Data Sleuth

Chapter 4Data Sleuth Considerations

WHEN ACCOUNTANTS DECIDE TO work in public accounting, they typically choose between the audit career path or the tax career path. Although people often think that audit would be most closely aligned with investigations, I did not choose the most obvious path. I chose to learn to prepare taxes. Although I learned an enormous amount about business, accounting, and tax, management knew I would jump at anything that afforded me an investigation opportunity and not be a long-term employee if my day consisted of only preparing taxes. Preparing taxes for this midsized local accounting firm ultimately evolved into the creation of a forensic accounting department including me and a Certified Fraud Examiner manager.

After three months of working for this firm, one of the partners received a call about a potential embezzlement in a doctor's office. The partners assigned the case to me. Feeling confident, the client provided her evidence in which she was certain I would discover that the office manager was stealing funds. This evidence, however, did not contain bank statements but rather only a general ledger exported from the accounting software. I asked the project manager to request the bank statements but began to feel extremely insecure about my investigative abilities when I was told I would not be receiving the statements.

Although my investigation skills were advanced at this point in my career, for my age and experience, I had never put my accounting ...