Accountants who don't count anymore

Some of you will have planned your career down to the last detail, while others will be more inclined to let fate take a hand. But either way, none of us can be absolutely certain where we will be and what we will be doing 10 years from today. So despite the fact that you are studying or working towards a qualification in accounting, and may spend years working in the profession, at some point in the future, some of you will end up doing something entirely different.

Take the Australian Linda Aurora, whose international career has taken her from London-based ACCA trainee to Hong Kong-based executive coach. After training in the UK, and sitting her final exams in Singapore, she returned to her native country of Australia, where she spent more than a decade working as an accountant. 'I set up an international audit department in Sydney for a merchant bank,' she recalls, and followed this with a variety of impressive financial roles.

Aurora worked in capital markets for a bank in Melbourne, set up a litigation support department for one of Australia’s Big Eight accountancy firms, and then relocated to Hong Kong as a regional finance director for Inchcape Insurance. There she continued her education, doing CPD for finance as well as studying for an MBA and a masters degree in human resources. 'I'm a very organised person,' says Aurora, 'but I like variety and I need to be challenged,' so during her finance career she naturally gravitated towards roles where she was required to create order from chaos - and for a while, she was thriving. 'I love Hong Kong,' she enthuses, 'it's so cosmopolitan, and it's full of type-A people who just get on and do stuff.' But being type-A isn’t always a good thing, as Aurora discovered when health problems forced her to reassess her life, and her priorities.

Take the lifestyle challenge

'I'm the queen of burnout,' she quips, adding: 'Hong Kong is a 24/7 kind of place and I was working too hard and not taking care of myself'. Then, in 1997, she read an article about executive coaching, and found her new forte. Coaching brought together her education in business, HR and finance, her experience as a finance professional, and her past tendency to work much too hard, so she retrained to become a ‘master coach’ certified by the International Coach Federation, and now works for the international coaching organisation InsideOut.

'I took a very professional approach to coaching,' says Aurora, just as she had previously taken with her career as an accountant. 'It was important to me that I should be formally accredited for what I do,' she explains, 'and in Hong Kong, I was the first certified coach who was a member of an internationally-recognised professional coaching body.' But achieving this wasn't easy. To become a certified master coach she had to study and get letters of reference from three people who had seen her coaching and been impressed. Maintaining her accreditation also calls for the same level of dedication to CPD as would be necessary if she had remained an accountant.

By becoming a coach, however, Aurora has been able to create a career that builds on all of her professional and personal strengths, and which even puts some of her more self-destructive traits to good use. 'Being an executive coach is varied and interesting,' she says. 'One day I will be working with an FD who needs more presence in the boardroom, another day I'll be coaching the head of an insurance company who needs help with communication and strategy,' and even if she’s had to tone down her own type-A behaviour, she still appreciates it in others. 'Coaching is about accelerating development and getting sustainable results,’ she explains, ‘so I get to work with some awesome people.'

Think big, start small

Anthony Farr also gave up his career in finance to work with some awesome people. After training to become an accountant with Deloitte and Touche in South Africa, he spent three years working in the corporate finance team of Standard Bank in London, but during his time in the UK he decided on a change of career. 'Coming from South Africa meant that I was well aware of the issue of orphans,' says Farr, so one day, while sitting in a London coffee shop, he and a group of fellow South Africans decided they wanted to make a difference, and the Starfish Greathearts Foundation began.

In 2001, UNAIDS released some stark statistics. An estimated 4.7 million South Africans were living with HIV, and the number of children under 15 orphaned by Aids had increased tenfold within five years to 662,000. 'It was a serious issue for the country,' says Farr, who was determined to help. 'To begin with we were just testing the water,' he recalls, but a number of successful fund-raising events followed, culminating in the UK launch of Starfish at the South African High Commission in London, in December 2001.

Gcinasapho Rural Outreach Programme was the first beneficiary, receiving £2,500 to feed 500 children, but Farr wanted to achieve more. 'I saw an opportunity to do something really significant,' he recalls, 'but it needed someone to take up the task on a full-time basis.' So Farr decided to leave Standard Bank, and, in January 2002, he returned to South Africa as the director of projects at Starfish Greathearts Foundation. By 2005, the charity was helping 52 communities in eight provinces, and reaching more than 9,100 children a year, thanks to an annual increase in funding of over 140% to almost 13 million Rand; and a large part of this success was due to Farr’s accountancy training and financial background. 'One of the reasons many organisations such as Starfish do not achieve their potential is lack of financial management,' he asserts, 'and there is a huge need for accountants to share their financial skills across the sector.'

Farr can't do it alone, but he's trying. Today, in addition to remaining a non-executive director of Starfish, he is chief executive of the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation, where he is also working to help build a future for the young people of South Africa. 'The foundation provides educational scholarships for the entrepreneurial leaders of the future,' explains Farr, and, despite being a relatively new charity, it is already sponsoring 140 students though university; in the future it plans to increase this number to 500 and provide the country’s fledgling entrepreneurs with access to funding.

Look back and move forward

So, do Farr or Aurora ever pine for the days when they were accountants? 'I don’t miss accounting at all,' says Aurora. 'It helped me to get where I am today, and I still do all of my own accounts and tax returns,' she adds, but there are some areas of accountancy which she has been happy to leave behind. 'I hated accounting standards and that sort of thing,' she laughs, 'but because I have come from an accounting background, I have taken a very professional approach to coaching, and I’ve been able to work at a very senior level.'

Farr has also found a place in the world where he is feeling more fulfilled. 'I needed to be involved in something much more meaningful,' he explains. 'Financial management is meaningful for the economy, but I wanted my efforts to directly affect the lives of deserving beneficiaries,' he says, and they have. 'At Starfish we started out as a few people with a dream,' he recalls, but the charity has since improved the lives of more than 34,000 children. As Farr says: 'Individuals can make a big difference.'