Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to interview questions for accountants. I'm Ross Maynard, and I'm a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. This set of potential interview questions is designed for people who might be up for an accountancy or finance related interview, and covers the sorts of things that you might be asked. can't guarantee what you'll be asked to what you won't be asked. But these are the sorts of topics that might be touched on. If we move on then here are the eight questions that we're going to cover in this section.

What do you consider to be the main challenge facing the accountancy profession? What changes do you think will most impact on accountancy in the coming years? Which accounting applications are you familiar with? And what are their advantages and disadvantages? describe an accounting process that you've developed or improved. Describe a time when you help reduce costs.

Describe a time when you had to present financial information. How did you do it? What is your experience with KPIs and or dashboards? and describe a time when you had to explain in a complex accounting issue to someone without an accounting background? How did you help your audience understand the situation? So let's get started with the first one.

And the first question is, what do you consider to be the main challenge facing the accounting profession? Now, this is really a sort of general question to sort of open up discussion with you as a candidate. So there'll be no right answer here. It's just looking to see that you've some awareness of what is going on in the industry and in the institute's, so you should check with your own Institute's on the website and through their journal sorts of topics that are occurring in the journal the sorts of things that have been talked about, maybe for the future. Have a recent changes. And you can easily do a search on the internet to also to see some sort of talking points for accounting.

If you're up for a fairly specialist finance role, for example, Treasury, or foreign currency, or maybe you know lease finance or something, then you might also want to check topics that might be relevant to that area, so that you can talk about, you know, the the area that you're up for in terms of the job. But this is should be a fairly easy opening question, as long as you've done a bit of research into your own Institute and the sort of topics that it's raising at the moment. The second question is, what changes do you think will most impact on accountancy in the coming years? And this is similar to the first question, it's a kind of discussion point to get you to open up about your awareness of Accountancy your level of interest, perhaps in accountancy as a future career, and how you think it might develop in the future.

And again, you should be looking on your Institute's website in the journal on other Institute websites and other accountancy websites to see the topics that have been talked about. But the sorts of things that you might speak about would be AI in accountancy, can that help in terms of deal with daily transactions, for example, machine learning, changes in the accountancy software packages that are being developed, and other topics that you might think of interest. So it's useful to look into sort of recent accounting scandals to see what how that might impact on the profession and the way it's regulated. For example, I was reading one today about Ernst and Young, not declaring potential money laundering and a client that they were working with in Dubai, but there's been many recent accounting kind of scandals come accountancy firms, audit firms involved in companies that have crashed like karelian and Thomas Cook In the UK, and that may obviously have impact on the way that the profession is regulated internally and also by legislation, and give good topics for you to talk fluently with your interview panel and get comfortable in your interview.

The third question is, which accounting applications? Are you familiar with? And what are their advantages and disadvantages? Now, there might be two aspects to this sort of question. Firstly, if the client if the company that you're going for the interview with has a specific package, then they want to be assured that you're familiar with that package, and in fact, proficient in the use of it. And you should be able to find out what package they're using from you know, the interview materials that are sent to you the job description and so on.

And you should make sure that you emphasize your abilities in that package. Obviously, if you have no experience in the package of the company that you're going for the interview for, then your chances of getting the job Somewhat reduced. But the second aspect is that if it's a larger company, for example, they may have several different packages in different subsidiaries different parts of the business, they may have legacy systems and so on. So your knowledge of a variety of accounting packages of variety of finance packages in terms of systems will help you because it shows that you're flexible, it shows that you're able to learn new packages, and the way that they interface with each other. So this discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of accounting applications that you've used, will help you reinforce in the panel's mind that you're flexible, that you're quick to learn and that you can deal with different structures of packages, different structures of applications.

So potentially a very strong positive for you there if you've got good wide experience. If the panel's wishing to focus on one specific application that they have, then you need to be able to prove that you've got very wide experience of the different modules, the different aspects of that package. The next question is describe an accounting process that you've developed or improved. Now accounting and finance is much more than crunching the numbers. And a question like this is designed to kind of show how good you are at dealing with people and getting involved with people from different disciplines to improve a process to help develop a process. So it's about your involvement in improving accounting processes.

