Your reviewer can only rate what you wrote down. An acumen entry that answers four questions gives them something to rate; one that does not usually lands low or comes back.
Same work, two entries
Assisted with debtors on a year-end audit. Learnt a lot about confirmations.
True, and almost impossible to rate. It does not say what you did yourself, how much help you had, what you found or whose work you answered for.
I owned trade receivables on a March year-end audit. I chose the confirmation sample myself; my senior only checked the size. I planned follow-ups using ISA 505 and the client's credit terms. Three of 25 replies disagreed, so I traced each to receipts after year-end and recommended a further impairment, which the manager accepted. I also reviewed a first-year's alternative procedures.
Each sentence answers one of the four questions below, in order.
The four questions
When you claim an acumen on a learning outcome review, the assessment tool rates it by walking a short decision tree of yes or no questions. They come down to four things, and an entry that answers all four lets your reviewer answer them from your words rather than from memory.
- Guidance. What guidance did you need, and how much did you do unaided? This is the first fork in the tree and it caps everything after it, so say it plainly.
- Integration. Which knowledge sources and skills did you bring together? Name the standard, the system, the client information and the other skills you used.
- Analysis. What did you analyse or evaluate, and what did you recommend? A finding with a recommendation is worth more than a procedure you performed.
- Responsibility. Did you take responsibility for the quality of your own work, or for other people's too? Reviewing a junior's work is evidence; say whose and what.
Open with the who, what, where, when and how, then answer all four. How the answers turn into a rating explains what each one is worth.
Before you submit
- I said what I did, not what the team did.
- I said how much I did without help.
- I named the standards and skills I used.
- I said what I found and what I recommended.
- I said whose work I was responsible for.
- I left out client names.
Common reasons an entry comes back
- "We" all the way through. Your reviewer is rating you. Write "I", and name the team only where it explains your part.
- A list of procedures. "Vouched, recalculated, agreed to the ledger" says you followed a programme. Say what the procedures told you and what you did with that.
- Saying nothing about help. Silence on guidance is read as needing it. If you worked unaided, say so; if you were coached, say what you then did on your own.