Kogod School of Business professor of accounting R. Davis Taylor uses decades of forensic accounting experience to prepare his students for a career in fraud investigation.
Darby Joyce
Content Marketing Coordinator
Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are those of R. Davis Taylor and do not necessarily represent the views of any employer or other entities with which he is associated.
When business students think of careers that an accounting degree can lead to, a few options immediately come to mind—auditing and financial analysis, for instance. However, the opportunities available to accounting students at Kogod range even further, and the skills they pick up while earning their degree can be utilized in fascinating ways. For Kogod School of Business accounting professor R. Davis Taylor, part of the job includes ensuring his students know their wide range of options.
“A degree in accounting and a CPA license can lead to many varied and interesting career paths, especially in forensic accounting and fraud investigation, which, in my case, allowed me to combine my technical accounting and auditing knowledge with my interest in the investigative process,” Taylor said. “This led me to opportunities to investigate potential fraud and financial misconduct in companies worldwide.”
As a professor at Kogod, Taylor teaches a course in forensic accounting, a specialty that focuses on identifying and investigating financial misconduct. Forensic accountants often play major roles in investigating businesses and individuals for misreporting, contract breaches, and fraud. Though forensic accounting is a relatively young discipline, it has developed rapidly, particularly as technology has influenced the investigative process. Taylor is confident that more students will be drawn to the field in the years to come.
The relevance of forensic accounting and fraud investigation as concepts for accounting students are relatively new. There were no forensic accounting classes when I received my degree forty years ago."
R. Davis Taylor
Professor of Accounting, Kogod School of Business
“As the academic field continues to develop and the curriculum improves, I believe that more students will wish to take advantage of the opportunities to develop these skills as part of their degree program,” he said.
Through his course at Kogod, Taylor hopes to use his decades of professional experience to prepare these interested students for a career in forensic accounting. Over the course of his career, he has worked as an auditor for a Big Four accounting firm, worked in both the United States and China, and handled training staff on auditing and investigative methods. He has worked at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) for fifteen years and currently serves as a Managing Associate Director-Accountant in its Division of Enforcement and Investigations. Throughout his career, Taylor has taken an interest in teaching. With so much professional experience to pull from, it only follows that he would make sure to bring that real-world knowledge into the classroom.
“I try to use real-life examples from my past investigations to illuminate the key investigative concepts on which I’m focused in each week’s class,” Taylor explained. “For example, during my class on interviewing in investigations—one of the more important information gathering aspects in an investigation, I’ll demonstrate with one of my students the use of silence in an interview to elicit additional responses to challenging questions.”
For Taylor, preparing his students for an accounting career entails giving them a strong understanding of accounting concepts and where accounting knowledge can take them. Though some might think that specializing in forensic accounting would lead to more limited options, he’s found that the opposite is true—that forensic accounting techniques can often be utilized in other scenarios and disciplines. Taylor says that working as an auditor is one of the best ways to prepare for a full career in forensic accounting.
“I recommend students spend at least several years at an accounting firm developing their accounting and audit skills before focusing on their forensic careers,” he said. “In my experience, being involved in audits of companies provides opportunities to develop business acumen and an understanding of how business is conducted that few other professions provide.”
Having spent so long in accounting himself, Taylor has seen the field and its capabilities change drastically. The advent of the internet and digital communications has made it easier to find information to support investigations and analyze it. When Taylor began his career, a company’s financial information typically only existed on paper or through word of mouth, leaving forensic accountants to rely on interviews and as much documentation as they could find. These days, information for financial investigations can be pulled from online datasets, email records, and instant messages to better understand a company’s behavior and the people involved.
"Electronic information can be easily searched to pinpoint specific information you might be searching for, so it is no longer necessary to look at every document you are provided,” Taylor explained. “It also isn’t possible."
The volume of documents provided in many investigations these days, if printed out, would more than fill a typical AU classroom from floor to ceiling.”
R. Davis Taylor
Professor of Accounting, Kogod School of Business
Now, with artificial intelligence evolving at a similarly rapid pace, Taylor predicts that forensic accounting will continue to change with the times. AI already has several proven uses in accounting, from analyzing patterns in document sets to identifying information that needs further review. With so much information involved in financial investigations, forensic accountants are seeking ways to make the analysis process more efficient so that they can focus on using the most important aspects of that information.
“I believe that the use of artificial intelligence is significantly driving changes in forensic accounting and financial fraud investigation, and it will continue to do so,” Taylor said. Fortunately, he’s teaching forensic accounting at a school that understands AI's role in business disciplines. Between his expertise and Kogod’s focus on developing AI education, students with an interest in forensic accounting will graduate uniquely prepared for changes in the field in the years to come.
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