When it’s a job title, not a lot. So when you are planning your future career and applying for jobs, you could be in for a few surprises.

Audit senior, business analyst, chief operating officer, tax accountant, finance director… You won’t be very far into your finance career when you realise what a nightmare of confusion job titles can create: exactly the same term of reference can mean very different things depending on who is using it and the context in which it is being used.

Job titles in auditing

An audit senior in a small firm will play a very different role to one in a larger organisation: the bigger the firm the bigger the client, and the bigger the client, the bigger the audit team. If the role is in business and involves internal audit, it will be different again, and the scope of the work undertaken can potentially be much greater than if you are working for an audit firm.

As well as looking at finance systems, an internal audit may evaluate the effectiveness of non-finance systems and procedures such as corporate governance, adherence to internal rules and regulations, IT systems, and more. Although the scope of an external audit can extend beyond finance, because it is generally driven by the need to meet statutory requirements, it often goes no further.

Business analysts

If this seems confusing, it is nothing in comparison with some other job titles. Take the oft-used term ’business analyst’; it can be used to describe many different types and levels of role in many different environments, so without the appropriate context it is virtually meaningless. Its use in practice and business varies widely, and even within these areas there is plenty of scope for misunderstanding.

In practice, for example, a business analyst could be involved in analysing business performance parameters within the firm and identifying needs for business analysis within its internal management communities, but the job title could also be used to describe someone who has a much more outward-looking role.

The same potential for confusion exists in the public sector, industry, or commerce, where a business analyst may be next in line to the finance director or one step up from an accounts clerk. So the role could entail managing the quarterly and annual rolling forecast process, producing draft commentary sections for the monthly divisional finance report, and focusing on areas such as profit achievement and working capital management, or it could involve a more hands-on approach to analysis – processing claims for travel and entertainment expenses, and making sure all of the necessary back-up documentation is present.

Tax accountants

The job title ’tax accountant’ can also be used to describe so many different activities that it is verging on the meaningless. Tax accountants in industry have just one client (the company they work for) as opposed to those in practice, who deal with many different clients. Despite a common job title, the work they are doing could be worlds apart.

Working in industry means you have more contact with other employees as well as decision makers, and the role may include more commercial decision-making. In some organisations a tax accountant may focus on group tax and international value added tax (VAT), working as part of the financial reporting team. They could also function at a much lower level, handling bank reconciliations, interest accruals, general ledger coding and VAT. These are just two of the many possibilities.

The same can be said for practice, where generalists and specialists abound. In a small firm, for instance, a tax accountant may be working with a wide range of clients, advising on anything and everything. This could include producing statutory taxation calculations, electronic filing, advising a high-net-worth individual on their tax affairs, or providing a managing director with advice on the way changes in legislation are impacting on profitability. In larger firms, the job is often more specialised, with the tax accountant an expert in areas such as mergers and acquisitions or financial instruments and derivatives.

Understanding job titles – partner, managing partner, senior partner…

Unfortunately, the meanings of job titles don’t get any clearer as your career progresses and you rise through the hierarchy. Some firms of accountants, for example, have one managing partner, while others have a series at each regional office or an uneasy alliance of co-managing partners.

In some scenarios, the managing partner assumes responsibility for the management and overall direction of the firm and gives up any direct work involving clients, but other managing partners do both.

Similar variations exist at partner level, though the biggest variations tend to be between very large firms and smaller practices: the depth and breadth of the hierarchy that supports those working at partner, senior partner, and managing partner level has a significant impact on some of the responsibilities the role entails. Approaches to profit-sharing also vary, with firms that share profits on a national or international basis often applying performance-based profit-sharing rules, while local partnerships are more likely to share profits equally.

FD, FC, COO, CEO, CFO, President…

It can also be difficult to distinguish what is meant by entirely different job titles. There is a big difference between the FD and the financial controller (FC). The FD has a much more public face because they are an officer of the company and on the board, and, in theory, if the chief executive disappeared under a bus, the FD should be capable of running the company.

But this is yet another area where theory and reality part company. The difference between the two roles really depends on the way the FD works. So in some scenarios, the FC can be handling tasks that would elsewhere be undertaken by the FD, and the FD could be undertaking tasks that some might see as the responsibility of the chief operating officer (COO) or the chief executive officer (CEO). But when you get to this level in an organisation, the potential overlap between roles becomes so complex that there is little point even attempting to explain what the job titles mean.

Sometimes the CFO and the COO have quite separate and distinct roles; sometimes there is so much overlap that the same person fulfils both roles, and the same can be said for the COO and CEO. The CEO is often also the chairman of the board, or both boards; some organisations have an executive board for day-to-day business and a supervisory board elected by shareholders. Even in large and complex organisations, it has also been known for the roles of CEO, CFO, COO, president and chair of the board to be simultaneously filled by one individual – which just goes to show how meaningless a job title can be.