Summary

Page 57 grounded, have self-confidence during the examination, remember all the pensum by heart in a pressured situations while a lot of people watching and questioning them. The oral exams require great professional and personal skills, they need to know pensum by heart and they personally need to be persistent, keep calm etc.

” The exams are pretty hardcore. For the oral exam you need to remember everything by the heart, and you do not know what you are examined in. There are many different rules you need to be following, which you maybe have learned after working 10 years as an auditor, but there is further much more you need to learn. You need to have a great professional knowledge. To become SAA, it is essential to be persistent. Additionally, you need to have steady nerves and remember it is just a job, if not then you will be completely run over.” (A5

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Page 58 many women are leaving the industry, as they do not feel it is acceptable to work less to prioritise private life including children and family.

According to our findings the auditing industry is structured in a way where the auditors are only able to reach a certain level then the SAA title becomes a ceiling forcing the auditors to either take the SAA exam or to leave the auditing industry to find an alternative career path. Therefore, the SAA can become a formal structure within the auditing industry drawing auditors who are not interested in becoming SAAs away from the industry.

The working environment is, according to our findings, characterised as high-performance, fast-paced and competitive to the extent where people compare each other on parameters like feedback, promotions, salary, and pace of advancement etc. Therefore, auditors who have family obligations, or prioritise maintaining a private life etc. are systematically categorised as unambitious and unserious about their career, which can be a factor drawing people away from the industry because they feel they cannot comply to the Doxa of “hard work” and “high-performance” of the Field.

The “hard tone from the top” is generally not addressed by the respondents, as it was indicated by a few that they felt uncomfortable bringing this up around other people. This is a natural feeling as the topic can be sensitive and includes complex feelings of discomfort, shame, degradation, embarrassment etc. It can further make people feel vulnerable or exposed and not “good enough” at their job. This can be a factor silently constraining women to become SAAs.

The auditing work is structured as primarily teamwork where one specific team is covering a client or a specific assignment. Therefore, the working conditions are dynamic and changing because it depends on the team, the client, and the assignment. The challenge of teamwork is the ability to work together with different kinds of people and the challenge of the uncertainty of the expected workload due to the dependency of the external factors. The way the new assignments/clients are distributed by the partners/top management and pressures for the auditors to say yes, even though they are already fully booked, because they want to secure receiving new and interesting assignments in the future and they want to maintain a good relationship with top management. The auditors feel pressured to stay late in the office during the busy season if the rest of the team is also staying late. The physical appearance is

important to show they are fully committed and ambitious.

Based on our finding the respondents in general experience a comprehensive workload. One factor for this is how the industry is conditioned by the formal and mandatory deadlines of submitting the annual

accounts etc. The comprehensive workload makes it difficult to balance work life and private life and this can be factor drawing people away from the industry because they constantly feel the pressure from the infinite amounts of assignments and clients, which makes it difficult to prioritise private obligations such as

Page 59 having a family.

In accordance to our findings, the working environment in the auditing industry is stressful due to the comprehensive workload and the urgent deadlines which are particularly relevant during the busy seasons of the year. The extensive level of stress is expressed in how many of the respondents have trouble sleeping, how they have observed many of their coworkers going on sick leave due to stress, how it is common knowledge that the auditing houses in general are challenged with many stress related sick leaves, how several of the respondents are challenged in finding a balance in their work and private life and how it generally affects their health.

The benefit of working many hours and working in teams is according to our findings that the auditors spend a lot of time together which encourages a strong collegial bond and a sense of being part of a

community. The great collegial bond and the sense of community motivate the auditors and can be a factor encouraging women to stay in the industry.

Based on our findings, leadership is big part of the auditing work. The general concern of how management responsibilities are assigned based on experience and not on management skills held together the factor of the “hard tone of the top” indicates some improvement potentials of the management in general.

Therefore the “insufficient” management skills in the auditing industry can be a factor constraining women to become SAAs.

According to our findings, the formal requirements to begin the SAA programme demand a certain amount of self-confidence because the candidate needs to express their desire to begin the SAA programme which includes self-confidence in being good enough to be a SAA. Additionally, it requires the self-confidence to be exposed to the highest management level and be evaluated if one has the adequate professional and personal skills to become a SAA. Thus, process requires a certain amount of self-confidence, professionally and personally.

The formal requirement to enter the SAA programme is that the candidate needs to have graduated CMA and have three years practical work experience in the auditing industry, which entails the age of the candidates clashed with the age where many people begin considering establishing a family. The timing of the SAA together with the understanding of the increased workload and pressure included in the SAA process is according to our finding an explaining factor of why women do not choose the SAA.

The challenge of the SAA candidates is the balance between the pressure from their regular work and pressure from the SAA exams, it requires the candidates to be able to enforce their time to study for the SAA and the ability to say no to more work. Thus, the process to become SAA is very hard and time consuming because the candidates need to fit in studying and courses in addition to their regular work obligations. This can scare away many candidates in advance especially if they cannot see themselves in the

Page 60 SAA role afterwards.

According to our finding the formalities of the SAA exams can be a challenge for the SAA candidates to pass. The typical SAA candidate has a lot of practical experience, but limited experiences with studying techniques, which can be a challenge when the SAA exams require being able to acquire a comprehensive theoretical knowledge.

Another challenge of the written SAA examination form are the required formalities. The written

assignment is required to be written in a specific type of “note” on the given accounting issue. Therefore, the candidates are requiring to be able to convey their knowledge in a certain formal way, differently to how they normally do in practise.

According to our findings, there is a lot of pressure on the candidates in connection to the oral exams which requires a lot of practice to be grounded, have self-confidence during the examination, remember all the pensum by heart in a pressured situations while a lot of people watching and questioning them. The oral exams require great professional and personal skills, they need to know pensum by heart and they personally need to be persistent, keep calm etc.