Top 15 Forensic Accountant Skills to Stay Top of Your Career

This post provides detailed information and list of important forensic accountant skills and qualities to have to be more effective in your work and excel in your career.

Please, read on:

Forensic accounting has to do with the clinical analysis, presentation, representation, and solving of complex financial problems of an organization.

This is the work of a forensic accountant.

Who is a Forensic Accountant?

From the description above, one can say that a forensic accountant is an expert hired to carry out critical and clinical analysis, evaluation and solving of complex financial problems in an organization.

Top 15 Forensic Accountant Skills to Stay Top of Your Career

Here are important skills and qualities you need to succeed in your job as a forensic accountant:

Accounting skills
Legal knowledge
Attention to details
Curiosity
Persistence
Creative thinking
Analytical skills
Research skills
Interviewing skills
Communication skills
Problem solving skills
Fraud identification skills
Investigative skills
Presentation skills
Use of technology.

Accounting skills

For all accounting jobs, the basic skill to have is the basic accounting skill.

And like you know, the basic operation in accounting is preparation of reports which shows the income and the expenditure of the organization.

This is what accounting is basically all about.

As a forensic accounting officer, the first skill to have is the accounting skill.
You should be able to do the basic accounting job of preparing financial reports for presentation to the hierarchies of the organization.

If you cannot prepare financial reports and do some basic financial analysis of the accounts, then attaining this position will be impossible.

So it is simple, you have to get used to the basics of accounting and have them at your fingertips.

Legal knowledge

Governments of nations are always concerned and conscious of the financial operations of legal organizations.

This is why they make laws to moderate the rate of transactions and how to best provide platforms to enhance business operations.

In the light of this, it is important that a forensic accountant should have knowledge of the relevant state and federal laws governing businesses/organizations in the country.

Through this knowledge, he/she can intimate the organization about the laws.

The forensic accountant should not leave the organization ignorant of these laws.

It is your duty to tell the hierarchies of the organization what is obtainable and the dangers of flouting some of those laws.

Attention to details

When analyzing the financial operation of the organization, be sure to take into account every detail you see or find.

Don’t be arrogant to ignore or overlook details. Like you know, every detail is very important in financial reports, no matter how minute the details might be.

So to this effect, you should pay attention to details. Partly due to the fact that it will help you spot out errors and discrepancies in any financial report you come across.

The essence of figuring out the discrepancies is to help effect corrections where necessary.

This will help you work with accurate records or financial reports.

This is what you will need to stay top of your job as a forensic accountant of your organization.

Curiosity

Curiosity pays in this job no doubt about that. It pays to be curious or inquisitive.

This means that you are always eager to know more about how some records or reports came to be.

This is a good way to garner more knowledge and help make your job easy.

This curiosity might be spurred by the discrepancies you detected going through some financial reports.

With your level of curiosity, you can get to the root of the differences in the status of the reports you have at your disposal.

Also, through your expertise, you should have a level of expectation from an organization with the status of the organization you are working for.

If these expectations are not met, it is safe for you to carry out an enquiry into why such expectations were not met.

Persistence

Curiosity brings persistence with it, particularly if the results you are getting are not matching or are not consistent.

This is necessary because sometimes you may be in a situation where you are left with two options: either to believe what you have at hand or dig deeper to know more.

The key thing there is that you must be persistent in your search for more results.

You don’t have to quit until you are satisfied with what you have acquired through constructive research and analysis.

This is why you have to be persistent in your search.

Also, through consistency, you will be able to unravel some unknown facts which the management may not even be aware of.

Sometimes when good forensic accounting is done, members of the managements are surprised about some unknown facts that are unraveled.

That is the essence forensic accounting.

Creative thinking

Forensic accounting demands a lot of creativity. In fact, it is safe to say that how effective you can be in this job is heavily reliant on your ability to get around problems on your own without using the conventional means everyone knows about.

This starts with good thinking ability; thinking creatively on how to get around problems.

This should be your thing and something you should do always. Simply put, you should be unpredictable in your approach to your job as a forensic accountant.

One aspect that your creativity will be put to test is when you are faced with the prospect of making your investigations to know why there are discrepancies in the report before you.

You may need to come from an angle where no one really predicts your next move.

Analytical skills

A forensic accountant has some analysis to make in regards to his/her job.

It is binding on him/her to analyze the entire system and learn how the mode of operation in the organization affects the overall output of the organization.

It is one of the qualities you have to possess.

Since you have a lot of analysis to do, you just have to make sure that you are good in analysis.

This is what you will need to make good progress in your job.

You should be able to analyze results and through your analysis draw conclusions.

It is when you are able to analyze financial reports that you can spot errors or inconsistencies.

If you cannot analyze, then you are bound to make mistakes due to oversight.

Research skills

Some valuable knowledge you will need in the course of your job will come from the research you have made.

