone for reading, and I hope to continue to provide more and better content for you this year!

This year was the first year I hadn't attended school as a full-time student since I was five. I learned as much, and probably retained more, than in college, but it felt like the hardest lessons were not about how to do the work. Rather, the tough lessons were about how to get the work done when you have 3 managers wanting you to get their project finished first. They were about knowing when to ask questions, and how to really try to figure it out on your own first.

I can't help but look ahead to the year that lies before me, thinking of how much there is to do, and hoping to do it so much better this year. However, I think a moment of reflection is in order now, before jumping ahead to the next thing. It is too easy to move ahead without appreciating the path left behind.

In the past year: I moved to the biggest city I've ever lived in; I flew to another state and back in one day (inventory counts); I worked on 7 audit clients, and several other reviews and compilations; I completed an uncounted number of tax returns (it felt like hundreds, I think it was 20 - 30?); I wrote 91 blog posts; my net worth changed from negative to almost $10,000 positive.

Here are some points I'd like to remember, and maybe you'll find them useful, even if you don't work in public accounting, but are just starting out after college.

• Money doesn't go as far as I thought it would. I have been very focused on money this year, which I don't think is a good thing, but I feel like I need to build saving and budgeting skills, and really get comfortable with using what I am making. I'm making plenty, I just need to get comfortable with the best way to manage it and put it to the right things in my life.
• Impressing your direct managers on a day to day basis is much more important than impressing the partners. Maybe you have a "big boss" and then you have the bosses in between you and the big boss. Sure, if you make witty banter when you get a chance to chat with zir at a company outing, that's all good. But if you consistently turn good work into your direct managers, they will be eager to give you more work, get you on their jobs, and this is what the partner will notice.
• Being polite and friendly to people will always serve you well. When a manager gets fed up with you for making the same mistake twice, being condescending and angry about it is not going to make the mistake-maker any better at their job. This is a point I really want to retain and carry forward as I get more reponsibility and work with new staff. If you're scary, staff won't want to come with you with questions and issues until the little issues turn into big problems.
• Making time for my own life is up to me. I had a lot of days where I think I could have left earlier, but since everyone around me was working late, I didn't work as efficiently as I could, and would end up staying as late as everyone else to complete stuff. I think it's okay to leave at 6:00 even if some other people are staying 'til 8:00, as long as I'm working efficiently in the time I am there, and still getting lots done.
• Stay away from comparing yourself to other people. If you work hard and turn in good work, there's not much benefit to get from comparing yourself to your coworker equivalents who are leaving 2 hours before you each day. You will just get upset when you see that they are pretty much being rewarded (financially) the same as you. It takes a few years of hard work to really distinguish yourself from these people, so just forget about them, and work in a way you need to to turn in work that you know you put your best effort into.
• Don't tell people at work anything you don't want repeated. It will be repeated.
• If you're out of work to do, be flexible about offering out your services. If your direct boss/manager doesn't have any work for you, see if you can make yourself useful to another team or department. I've met a lot of great partners over the last year, and have more people who will think to offer me work to do now.

What did you learn from your first job after college? What did you learn this year? Are you starting your first year of work now? What are your concerns?

I liked the detailed version of Myers-Briggs, because it showed that while I scored as an "introvert" rather than "extrovert", I also scored high on "communication." I thought this was a very accurate assessment of how I can be very uncomfortable in social situations, but I don't have much of a problem talking or sharing my opinions in the right setting. One thing that our moderator told us was that a big difference between introverts and extroverts is not how they interact with people, but whether being around many people drains energy (introvert) or gives energy (extrovert.) That described perfectly how I feel when I would go to parties, or networking events.

However, I agree with the view expressed in this article that extroverts are fairly easy for introverts to understand, since extroverts live "out loud" a bit more than introverts. But introverts can be unfathomable to extroverts, and since there are more extroverts than introverts in the world, there is pressure on introverts to act like extroverts in order to "be normal."

