Life of an auditor

I have a question - how do you deal with auditees (especially those who have prior audit experience and therefore think that they know everything) who question your audit methods?  I could explain my audit methods, but I don't see why I should, and it seems like the client is just being difficult for no reason (or to stall for time).  To be honest,  back when I was a staff associate, I liked it when clients challenged my audit methods - this made me understand why I'm doing what I'm doing so I could create an effective argument for it. Clients are inherently difficult just because they don't like doing additional work if it doesn't add value for them - unfortunately nature of the beast, and this is a majority of clients. Best way to overcome this is to explain why your methodology is necessary. Sometimes, if you don't agree with the methodology or think the requests are excessive, sympathize with your clients but explain to them that it's just the rules w...

How do you see the future in this industry, say 5 years down the road? Hours are inevitably longer, and pay may never catch up to the hours worked since no one ever agree on the fee inflation. All of our work are statutorily based, and we are never really adding too much value that will generate revenue for the clients in my opinion.  Is it better to switch out to other areas of the firm like non assurance services where it may be more meaningful?   The way I see it, audits aren't really a growth area for the Firms, but rather, just their bread & butter to chug along at a mature growth rate. And the Firms know that, they've known that for years, which is why they invested heavily in consulting, and then got completely sidetracked by the Arthur Anderson fiasco. Now the Firms are slowly building back their consulting business, albeit very careful to make sure that everything's straight from an independence standpoint. They know if that they want their profits to increas...