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A Chartered Accountant qualification is not won alone. Behind every candidate who sits and passes the Capstone Exam is a mentor who has answered the same question a dozen different ways until it made sense, a buddy who explained where things live and how the business works, and a Principal who has quietly nudged them towards the next opportunity before they thought to ask for it. At UHY, that support is not something that happens if a junior team member is lucky enough to land the right manager. It is built into how the firm operates, from the first day someone joins through to the point they are mentoring the next graduate themselves.
How does UHY develop junior accounting professionals?
Junior development starts before a new employee’s first task is even assigned. Every new team member begins with a structured induction, meeting their Practice Manager on day one and working through an onboarding process covering the firm’s culture and values, IT systems, health and safety, policies and workplace expectations, and introductions to the wider team.
From there, development becomes something that happens continuously rather than at scheduled intervals. Teams meet weekly to work through workloads, priorities and technical matters, which doubles as an ongoing forum for knowledge transfer between more experienced staff and those still building their technical base.
It is designed to remove the guesswork from the first weeks, so new employees have the tools and confidence to start contributing quickly rather than spending months finding their feet.
Client jobs are reviewed regularly, with constructive feedback given throughout the year rather than saved up for a single annual conversation. Learning at UHY tends to happen in the margins of everyday work, in a job review or a five-minute conversation about how to approach a tricky reconciliation, rather than only in a formal training session.
What mentoring and guidance do new graduates receive?
Every new employee is paired with a more senior colleague through UHY’s buddy system, a friendly first point of contact for the practical questions that do not always feel worth raising with a manager: how a particular process works, where to find something, or simply how to feel part of the team faster. It is a small structure that does a lot of work in building confidence early on.
Career guidance becomes more formal as staff progress. Regular check-ins with Principals give employees ongoing access to coaching and professional advice, and an annual performance and development review with a Principal and Director provides space to reflect on progress, set goals and talk through career aspirations properly, rather than in passing.
For employees working towards the Chartered Accountants (CA) Australia and New Zealand qualification, mentoring becomes considerably more structured again. Each CA candidate is assigned a dedicated mentor for the duration of the programme, supporting them through regular check-ins, guidance on technical and professional challenges, career development planning, and sign-off of the practical experience requirements the qualification demands.
Balancing study, client work and professional development is difficult, and having someone whose job includes helping a candidate through that balance makes a measurable difference to how manageable it feels.
Mentoring at UHY is a programme that is built into how the work gets done, which is why it shows up in results rather than just in policy documents.
How does knowledge-sharing benefit both mentors and mentees?
The value of this kind of knowledge sharing runs in both directions. Junior staff get faster, more practical development than they would from technical training alone, since a mentor’s experience of how a client relationship plays out, or how a tricky judgement call gets made in practice, is not something a textbook teaches.
Mentors, in turn, sharpen their own thinking by having to explain it clearly, and often find that guiding someone else’s development is one of the more rewarding parts of stepping into a more senior role.
It also builds the kind of institutional knowledge that keeps a firm consistent as people move through it. Expertise that only lives in one person’s head is a risk. Expertise that has been actively passed on becomes part of how the whole team works.
A mentoring story worth telling.
One of the clearest examples of what this support can produce is UHY employee Matthew Dawson, who achieved the top mark across both Australia and New Zealand in the CA ANZ 2022 Term 2 Capstone examination, the final and most demanding stage of the Chartered Accountant qualification.
Being recognised as the leading candidate across both countries, and presented with a special award by CA ANZ for it, does not happen through study alone. It reflects the mentoring relationship behind it: a dedicated mentor working with Matthew throughout the programme, regular guidance through technical challenges, and a firm culture that made room for that level of focus alongside a full client workload.
His result is a source of real pride at UHY, and a useful reminder of what is possible when structured mentoring and genuine effort come together.
The development journey does not stop at qualification either. Once employees have completed their CA, they become eligible for UHY’s Emerging Leaders Programme, run every two years and bringing together future leaders from across Australia and New Zealand to build leadership capability, strategic thinking and relationships across the wider UHY network. Many of today’s mentors came through exactly that pipeline themselves, which is part of why the culture keeps renewing itself rather than depending on any one person to sustain it.
Thinking about where your career could go next?
Mentoring and guidance at UHY are not standalone initiatives bolted onto the job. They are how the firm invests in its people at every stage, from a first-day buddy through to leadership development years later. If you are curious about what that could look like for your own career, get in touch with our team. You can also reach out to the author, Emma Simpson, via email at emma.simpson@uhyhn.co.nz for more information.
