I am a young professional based in Perth, Western Australia.
I am currently a Financial Accountant at a mining company and have spent the past four years in the audit and assurance team of a Big 4 accounting firm.
The transition from audit into accounting has made me come to a few realizations – the main one being that there were aspects of my prior role that I enjoyed much more than the accounting.
I developed an interest in the mining industry specifically, finding it the most engaging and dynamic amongst industries of the clients I worked on. I enjoyed having a bird’s eye view, so to speak, for the entities I audited – understanding their activities during the period and the impact these had on the financial statements, and of course, getting into the nitty gritty as I audited them. I felt there were no dull areas on mining clients in production. I didn’t have to worry about the work allocations. Revenue, cost of sales and inventory models, rehabilitation and restoration provisions, acquisitions and divestments, the list goes on.
Moving into Financial Accounting and I feel I have zoomed in too much. I’ve lost that bird’s eye view.
From some of the work I had been exposed to in my time in professional services, listening to conversations around me in my current role, research on other roles, and other factors… I want to give a shot at corporate finance.
I love the idea of evaluating the economic feasibility of, or valuing, a project. I loved getting my hands on life of mine models, rehabilitation and restoration models, impairment models – anything – while I was in audit. I would often lose an hour just poking around the models and understanding beyond what I needed to for my audit work.
I would love to be involved in that. The only catch is I feel like I’m quite stuck in my current trajectory as a Chartered Accountant and I might not be looking hard enough but there doesn’t seem to be many roles at the moment. I’m also a bit of an over thinker with a bit of imposter syndrome. If I were to interview right now I probably wouldn’t do the best.
This site will be my public journal as I prepare for and undergo this transition. To do this:
- I am currently (November 2025) preparing to do a Level 1 Chartered Financial Analyst exam in February 2026. I don’t know if I will take it all the way to Level 3 – depends on where I end up. I feel at least doing Level 1 will equip me with enough financial knowledge and skill to survive in a corporate finance role of some kind and at least demonstrate the effort and willingness to pivot in terms of career.
- I am also working through the Corporate Finance Institute’s Financial Modelling and Valuations Analyst certification. I have already completed this with a passing rate quite a while ago before I left audit (~6 months ago). I ended up in my current role and haven’t used a lot of what I learned which is now forgotten.
- Without trying to over do things, I also plan on reading a lot of mining, economics, finance, etc. related books as half study half enjoyment over this time.
I plan to document a lot of what I learn along the way, and demonstrate what I have learned through this blog as a public resume for when the time comes.
A lot of this will probably be pretty cringe but I don’t really care.
Please feel free to follow along for entertainment, to learn with me, critique and correct me and my work, suggest resources, etc.