How many questions is too many questions?
If you are a new accountant who is learning the ropes of the profession at your first job, you're going to have a lot of questions, there's no doubt about it. However, not all questions are created. Equal, and growing as a professional is a result of asking the right number of questions and the right kinds of questions. Today, we're going to discuss why and how often you should be asking questions as a new accounting professional. Let's jump in!
Why is it important to ask questions?
As a young professional, the two reasons you should be asking questions are:
To Learn
To Complete your assignment timely and correctly
By learning, you will be able to handle more complex tasks in the future and grow as a professional. Everyone has gone through several learning stages in their career and a good manager should understand that young professionals won't know everything. Great managers will put you in a position to learn by giving you work where they know you will have to ask questions.
While learning is important, work needs to get done. In many cases, asking a question Will help you harness some knowledge you didn't have otherwise about a certain aspect of the job and save you time in the process. Asking someone more experience than you to help on something that is difficult is a great way to save time in a deadline driven environment, if they have the capacity to support you.
How is it possible to ask too many questions?
Despite the benefits I mentioned above, it is possible to ask too many questions. Here's a few examples of when asking questions becomes too much:
Always asking to get the answer, but not to understand - many young professionals fall into the trap of trying to save time on their engagements but not learn by simply asking others to do the thinking for them. These questions are appropriately asked the first or second time, but quickly get old when the manager realizes that the person asking these questions simply isn't thinking for themselves.
Not respecting the time of the responder - in the accounting world, everybody's busy with something. If you were early on in your career, it's very likely that the people you would be asking questions to have their own responsibilities that can take priority over helping you. While it might be easy for you to ask a question and wait for someone else to give you the answer, that someone else has their own set of priorities and responsibilities. When this is the case, it's often a good idea to try to find the answer yourself. If you aren't in a position to find the answer yourself, move on to something else and wait for a response in the meantime.
In order to not ask too many questions, it's important that you take some responsibility for your own education as well as have some empathy for the people to whom you're asking questions.
Is there such a thing as a bad question?
Yes. In the context of new hires in accounting roles, bad questions can certainly arise. These questions are the ones that should be answered already because of your education or the fact that you have asked them multiple times before. In order to avoid asking a bad question, make sure you research potential answers beforehand and if appropriate, share some suggested responses at the same time you're asking the question.
Finding the right balance of learning and working efficiently is a challenge that you will have to manage throughout your entire career, so you better start learning now!