Michelle Wright - Principal Auditor

What I enjoy most about my job is the variety - although my area of expertise is local government, I work on a wide spectrum of projects and meet loads of different people.

“When I think about how ideal this role is for me it makes me laugh to think that when I applied 5 years ago, I didn't even know what auditing meant! I think I was successful because I showed my enthusiasm for public sector work and all it represents - I'd done project work in local government whilst studying for my history and politics degree, so I was well prepared.

“What I enjoy most about my job is the variety - although my area of expertise is local government, I work on a wide spectrum of projects and meet loads of different people.

“The perception is that this job is all maths, calculators and number crunching, but in reality that's only part of what we do - it's very rewarding, communicative work which relies on an aptitude for building and maintaining positive relationships wherever you're assigned.

“I've taken full advantage of the training opportunities here, and have recently been recruited as a ‘Mediator' along with 12 other people nationally, who have all been trained in conflict management skills. Then there's my CIPFA of course - having completed that, I'm now enjoying a promotion and new levels of responsibility.

“Fundamentally I act as a main link between the audit manager and the client. I'm always working towards the year-end financial statements, so I tend to have seasonal periods of frenetic activity, but I love the fact that outside these intense times, I can also step back and see the bigger picture – feeding my findings back into ‘Use of Resources' assessments, so that if performance has been poor, we can facilitate further inspection and recommendations for positive change.

''Recently, I have started to undertake work for the Trust Practice side of the Audit Commission which has widened my audit experience within the NHS. Also I have begun to help deliver quite a bit of training that the AC provides, such as basic audit skills for new starters and also LG Data Quality which is an area of technical expertise of mine.

“I should also mention the social side of things - when I started here I was straight out of uni and I didn't know a single soul in Cambridge, but now I can definitely say I count my colleagues amongst some of my best friends.”