And this gives you a chance to show your communication skills, your facilitation skills, your coaching skills, your ability to work with other members of staff in the organization who are not finance people. Your ability to bring a team together perhaps to chair or facilitate that team to examine, review and improve an accounting process. Your ability to reach outside of the finance function and work with other functions within the organization. So it's very much about your skills as a kind of people person, if you like your skills and dealing with people who are not primarily financial people. The next question is describe a time when you help to reduce costs. And again, this is about moving outside the crunching of numbers into using financial information management accounting information to help improve processes and help improve the performance of the business.

So you should come up with a list of projects perhaps you've worked on that I've helped to reduce costs, either by making accounting processes more efficient, or working with business units with teams with departments to manage their budgets to help them keep a control on costs, and perhaps to reduce costs. So it's very important for you to make an inventory of the projects that you have worked on as well. Finance person as an accountant, with other people within the finance team, and also outside the finance team to understand costs, understand how costs are arising, and then to put in place and implement a plan to reduce those costs. So this is really about the project work that you've been involved in as an accountant, and how that has helped improve the performance of the business. You might also hear substitute reduced costs for improved profitability or improved efficiency.

The question might be phrased something like, describe a time when you help to improve the performance of the business. So it's not just about reducing costs. The next question is describe a time when you have to present financial information, and how did you do it? In my view, being a good presenter of financial information, is what's going to set you apart from run of the mill accountants and finance people. So you can really present your credentials here. Even if it's just sitting down in meetings with people from other departments to help them understand their budgets or their cost reports, that is presenting financial information in an understandable and accessible manner.

Other things that you might have done that might include, you know, presenting the business plan are the budgets, two groups, presenting at meetings, even Institute branch meetings, at conferences, if you have anything that you've done to help people who are not financial people understand the numbers, understand the information presented to them, is going to be a bonus and it's going to help you in your search for a new job. So make a list of those instances and those events, those meetings that you've presented information at those presentations or training sessions, and flesh those out with a few sentences that you can then talk about in an interview. The next question is, what is your experience With KPIs and or dashboards, and this question is similar to the previous one, and it's about your ability to communicate financial information to people who are not necessarily finance people who are not necessarily finance experts, and who perhaps have some difficulty understanding the numbers and the way that they're presented, a question like this gives you the opportunity to show that you're more than just a number cruncher, as I've said before, but that you can present information in a way that's understandable and accessible to people who are not naturally finance specialists.

For example, how would you recommend presenting KPI performance measures to operational people? Personally, I believe that a time series to show that performance data over time is the best way to do it. This shows the peaks and the troughs. What report formats Have you used to present data? What sort of dashboard formats Have you used? What's been your experience with those How have other people put nonfinancial people reacted to those forms of presentation.

These questions, these thoughts can all form part of your interview discussion. And our final question is describe a time when you had to explain a complex accounting issue to someone without an accounting background. How did you help your audience understand the situation? Again, this is a question about taking finance out of the finance function, and presenting it to people who don't have an accountancy background, who perhaps lack the ability with numbers and figures that you do. How can you help those people understand and appreciate the information that you're presenting to them, and, you know, make the right sorts of decisions with that information. So again, you should make an inventory of the situations that you've experienced, where you have presented and explained complex accounting issues, to non financial people, how they've reacted to that and how you've sort of cope.

Them to understand and appreciate the data, and then help them make the correct decision with that data. The key to success in many accounting jobs is to be a good communicator of financial information to help the people, the many people in the organization who don't really understand finance or perhaps don't like it have a bit of a phobia refinements help them to understand the information, to learn to love the figures, and to use them properly to make correct decisions which improve the performance of their part of the business. That's the key to successful finance people. That's all the questions then I hope they've been helpful. You may not get these questions word for word in an interview, but they're covering the sorts of topics the sorts of themes that you would likely meet in an interview for an accountancy or finance role, so it's worth running through them.

Compare the questions and your thoughts about the questions to the experience on yourself. dv, C where you've maybe got gaps that you can fill in with case studies of work that you've done with projects that you've been involved in, and also maybe where you've got further learning requirements. And it's useful to be upfront with the interviewer about further learning requirements for a job because that can also help give you credibility give you kudos with the interviewer that you've been honest with them. Anyway, good luck with any accounting interviews that you're going for. I hope these questions have been helpful, and I wish you success in your efforts to find a new job. Thank you very much for your time.

I am Ross Maynard, and I look forward to speaking to you on a course in the future. Goodbye.