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A good professional qualification together with strong early work experience has made the world Ciaran Burke's oyster. For the young Chartered Accountant with a keen interest in travel, the offer of a job in the West Indies was too good an opportunity to miss.

Back in November 2003 he headed off to Barbados to join the local Deloitte & Touche practice, planning to build his experience of the offshore sector.

Today he is a manager at the Deloitte & Touche office in Barbados - promoted from supervisor after only eight months - responsible for servicing a diverse portfolio of offshore clients including captive reinsurance companies, banks and international businesses. He heads up a team of team of 17 professional staff which provides a range of audit and non- audit services under US and Canadian GAAS and International Auditing Standards.

His work in Barbados is interesting and challenging, he says. He is getting wide and valuable experience and working under three different GAAPs and he would advise any young accountant to travel to build up their work experience. “Every young accountant should travel. Business has become more global and companies are always looking to new markets. It is excellent to gain that broader perspective and to learn to use new GAAPs, as well as on a personal level getting the chance to experience a new culture and some sunshine”. But it was not all plain sailing. Arriving at a small office on a small island was a bit of a shock and it took time to settle in, he explains.

“Over the first few weeks I was constantly deciding to go home again and then giving it another chance. It was hard to settle initially having come from a large Big 4 practice in Dublin to a 25 person practice in Barbados. But D&T had a massive offshore portfolio which was what I was looking for. I was also committed to my contract and I was determined to work hard”.

The nature of the work won him over - he saw that he would get the wide exposure to the offshore sector he wanted.

And in November last year he was involved in the operational restructuring of the practice following the merger between the previous practice of Deloitte and Touche / Robert J Bourque and Toppin Walker & Co, a local firm of accountants. This merger increased the size of the new practice to 60 people.

As well as looking after offshore clients, his work involves managing some of the firm's largest local manufacturing, retail and distribution clients. On a day-to day basis he plans, organises and supervises all aspects of financial statement audits, reviews and agreed procedure for a diverse group of international clients particularly in the exempt insurance industry. He prepares financial statements under Canadian, US and International Accounting Standards. His non audit work includes involvement in financial management assessment reviews of various private / public interest entities and reporting on the capacities and weaknesses in their internal control environment - this is required before they can receive grant funding for various HIV/AIDS programs. This non-audit work is interesting, he says and carries a bonus - the opportunity to travel to the other island in the region.

He works long hours and often works at weekends particularly in the busy January and June/July seasons. But is content that his hard work has already paid off.

“If you want to do well and progress, particularly in auditing you have to work long hours. I have got a reward in being promoted to manager within my first year. Then D&T merged and the firm is about 60 people and we are really going in the right direction. Lots of opportunities are opening up and we are winning more and more new business”, he says.

He was well prepared for his new role in Barbados, having trained in Dublin for three and a half years with BDO Simpson Xavier followed by eighteen months work experience with Ernst and Young, again in Dublin.

Ciaran, who will be 28 next month (November) and whose family moved from Dublin to Lahinch and then to Clonmel while he was at school, knew early on that he wanted to study accountancy. With self-employed parents - Peter and Yvonne, he was always interested in going into business and in secondary school he was aware of the usefulness of accountancy training for a career in business. He took the college route into accountancy, achieving a BA (Hons) in Accounting and Finance from Dublin City University in 1998.

While at DCU he was selected for participation in the American Ireland Fund Fellowship Programme. This involved a two month trip to Boston, USA, where he interned for four days each week with Liberty Mutual in the Human Resources Risk services Division. The fifth day of each week was spent attending seminars and discussions at the Carroll School of management at Boston College.

On graduating from DCU, he joined BDO Simpson Xavier to train as a Chartered Accountant. At BDO Simpson Xavier he worked on the external audits of subsidiaries of NASDAQ quoted companies which involved reporting to group auditors in the US, supervised and managed some smaller external audit assignments and account preparation assignments across different industries and assisted external audit partners on ad hoc projects.

He worked as an audit senior in the Business Assurance & Advisory Services department where he was responsible for managing external audit assignments across a range of sectors including entertainment, motor, distribution, wholesale and manufacturing. At that stage of his career his work included supervision of engagement teams, planning and execution of audit field work, reporting to the client engagement manager and partner and eventual drafting of financial statement under mainly Irish and UK GAAP.

And in a brush with journalism, he edited the monthly newsletter of the Business Advisory and Business Assurance department!

“It is only now that I really appreciate the experience I got at BDO Simpson Xavier and what I learned as a trainee. That three and a half years were tough - it was poor pay, long hours and hard work but it was important to persevere with the training and get the exams. Now when I deal with staff and client issues on a daily basis I appreciate more and more what I learned in my training. It is important for aspiring young accountancy students to realise that they have got to be willing to put in the hours and persevere if they want to reap the rewards”, he advises.

After training at BDO Simpson Xavier he moved in May 2002 to Ernst & Young in Dublin where he became a lead auditor in the Business Risk Services Department. At Ernst and Young he managed control risk assignments. His work involved fieldwork, staff management and clearance processes and eventual drafting of final audit reports. His assignments involved extensive travel throughout Europe and to Russia, the Middle East and Africa and his work involved operating under US GAAP constraints including leasing and revenue recognition requirements. From early 2003 individual internal audit reviews included a separate report on Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

Of his eighteen months with Ernst and Young in Dublin he says: “It gave me a real appreciation of business processes and the importance of understanding the clients business and the risks involved. I am really glad of the experience I got there particularly the timing of internal audit experience at the time Sarbanes-Oxley came into play”.

But it was the era when the Cayman Islands, Ansbacher accounts and other offshore scandals were in the news and the lure of learning more about the offshore sector was compelling. So when the Think Global Recruitment agency offered the job in Barbados he decided to take the opportunity.

While his work life in Barbados is interesting and fulfilling, his free time can be more problematic. Barbados is a small, fairly quiet island, some 15 miles long by 13 miles wide, with 268,000 friendly and laid-back inhabitants. But it has no hurling team, according to the devoted hurler from Tipperary / Clare. Daylight hours are short - it gets dark at 6pm - and while the weather is sunny all the time, he misses the seasons. It is a long way from family at home - his Mum and Dad, Peter and Yvonne, (brother Ian works in Africa), travelling back takes a full day and flights are expensive. With no hurling or team sport opportunities, he plays golf and does some running. Dodging hurricanes is another island pastime in the June to October period, he says. “Last year it was Ivan, this year so far there has been just Emily”.

“Everywhere has its advantages/ disadvantages - Dublin has its traffic congestion, rain and over-valued houses”, he quips.

He is the only UK/Irish ex-pat at his firm and while there are a few more on the island their numbers are small and it is largely a transient community, so there is little chance of getting a football / hurling team together unlike in the Caymans or Bermuda where there are large number of ex-pats, he explains.

However, he is settled now and plans to stay on the island for another few years:

“I have become relatively settled here and right now I can see myself here another couple of years anyway. The firm is going well and although the work is challenging and the hours are long I am enjoying it. There are new challenges every day and there is rarely a boring moment”.

An associate member of the Institute of Charter Accountants in Ireland and of the Institute in Barbados he finds the ICAI website very helpful in doing his job. “It is really great when you are researching new standards or particular issues. Very helpful”, he says.

He feels strongly that accountancy today has become a much more challenging and tougher job largely because of the increase in regulation and expectations of clients.

“There has been a big increase in the responsibilities of auditors particularly and clients expect much more from them than a meeting or two a year”, he says.

And as a manager looking after staff he now sees that a big issue for the profession going forward will be its ability to attract high calibre entrants and retain experienced staff.