Love and passion aren’t always the words that come to mind when talking about internal audit and accounting, but a new documentary Making It Balance: Will the Work Be Worth It explores just those aspects of the professions and discusses the very humanity behind the audit industry.
The documentary, which appears on the program Road Trip Nation and is produced in collaboration with the Center for Audit Quality, follows three aspiring accountants and auditors who have questions about the professions and their choice to pursue them. The young trio puts these questions to several successful members in the industry to find out how to have a meaningful life as an auditor, which often requires long work hours and frequent travel. The interviewers bring out the passion of these leaders in the industry, receiving sage advice that help them consider a life in the auditing profession.
Cynthia Boon, a Ghana-born auditor who is now an internal audit manager at Live Nation Entertainment, a Los Angeles-based global live entertainment producer, spoke about her various career changes, including leaving EY early on in her career to open a clothing business that ultimately failed.
“Failing is not the end of you,” she said in a featured interview. “You can always try again. You can always reinvent. You can always go for the next thing that you want.”
Sarah Elliot, a former CPA for 14 years and co-founder of Intend2Lead, a leadership development firm for accountants, spoke about her love for the profession. For Elliot, the people she worked with were especially instrumental in making her career in accounting her passion.
“It wasn’t like I had this lifelong dream of being an accountant, but I found it,” she said. “And the people I’ve gotten to work with are super smart, caring, kind, and fun. So whatever it is for you, find that.”
When asked about her work-life balance as both a successful professional and a mother, former Deloitte CEO and current commissioner of the WNBA Cathy Engelbert stressed the importance of family and explained her skills could translate into different roles in the firm that fit her particular needs at the moment. She explained that although she had to actively seek out changes in her career sometimes to find a position that worked better with her responsibilities, the profession allowed her to find the balance she needed.
“A lot of people say: ‘Can you have it all?’ with the ‘have’ being defined by someone else,” Engelbert said. “I’ve always have defined it as: ‘Can I do it all?’ as defined by me. And this profession, this accounting and auditing profession, really allowed me to do it all.”
Dawn Brolin, CEO of her own forensic and fraud accounting firm Powerful Accounting talked about the misconceptions that people have about accounting, and how audit is so much more.
“We can analyze. We can justify. We can put numbers into words that most people can’t. So open your mind to whatever your passion is, because you can find it in accounting,” Brolin said.
Curiosity, passion, and the flexibility and creativity to pursue whatever you want come through in the documentary, highlighting the merits of the industry and its professionals, as well as offering bits of insight and advice on how to really achieve it all. 
Stephanie Liu is assistant editor at Internal Audit 360°
In my experience, having a passion and enjoying what you do are strong contributors to professional success and also to personal happiness. Many external circumstances (e.g., working environment) impact your personal experience but if you are a little bit lucky and put your mind and heart to it…you may find your passion in Audit:). To make a long story short, some years ago we were developing the identity and strategy for the formation of a new audit team and the activities included identifying/finding our personal and team values. A senior team member said during the session “…who can find passion in audit”. Making a long story short, that person was not successful in the job and was dismissed a few months later. Good luck to everyone involved in an Audit journey!:)