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Communication And Interviewing Skills Are Important For Entry Level Accountants

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University Preparation According to Akers and Yahr (2005, p. 1), “communication and interviewing skills are important for entry-level accountants. Accountants must gather data, interview employees of the client’s organization, and interact with members of the audit team.” Universities, for the most part, are preparing students to interact and work collaboratively within group settings. Many courses assign projects which require students to work together culling information for the given topic, write reports outlining their findings, and then present the results or information to their respective class. These are sound skills all students need to have in their accounting toolkits, yet, in many instances their toolkits are still …show more content…

4 There is one additional university in Wyoming – Wyoming Catholic University – which is not included in this analysis. The university’s singular liberal arts curriculum, which is taken by all enrolled students, is on a specific schedule with no apparent deviations.
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forensic accounting elective track as part of their Masters of Accountancy program. Colorado Mesa’s Fraud and Forensic Accounting and Advanced Fraud and Forensic Accounting course catalog descriptions include introductions into interviewing as part of the topics covered during the courses (Colorado Mesa University, 2017). Likewise, MSUD provides students with greater exposure to interviewing in their courses. MSUD’s Fraud Awareness (ACCM 5600) course offers an overview of interviewing, including a guest lecturer with hands-on interviewing experience to discuss the topic. Additionally, in Sheri Betzer’s Legal Elements of Fraud (ACCM 5650) course at MSUD, not only is class time dedicated to the introduction of interviewing, but the course has a practical exercise for the students. The practical exercise includes conducting four separate interviews of individuals related to an accounting litigation scenario. Over the course of those interviews, not all the individuals contacted are overly cooperative with the student interviewer. This gives the student a much more realistic view of what may happen when he seeks information from the

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