Divyansh Goel

7.30 AM

It’s time to wake up and, like a ninja, slide out of bed quietly — even the tiniest noise will wake up my one-year-old daughter, something which can turn a calm morning into an eventful one. A quick shower and a bite to eat, and then I’m seated in the car for a nice drive from Canberra’s north side to its city centre.

9.00 AM

Making it into the office feels good — the COVID restrictions limited how often we could come into the office in 2020, but I’m enjoying being back this year.

The office has plenty of comfy corners to choose from, to set up my work station. Time to scan through my emails and daily schedule.

9.30 AM

It’s now time for our team meeting. Given our auditee is one of the biggest departments the ANAO audits, we have a large team and usually end up in the spacy kitchen area for the morning catchup. Today, three of us are there, with the rest of the team joining in via Skype. During the meeting we set up the daily tasks and logistics of visiting the department we’re auditing, and also have a quick chat about our weekend.

10.30 AM

Before I dive deep into work for the rest of the day, it’s time for a quick coffee run with my colleague. Brew & Brew has the best coffee around, and with a busy day ahead I’m going to need a bit of a caffeine hit. We get takeaways and head back to the office for a quick planning session.

10.45 AM

It’s time to crunch through some data analytics. The work I’m doing will provide assurance over the data extracted from the audited department’s system, which will then feed into financial statements audit work. It has given me immense pleasure to use the knowledge I acquired during my rotation in the systems assurance and data analytics area. Here I learnt the basics of coding language, like Python, which now helps me analyse complex data sets in an efficient way.

12.30 PM

Its lunchtime, and I’ve got veggie pasta from last night. Most days, though, some of the other graduates and I go across the road to a nice restaurant at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade building.

1.00 PM

It’s now time to head across town for a long meeting. I arrive at the auditee department’s office 15 minutes before the meeting, which gives me some time to settle in. This is a planning meeting, one of the first steps when starting an audit, where we reconfirm our understanding of the department’s systems and processes. We check if the department has made any changes by walking through the process with them in real-time. This is an important part of the audit as it helps us develop expectations for the audit and it feeds into our audit strategy for the year.

4.30 PM

Catchup with my team to recap the meeting and discuss what actions we’ll take from the information we learnt at the meeting. Once we’re all on the same page and have agreed on how we’ll tackle the work, it’s time to head home. Canberra is a small place, so travelling from South Canberra all the way back to the North, even in peak traffic, still only usually takes me about 30 minutes.

5.00 PM

After a long day, there is nothing better than coming home and giving my daughter a cuddle. Then it’s time to refresh, have a quick shower, and go for a nice walk with my wife and daughter, catching up on each other’s days.

7.30 PM

Dinner on the table — today we ordered Italian via Uber Eats. After dinner, it is a mission to put the little one in bed by 8.30 PM. I always try to have some me time, watching some sports updates, and Big Bash, if it’s on.

10.00 PM

It’s time for bed — sweet dreams.