What Personality Traits Make a Good Accountant?

Not everyone excels in every professional role. In addition to education and experience, your personality can determine whether or not you are well-suited to a particular career. If you are tempted by the job security and reliably high salaries of the accounting field, you should first determine whether you have the right personality traits to feel comfortable and achieve success. Some of the most telling indications that you will thrive as an accountant include:

You Are Extremely Detail-oriented

Much relies on the work performed by accountants, to the extent that even the smallest error in an accountant’s spreadsheets can have disastrous ramifications for an entire organization. Thus, it is imperative that accountants pay exceedingly close attention to the figures they are working with and be willing to check and double-check their work for mistakes. However, being detail-oriented does not mean that accountants are slow; rather, accountants must be able to balance care and attentiveness with efficiency. If this sounds like an exhilarating challenge for a perfectionist like you, you should consider becoming an accountant.

You Are Willing to Work Hard

Not everyone is exhilarated by the work performed by accountants, which can result in the misconception that accounting work is easy. Though accountants do have a number of tools to assist them, the truth is that accounting work can be grueling, especially during particularly busy times of year — like Q4 and tax season. To succeed as an accountant, you must be willing to put in longer hours when the work demands it, which not everyone feels comfortable or compelled to do.

You Like to Stay out of the Spotlight

Though accountants are undeniably important to the effective functioning of a business, they are not the primary decision-makers and rarely receive much acclaim for their important work. Put another way, if an organization were a narrative, an accountant is unlikely to be the main character. Fortunately, most accountants are wallflowers who prefer to stay out of the spotlight. If you enjoy being the center of attention and would prefer a career that allows you to command a room, accounting may not be for you.

You Can Keep Emotions and Money Separate

For many people, thinking about money spurs an emotional reaction. Money troubles can be stressful and cause anxiety; seeing large amounts of money might inspire envy or anger; and some people might be blinded by joy by the concept of wealth. Accountants work with enormous sums of money, but they must be able to manage those sums analytically, without emotions affecting their behavior. If you are able to translate money into meaningless numbers that do not engender an emotional response, you would make an excellent accountant.

You Work Well With Others

While there are some small businesses that have a sole accountant on staff, most accountants work in teams with other accounting personnel. This might be within an accounting department in a medium or large company, or it may be within an accounting firm. In any case, accountants must be comfortable communicating effectively with team members to complete tasks accurately and efficiently. If you consider yourself a lone wolf, you may struggle in the accounting profession.

You Have an Unshakeable Sense of Integrity

Businesses place a significant amount of trust in their accounting team. As mentioned above, important decisions are made based on the work completed by accountants, but accountants also have access to sensitive information that business leaders may need kept quiet. Ultimately, accountants maintain a remarkable amount of power to ruin a business, so they must choose every day to act with integrity and do their best to uphold the values of the business. If you can resist the temptation to be careless or malicious, you can be a good accountant.

You Enjoy Continued Education

Becoming an accountant requires a bachelor’s degree in accounting, but climbing the accounting career ladder will require even more education. Many accountants choose to pursue CPA certification, which requires additional courses, and becoming a manager or director will demand graduate-level education, like a MAcc degree. Though continued education isn’t necessarily mandatory for accountants, it is highly encouraged, so if you enjoy improving your knowledge and skill in the classroom — real or virtual — you might thrive as an accountant.

Different people belong in different areas of business. If your personality contains any of the attributes described above, you may find happiness and success as an accountant.