By Mike G Robinson
7th July 2025

Going To California

Watching ‘Becoming Led Zeppelin¹’, a mocumentary out recently about the band, I imagined for a moment myself in Robert Plants’ shoes as he rocked on stage, his big hair hiding his face, one hand on the mic, the other playing air guitar with the cord, swaying rhythmically, mesmerizing thousands of screaming fans and creating timeless magic.

The moment was fleeting as I was jolted back to reality by Mr. Plant recounted pondering over career choice: become a Chartered Accountant or Rock God.

I’ll just let that sink in….

Robert Plant was ALMOST an accountant? He would’ve been on LinkedIn!

Made just prior to Led Zeppelins’ rise in popularity, his decision to shun the bookeepers saved a black hole in the universe, the opportunity cost of life without Led Zeppelin. We wouldn’t know any different of course, apart from a vague feeling of being somewhere over the hills and far away, or just constantly a little dazed and confused.

Coincidentally, as Robert Plant had once pondered long and hard over his career choice, so too did I. But unlike Mr. Plant, I didn’t have any offers on the table tempting me toward fame and fortune and of course I can’t sing! It’s no surprise then that I didn’t hesitate before settling on Chartered Accounting as my chosen preferred vocation.

Your Time is Gonna Come

It wasn’t until I set some personal goals that I started imagining my career. Accounting was always the easy choice, minimal university entry criteria, just turn up and you can be part of the oldest profession in the book…. or is second oldest, I can never remember?

It was the career you chose when you wanted to go drinking with your mates and make simple, yet safe decisions. I would have preferred to be the lead singer in a rock n’ roll band, but it was the sensible and safe towers of the Big Six that called my name.

So I set a big hairy audacious goal. I was working for the Big Six, they just didn’t know it yet. It took me a couple of years to find their weakness, a chink in the armor, the soft underbelly of The Big 6 – small town New Zealand.

31 years ago, I accepted my first career role at Coopers & Lybrand, Tauranga, headcount 18, now 19. I came in through the outdoor. I was now a real accountant.

Houses of the Holy

I was now a member of one of the greatest corporate memberships that ever existed, The Big Six. Pioneers of professionalism and integrity, the Mecca for business suave and excellence, institutional machines that churn out winners all day, every day.

I spent 8 years in the Big 6, some of my fondest memories. It was a club. It was a party. It was a family. It was an education.

Most of all however, it has endured. The lessons became the basis of almost everything I’ve ever learnt, or ever will learn, about how a large business operates.

• I learnt how to write reports that won’t get you sued, others that get you sales and all of them had layers of review and made me look good in the end.

• I learnt how Projects work (SDLC) and it was in this environment my long, and ongoing association with SAP began.

• I learnt about software and computerized methodologies, frameworks that keep you on the straight and narrow, templates, workpapers, workflow. A wealth of IP that kept making me look good.

• I learnt from great leaders. I recall an early client meeting with a PwC Partner at their largest client. Me – fresh faced, notes prepared, questions prepared, lots of questions, none of them got past the page. Partner rocks up, no pad, no notes, we blast in, he’s firing from the hip, nails the meeting in record time and I come out with a months work scribbled on a page that I could hardly read. And more questions.

“One day Robbo”, the Partner says, “you’ll be just like me.” This became one of those motivating moments when you see the battle ahead of you, and pump your fists and shout, “No Quarter”.

No Quarter

Then one day I no longer needed to prepare for meetings like I once had, I could fire from the hip if I needed to. I was all grown up. I was a real accountant, and I had a badge to prove it.

By the time I left the Big 6, I had learnt the fundamentals of large business reporting, risk management and technology practices. Ironically, the medium for these lessons was predominantly via accounting processes, as it is the modern-day audit of technology, that drives the modern-day assurance of a company’s financial statements.

If you haven’t been involved in a large audit, lucky you! You may not appreciate how technology drives much of a financial audit, it’s just more efficient, subject to attestation of course. It essentially works like this:

Garbage in = Garbage out.

And so it goes, if your systems can be proven to deliver the right numbers (attestation), the financial statements are less likely to contain material errors. But if your systems are garbage, you’ve got a bunch of fresh-faced, overly enthusiastic audit graduates coming your way for the Battle of Evermore.

I Can’t Quit You Baby

I’ve spent the last 6 months immersing myself in AI and I’m here to tell you, it’s real and it’s evolving as quickly as you think.