So what does being an introvert mean in a professional work environment where you are expected to do a lot of work as a team? During audit season, you spend most of your time working in a conference room with several of your colleagues, for 95% of your waking hours. That's a lot of face time. What about during recruiting, where you have to go to an event and speak to as many people as possible?

What do introverts look like to other people?

In my experience, many people get the impression that I am aloof or unfriedly, but not shy. This is because I don't have a problem speaking up when I have something to say, so they then think that the "introvert" parts of my personality must just be unfriendliness. I also get called "serious" a lot too, and my roommate almost daily gives me a hard time about how I'm going to "read a book in my room" instead of sit next to her watching TV. (Ugh.)

According to the book The Introvert Advantage, which I just started reading, introverts also tend to keep their comments to themselves until they've really thought things through, and often don't like to start new projects without doing a lot of thinking and planning first. This means that they could appear to be slow movers to extroverts.

The book also points out that introverts tend to enjoy serious discussions about real topics, and don't really enjoy chit-chat. This is another point that I identify with, and often results in people finding me a bit too intense for their liking, or results in myself not knowing what to say at networking events where chit-chat is required.

How many of you out there consider yourself to be an introvert - what are the comments you get from other people that you think have something to do with your introversion?

My strategies for being an introvert in an extrovert world

My strategies for coping with being an introvert in the accounting world are still under construction. I'm hoping to come up with some new ideas related to this as I read further in the "Introvert Advantage" which proposes to help you use introversion as a strength, rather that teach you how to "fix" yourself to be an extrovert.

During networking events, I find that it helps to prepare your "chit chat" ahead of time, if it doesn't come naturally to you. Come up with a list of questions to ask people about (what branch of the company they work for, how long they've worked their for, recent travel they've done), and also think about what you should avoid asking about (personal topics like whether they're married/have kids).

Preparing ahead of time can help reduce the stress and energy it takes to interact with an overwhelming group of people. I also find that treating it like exercise or saving and setting goals, such as "I will talk to 6 people from the firm" help make it into something that is not fun, but is accomplishable, rather than something that is simply overwhelming.

When working in an audit room with colleagues all week, it can drive you up the wall to be interrupted when you're deep in concentration. There's not much you can do to get away from them, but since everyone will be really busy, at least you shouldn't have to interact the whole time. When someone does want to interrupt you, focus on always looking up from your work with a smile, no matter how deep in thought you were.

The book "Introvert Advantage" suggests planning your day to have some alone time, or to not "schedule meetings" on days where you know you will be recovering from an over-social time the day before. As an auditor, you don't have that kind of flexibility, so you'll have to just practice having the extrovert "responses" to your coworkers, rather than just responding naturally.

I also like to bring a book to read before going to sleep after a long day of auditing, which allows me to feel like I got a bit of time "to myself." If you can bring a book, or a DVD of a tv show you like, etc, then carving out a little time to do a quiet activity might help you recover a bit from being over exposed to people all day.

Does anyone out there identify as an introvert but have times at work where you have to go against your nature to get along with extroverts? Do you have any tips on how to "refresh" yourself when you're drained of energy from spending too much time around other people?

We'll be out here for 2 weeks. I think this is my longest time working a plane ride away. After the two weeks are up, I'll be back home for a week, and then back on a plane to another client for a week. Then I think I mostly have local clients after that, except for one.

The client we're on right now is a conglomeration of entities. Our team is doing 3 reviews and 2 audits while we're up here. Another team of two is at a different location performing attest services for a couple of other entities under the same umbrella, and a third time is on some sister entities in a third location.

One big thing I've seen in my internship and here, which wasn't covered in school, is how complicated business structures are. And how normal this complication is. One entity will only exist as a holding company for tax purposes, for example, or two entities will form a partnership and own the other entities. I'm still trying to learn the reasoning behind all the divisions and complications, since half the time it's the same accounting department trying to keep track of them all!

I hope everyone had a good first week of 2011! I'm still looking into purchasing a house to live in and renting out the extra rooms, but I'm not sure I'm ready for such a big commitment!