So I don’t have an accounting specific educational background (finance undergrad here, was an accounting major for 2 whole weeks before switching), but it’s really all over the board for backgrounds. It takes a certain type of person to do internal audit work (analytical, detail oriented, etc) - basically the type of person you would expect be a CPA, but I’ve seen people with biology and history degrees be in IA (all at either accounting firms or in corporate world, both in manufacturing and banking/finance/insurance/real estate).

If you are doing “audit” in an accounting firm where you’re auditing financial statements, you’ll have to be a cpa. If you are doing control audits (in IA or in an accounting firm) it’s not a requirement at all.

You’ll need to have a cpa if you want to switch into a controller job or something more accounting focused, but otherwise we can move into risk, compliance, finance, operations, or a number of other careers/departments pretty easily.