Not everything can be taught, some knowledge are born out of intensive research to know more about a particular or trend.

You should be able to conduct research on your own and draw some valuable knowledge from the research.

You just have to go out of your way and acquire the knowledge you need in your forensic accountant job.

You need a lot of knowledge to stay top of this job.

Research is a good way to build and increase your knowledge base.

Knowledge is not cheap and every ounce of knowledge is worth the time and patience you give to it.

Interviewing skills

Interviewing skills are also important for you in this job.

You should know that enquiries are made possible through interviews and questionnaires.

However, interview is more potent than questionnaire because during interview, you gain more than what your interviewee is saying verbally.

How this concerns you is that you should be well skilled in conducting interviews systematically in order to get the best response from the interviewee.

This is important because if you are not skilled in this, your chances of getting the desired response will be very low.

Understanding human behavior will help you conduct a good interview.

You have to stylishly ask some sensitive questions without making it obvious to your interviewee.

This is not easy but a test of how skillful you are in carrying out interviews.

Communication skills

This is another skill you should be efficient in. All round communication is one of the tools you will need to get the best in your job.

Your job demands a lot of communication from you to all necessary stakeholders in the organization.

You have to communicate your findings and your thoughts to the people in the organization to know their thoughts and opinion about the whole exercise, especially people at the hem of affairs in the organization.

It is not really possible to produce good results in this job without efficiency in communication.

Part of your communication routine is to report your findings to the relevant authorities without bias.

You carry out forensic accounting and you are expected to give a feedback of your job through accurate reports and recommendations.

Problem solving skills

You should have it at the back of your mind that forensic accounting is the problem you were hired to solve.

This is your basic job which you should pay attention to.

The reality of this skill is in your ability to identify the problem on ground.

You should be able to identify the nature of the problem on ground before embarking on the possible solutions to the problem.

You don’t solve a problem you don’t know its foundation.

So after that, you should be able to look at the possible solutions to the problem.

If you are not able to arrive at any solution at the moment, you should go back and ask questions from experts in the field, you will then be able to arrive at a logical solution to the problem.

Fraud identification skills

Fraud is one problem that organizations face that really does not seem to fade with time.

The truth is that the issue of fraud in business seems to be on the rapid rise without abating.

As a forensic accountant, you should be well skilled to detect fraud even when it doesn’t look like it.

This is where also curiosity plays a vital role. When you are not able to reconcile some figures based on expectation and what is presented before you, you should ask questions and go beyond the answers presented to you by whoever you are quizzing.

This is really an important skill. That’s one of the reasons for forensic accounting and auditing.

If you can detect fraudulent reports then you should be happy with yourself that you have been able to defend your profession.

Investigative skills

Investigation is more or less an advanced research. Investigation is a deliberate process in which you make enquiries and also carry out independent research on financial reports and why such financial reports may not be consistent.

Investigation is highly needed in every stage of forensic accounting.

Forensic accounting cannot be complete without due investigation into the financial affairs of the organization.

There is no place for assumption, neither is there any place for oversight.

So, this is to say that you have to be inquisitive and curious at the slightest inconsistency you see in any financial report or financial system of the organization where you work.

This is important because without proper investigation, you may not be able to achieve tangible results on this job.

Presentation skills

Not as many people in the organization can understand what is written in the financial reports or some other documents by reason of not being accountants in the first place.

This means that for the organization hierarchy to be well informed about the financial state of the organization, presentation is necessary.

It is through presentations that the necessary authorities of the organization are made aware of the financial state of the company/organization.

To be able to pass across your findings and observations, presentation will be necessary.

This means that you must be good with presentations.

You have to train yourself in the art of presentation.

Remember that the more convincing you are in your presentation, the more you are likely to persuade the hierarchies in the organization to follow your recommended system.

Use of technology

I don’t think there is anyone in this century that does not know the power of IT in the industries.

Not using the latest technology in your job is like shooting yourself in the foot and you and I know what the result will be.

So, there is no gainsaying that technology has come to stay.

You should be able to gather enough knowledge of how digitalization can help your job.

You shouldn’t be ignorant of what the technological world has to offer you in your job.

It is up to you to decide whether or not to follow the digital trend.

If you decide to follow the digital trend, then you should keep your ears to the ground and your eyes wide open to see the possibilities that are tenable in your job if you decide to follow the digital trend.

This is easy and fun if you really want it to be so.

Forensic Accountant Skills for Resume

If you are making a resume or CV for the forensic accountant position, you can make a very impressive Skills section by applying the skills and qualities shown above.

Recruiters/employers are more convinced to give you an interview appointment when they see that you have the right skills and qualities for the forensic accountant job that they want to fill.

Conclusion

Forensic accounting has to do with the analysis, interpretation, and solving of complex accounting issues.

This is what a forensic accountant does on daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

As a forensic accountant, you will need quite some amazing skills and qualities to succeed in your career, this article has shown them.