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I graduated Curtin in Accounting and Business Law, so a double major back then. The Business
Law was really good in the writing and research sort of aspect of it, writing in particular.
In an accounting firm or accounting industry there's a lot of explaining, communicating,
relating with people and so the sort of work we do is very relational. Once you have cut
your teeth or done the accounting side or work, what we find is that the clients tend
to use the accountants as the go to person whenever they have a question, even if it
is totally unrelated with accounting or tax. We are often the first people they call, be
it human resources and all the laws involved in that or land tax or financing, estate planning,
all of those things even though they're not directly related with accounting or income
tax per say. Through time they get to trust us and we are often the only profession they
see on any regular sort of basis. They have to come and see us at least once every tax
year but its building the relationship where you don't see them every year anymore, you
see them once a month, every two months. You just catch up with them, talk to them, you
find out where they're at. So accounting isn't about numbers anymore, there is a lot of law,
so studying Business Law was really useful for that. Not necessarily the tax part of
it, simply understanding how to interpret what they're writing down and writing yourself.
Often a lot of things you try to explain with emails or letters and being able to clearly
identify what the area is and to communicate that in terms that isn't jargon based is really,
really useful just to be able to communicate with someone who isn't an accountant -- their
grandma, a client in construction who is demolishing buildings, that's their business. So you don't
talk to them in jargon, you just try and related with them, build friendships and be a one-on-one
person.