Audit Director

The Role

As an Audit Director, you will provide strategic leadership, overseeing major client engagements and ensure high-quality audit delivery and compliance. You will manage key client relationships, drive business development, and mentor senior team members. Your role focuses on strengthening the firm's reputation, profitability, and long-term growth.

Core Skills

Client Focus

Take the lead on managing and building client relationships with Azets clients with responsibility for developing relationships on key clients

Identifies and delivers service improvements

Demonstrates a deep understanding of client underlying future needs

Understands current & future forces that will shape and influence clients' needs

Uses a variety of influence approaches for strategic impact

Makes decisions based on maintaining long term relationships

Delivers excellent client satisfaction as measured by relevant KPIs

Manages client complaints in accordance with Azets processes

Takes the lead on cross service line delivery on own client base.

Technical Excellence

Recognised as a technical expert

Provides oversight and takes responsibility for ensuring that team members possess the necessary skills, knowledge and behaviours required to deliver accurate, high quality work for our clients and assesses the team’s ability to deal with future technical or regulatory developments and takes steps to address any skill gaps including managing talent / resource and software planning

Have a broad knowledge of the more technical aspects of other services lines – be able to spot and talk at a high level about matters outside of own service line

Thinks beyond own area to develop capability

Ensures that quality is beyond a minimum level, with adherence to key processes and ensuring appropriate training is undertaken

Commitment

Proactive leadership of tasks to achieve business plan

Creates and maintains positive environment

Able to look holistically at department to promote wellbeing, and a collaborative environment

Is able to pick up on the ‘mood’ of the business and take steps to raise team morale as appropriate

Leading by example and consistently setting high standards for professionalism and ethical behaviour

Champions the Azets brand, building on our portfolio of services, values, reputation, and market profile

Supports the continued development of a consistent and unified Azets brand, strategy and values and is able to challenge colleagues and clients who are not demonstrating these behaviours.

Attention to Detail

Encourages team to raise standards and eliminate errors

Tracks and acts on quality issues

Is transparent and shares information with colleagues which could benefit the business, working with the partners in the team

Is aware of the skills and abilities of those around them, communicating tasks clearly with deadlines and supporting through to completion

Communicates to the team the bigger picture and objectives of an assignment and is able to strike a balance between seeking further detail and an efficient and commercial output

Actively takes part in and contributes to the development of Azets quality monitoring processes in own part of the business.

Efficiency

Deals effectively with conflicting objectives, priorities and agendas

Draws upon organisational data, understanding of market trends, and latest thinking to identify and take forward ideas for improvements and efficiencies

Leads the way with digital transformation initiatives through clear understanding of the program and embedding throughout their team

Is able to critically assess effective use of time, for example ensuring all meetings have a defined purpose and agreed output.

Key accountabilities

Decision Making

Takes a dynamic and flexible approach to decision making, using live data to recognise when different approaches are required

Holds genuinely open discussions, listens to others views, and show a willingness to compromise

Is able to present a range of possible decision making options to stakeholders, highlighting the positive and negative implications of each to reach a decision

Is able to identify and extract relevant data to support a decision from a large volume and wide range of sources

Consistently demonstrates awareness and sound judgement on decisions which are able to be made autonomously and escalates those that cannot to more senior stakeholders

Actively reviews and adapts past decisions where data suggests original expectations are not being met.

Leading People

Communicates direction clearly and brings colleagues along on the journey balancing business priorities and people priorities with respect

Trusts and appropriately empowers team members

Promotes a culture of openness and trust

Actively looks for opportunities to develop others, gives responsibility to others and willingly delegates as appropriate

Comfortable in voicing opinions that may conflict with the status quo

Builds empathy and support to ensure buy-in and ownership of ideas

Always upholds and demonstrates integrity

Has oversight of wider team’s development and their future career progression and leads the support strategies.

Leading Yourself

Is able to lead a team to achieve resolution of complex challenges

Stays true to leadership style even when under pressure

Can step outside comfort zone and actively pursues new challenges and opportunities that support the business

Lead by example by openly pursuing continuous personal and professional development and demonstrates self-awareness

Demonstrates resilience but is able to recognise own limitations and draws on and is accepting of support from own network when required.

Driving Business Growth

Strategically develops and refines own external network and shows evidence of winning work from this network for own team and for Azets more widely

Able to critically assess the value of business development efforts and takes steps to refine own and team strategies that are under performing

Leads and builds own client portfolio, demonstrating fee growth from existing services and evidence of successfully introducing new services

Can identify the commercial realities of a client engagement and is able to seek agreement across service lines on approach to fee setting and fee growth

Is able to articulate the value proposition for the services the team delivers to support fee growth

Uses chain of indirect influence. This may include the use of technical experts to help sell a concept by adding credibility

Takes the lead on ensuring minimum pricing initiatives are followed and is proactive in RRR reviews.

Living Our Values

New to Azets: Shows good understanding of our company values, and making good progress towards consistently demonstrating required behaviours

Existing Colleague: Consistently ‘lives our values’ - demonstrates expected behaviours in line with our company values

Technical Skills

Acts as an engagement lead on assignments supporting the RI on more complex or larger assignments – acting as a quasi RI where necessary or appropriate

Takes responsibility for audit approach, direction of audit assignments and assessment of risk and response

Actively involved in supporting peers and Partners with department strategy and future planning

Works with Managers to identify high performers in team and support applications for Azets development programmes to help retain key team members

Supports Managers with identifying and addressing any underperformance or inefficiency within the team, obtaining additional training and development resources as necessary. If required, lead on performance improvement consultations

Responsible for identifying and pursuing growth opportunities to support departmental growth targets

Responsible for audit quality (communicating, implementing and monitoring) within department and regionally

Leading the way for change, innovation and technological advances for the wider team. You understand developments in technology and use appropriate technologies on audit assignments where they can demonstratively improve quality

Has responsibility for leading a specific area of strategy/operations within the department, for example finance or people

Demonstrate appropriate oversight and responsibility when utilising the expertise of others during audit assignments

Anticipates issues and risks within audit engagements and takes timely action to address audit risks – maximising audit effectiveness

You set the tone for audit engagements, communicating and consulting appropriately and effectively to deliver high quality audits

Responsible for monitoring and managing economics on each job across portfolio, including:

Being aware of the firm KPIs on all audit jobs ensuring individual job performance is within these KPIs

Communicating process for managing budget and overruns within the team

Ensuring that all time is booked to audit codes

Identifying appropriate fee increases, scope changes, overruns and securing (alongside the partner as appropriate) with the client on a timely and professional basis

Debriefing with client and team to identify efficiencies and improvements going forward.

Qualifications

Holds an accountancy qualification or qualified by experience (e.g. ACA/ACCA/CA).

Essential Experience

It is expected that the above core and technical skills will have been developed through study alongside work experience in an accountancy practice.

Job Reference: AZ04648