The Accountant – Is Good Governance on our Agenda?  –  Summer 2020 (MIA Publication)

We must admit that being a married couple within the same profession has its benefits, but it also has its challenges. We have two boys, five and ten years old, who need our continuous assistance and attention. Hence, we need to find a balance between their schedule and our duties.

Since we have the same profession, we have similar deadlines, which frequently fall within the same period. This is our biggest headache, especially when we have parent’s day, school concert, school outing with parents, and any other activities during the day which need our presence. Luckily enough, nowadays schools send the yearly timetable at the beginning of the scholastic year and we have ample time to plan our schedule to accommodate both parenthood obligations and cope with deadlines. However, sometimes this means that we need to compensate our working hours during weekends or evenings to meet reporting targets.

As a sport, our kids practice swimming and therefore we also need to plan our daily schedule after work, and sometimes even before work and school. We must admit that this makes our hectic life more chaotic, however watching our kids swim and participating into competitions is the most rewarding part of our life.

Having the same profession has its benefits as well. We tend to understand each other’s daily struggles and challenges. On a regular basis we discuss common issues and suggest solutions, which may be useful to our problems.

"Sometimes even an excel formula can make wonders!"

We never worked within the same sector; nevertheless, financial concepts are still the same and we frequently face similar problems. Although we are married, we need to act professionally, and hence confidential information cannot be shared between us.

We also support each other whenever one of us needs to change the current job. We spend a lot of time at work and therefore we need to make sure that we are both happy and satisfied with our working life. We also make sure that we do not work within the same industry since this may raise ethics and competition issues.

We make it a point that during dinner time we sit together as a family and discuss occurrences and circumstances handled during the day. As a general rule, mobile devices cannot be used during dinner. We try to involve kids into our discussions and decision making, such as time management.

The past few months were the most challenging ones since starting our profession. Having the kids stuck at home for a long time, with no school and no sports was very frustrating for our kids. So, we had to get creative and plan their daily routine, including both academic and indoor sports activities, to keep them occupied while we were both working from home. Our profession requires a lot of concentration and sometimes we struggled keeping them quiet while working, especially during conference calls.

"There were instances where the four of us were working on our dining table. We had to change our kitchen to an office and a school class during daytime and then back to a normal kitchen during the dinner time."

On a positive note, given that we were stuck at home, gave us the opportunity to get closer as a family, enjoying time playing with our kids in the evenings and during the weekend. We frequently ended our busy days with a game of Ludo.

 

Dennis Baldacchino is an ACCA qualified accountant. He currently holds a position as a Business Controller with a gaming company.

Sharon Baldacchino is an ACCA qualified accountant. She currently holds a position as a Financial Controller within the cruising industry.