2. Disadvantages of accounting careers

Along with benefits of choosing an accounting careers, there are some drawbacks and challenges that accountants face; or at least what some people would consider them drawbacks and challenges.  The perspective depends on your personally, interests, and preferences.  The list below may be perceived as disadvantages by some while others may see the same information as the advantages of the profession.

Education and training take a long time

Long education means more time without income (lost opportunity cost) and higher education bill.  Since accounting is such a specialized and complex area, it usually requires a lot of training and education. If you want to become an accountant, accounting manager, assistant controller, controller, CFO, audit, tax professional and so on, you would need to invest time and effort to get ready for such roles.

An associate or college degree will typically be expected by employers especially if you want to become a certified professional.  For example, for somebody with an aspiration to become a certified public accountant (CPA), 150 college credit hours are required in most states in the US.  This number of credits usually means you need to receive a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degrees.  Further, passing the CPA exam is relatively hard (only about 50% pass on the first try) and not possible without appropriate preparation, which means more training and study time.

Work can appear routine and accounting profession can be “boring”

Believe it or not, accounting isn’t a profession coming to mind when people think about exciting and high-profile jobs.  We need to face this fact and understand that accounting can sometimes be boring and routine.  Of course, there are great and interesting moments in a life of an accountant, but during other times, it is pretty dull and involves repetitive tasks of posting journal entries, reconciling bank accounts, or crunching numbers for a monthly report.  Whether you like this kind of work depends on your personality.

Deadlines and associated stress

Accounting professionals like most other professionals have deadlines.  Month end closes, quarterly and annual reporting, tax reporting, management reporting, annual audits, and so on have deadlines driven by the needs of those who use work result of accountants.  These deadlines add pressure and stress to accountants’ lives on a consistent basis because such deadlines are repetitive and may never go away (e.g., monthly, quarterly, yearly).  For example, one of the most pressing times for accountants may be at the end of the year when annual financial statements need to be prepared, audited, and filed.  Further, this annual work is in addition to the other regular monthly or periodic tasks that accountants have to do.

Long hours may be expected of accountants

Work deadlines for accountants not only come with stress but also long hours.  Accountants’ world is driven by schedules and deadlines where work and tasks have to be completed timely.  A lot of users of accounting information depend on timely completion of tasks such as closing the month’s books, preparing management reports, and preparing and filing various reports to external users (tax authorities, Securities and Exchange Commission, etc.).  If accountants are falling behind (and sometimes it happens at no fault of their own) their schedule, they need to work longer hours to catch up.

A good example of working long hours impacting work-life balance is public accounting.  There are strict deadlines where auditors or tax professionals need to complete their work by a certain date.  Accountants in public accounting can work 50-80 hours per week during the “busy season” (i.e., the period of the most intense deadlines).

Continuing education and training is required

Depending on your area of accounting, there may be lots of changes in laws, regulations, standards, technology, and so on.  Keeping up with these changes on a continuous basis may be time consuming and tedious.  Additionally, if you are a CPA, you are normally required by your state to complete the official continuing professional education courses on the ongoing basis (40 CPE hours per year).

Now that you are equipped with knowledge about advantages and disadvantages of the accounting profession, you can hopefully make better informed decisions as to whether becoming an accountant is for you.  There are definitely a lot of benefits in this profession but also some potential challenges for you to consider.  Good luck!

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