Leaving the Big 4, when to go and where accountants end up

Where Big 4 accountants usually go

Most people head in one of a handful of directions. The right one depends on the work you want to do each day as much as on the pay or the title.

• Commercial or industry finance. You join a company's own finance team, often as a financial accountant, management accountant or analyst, with a longer path towards financial controller or finance manager. Many commercial employers set an Excel or month-end exercise as part of hiring, and our guide to accounting interview tests explains the common ones.
• A mid-tier or smaller firm. You keep doing audit, tax or advisory work, usually for smaller clients, and often with a step up in title or a bigger part in each job.
• Government. Audit offices, regulators and agency finance teams all hire accountants. Audit and tax experience carries across well, including into roles such as tax auditor and internal auditor.
• Specialist advisory. Smaller firms focus on one area, such as restructuring, transactions or investigations. Audit work is good grounding for forensic accounting, and advisory experience can lead into work as a management consultant.
• Your own practice. Offering accounting services to the public brings its own requirements. CA ANZ members may need a Certificate of Public Practice, for example, and preparing returns for clients means registering as a tax agent.
• Overseas. If you'd like to work abroad, ask about a secondment or transfer within your firm's network before you resign, because that route usually closes once you've left.

The external auditor role page shows the moves people have actually made out of audit, using Jobs and Skills Australia's data from income tax records between 2011-12 and 2020-21. Internal audit, forensic accounting, general accounting, financial controller and management accounting roles all appear. The data covers external auditors generally, not only Big 4 staff, but it shows these are well-used paths. The accountant role page does the same for accountants.

If you're partway through the CA or CPA Program

If you're still working towards your CA or CPA, check how a new job affects it before you accept an offer. The two programs treat a change of employer quite differently.

For the CA Program, your three years of Mentored Practical Experience have to be with a CA ANZ approved employer. If your new employer isn't approved, your time there may not count. Ask the new employer whether they're approved and whether they have a CA who can mentor you, and ask CA ANZ how the experience you already have carries across.

The CPA Program is more flexible. You need 36 months of relevant full-time experience (or the part-time equivalent), and you can claim it across any number of employers, as long as a CPA, FCPA or full member of another IFAC member body signs it off. CPA Australia recommends having experience signed off regularly, so it's worth getting your current period signed off before you leave.

It can also help to finish a subject you've started, or wait until the end of a term, so you aren't studying through the first months of a new job.

If your firm paid for your study, read your contract and study policy before you resign. Some employers ask for part or all of the cost back if you leave within a set time, often reducing the amount the longer you stay. For a sense of scale, CA ANZ gives an indicative tuition fee of $8,548 for the whole Graduate Diploma for domestic candidates in Term 3 to Term 4 2026, and FEE-HELP is available if you'll be paying the rest yourself.

Even if you do owe money back, your employer generally can't just take it out of your final pay. Deductions from wages are allowed only in limited cases, such as when you've agreed in writing and the deduction is mainly for your benefit, or when a law, award or registered agreement allows it. Whether you owe the money at all is a separate question, and an employment lawyer can help if the amount is large or the clause is unclear.

Bonuses, pay reviews and promotions

Find out when your firm pays bonuses and when pay reviews take effect, then read the conditions in your contract or the scheme's rules, since colleagues' memories of them aren't always right. If a bonus requires you to still be employed, or not to have resigned, on the payment date, resigning a week early could cost you all of it. A pay review can help in another way too, because your new salary becomes the figure a new employer's offer is compared against.

Promotion rounds work in a similar way. If you're expecting a step up, say from senior to manager, the new title may open up roles you can't apply for yet, and some people stay a few extra months to get it. Employers outside the firm will also ask what you actually did, though: which clients you ran, whether you supervised a team and how close you were to the reporting. If the promotion is uncertain or a long way off, a good role now can be worth more than waiting.

Leaving around busy season

Leaving in the middle of busy season puts pressure on the team covering your work, and on the people you'll later want as referees. For clients with a 30 June year end, most companies have three or four months to lodge their annual report with ASIC, depending on the type of company, which is why the months after June are so heavy in audit. Your own clients may have different year ends, so work from your own calendar.

Resigning once the main deadlines have passed usually makes the handover easier. Your last few weeks can then go on handing over properly, and you're more likely to leave a good impression than if you spend them rushing to sign off files.

Restraint and non-solicitation clauses

Before you accept an offer, read the restraint clauses in your current contract. Professional services contracts may stop you working for a competitor for a time (a non-compete), approaching the firm's clients (client non-solicitation) or recruiting your former colleagues (staff non-solicitation).

These clauses aren't automatically enforceable. Outside New South Wales, a court will uphold a restraint only if it's reasonably necessary to protect something the employer is entitled to protect, such as confidential information or client relationships, and it looks at the area, time and activities the clause covers. New South Wales has its own law, which lets a court enforce a restraint to the extent it considers reasonable. Treasury's 2024 issues paper on non-competes explains both.

Client non-solicitation is likely to matter most if you're joining a competing firm or starting your own practice, because your clients are the firm's clients. If you're joining a client's finance team, check whether the clause stops you working for that client at all, or only stops you taking its business elsewhere.

In September 2026 the federal government released draft legislation to ban non-compete clauses for workers earning under the high-income threshold of $190,100. It isn't law yet, so the current rules still apply to your contract. If a restraint looks broad, it's worth getting advice before you sign the new offer.

If you're an auditor joining an audit client

A job with a client your firm audits can be an obvious next step, because you already know the business. It also brings independence rules that you need to deal with early.

The profession's code of ethics, APES 110, requires audit firms to have staff tell them when they start employment talks with an audit client. Working on an audit while you're negotiating to join that client is treated as a threat to independence, and the usual way to deal with it is to take you off the engagement. So tell your firm when talks begin, not when an offer arrives, and follow its independence policy.

If you're joining the client as a director or officer, or in a role with significant influence over its accounts, the firm also has to make sure no significant connection remains between you. That means, for example, not being owed amounts that matter to the firm and not continuing to take part in its business.

Longer cooling-off periods apply to partners. A key audit partner joining a public interest entity client in one of those roles has to wait until the client has issued audited financial statements covering at least 12 months that they didn't work on. Under the Corporations Act, a former partner who was on the audit team also can't become an officer of that client within two years of the latest audit report they worked on, with a similar rule for lead and review auditors at audit companies and some exceptions, including small proprietary companies.

If you're not a partner, or a lead or review auditor at an audit company, those cooling-off rules won't apply to you. The notification rule and your firm's own policy still do.

Resigning and working your notice

Your notice period comes from your contract, and from any award or enterprise agreement that covers you, so check the actual figure before you plan your last day. Our guide to your notice period when resigning explains where the number comes from and what happens if you or your employer want to finish early.

It also helps to decide beforehand what you'd say if the firm makes a counteroffer. If you're leaving because of the work itself, more pay may not change that.

During your notice, a clean handover of your clients and files helps the people picking up your work, and they're often the people you'll later ask for references. Our guide on how to resign without burning bridges covers the conversation with your manager and the weeks after it.

Staying in touch after you leave

Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC each run an alumni program in Australia. Over the years your former colleagues will spread across companies, government and other firms, which makes them a good source of introductions and references.

Leaving doesn't rule out going back, either. KPMG's alumni page, for example, lists open roles for former staff who want to return.