Accounting Behavioral Interview Question Examples

Job Interview: Senior Accounting Manager

Behavioral interview questions are increasingly popular among employers when conducting job interviews. Here we list 30 questions you could find yourself facing in the near future.

We’ve broken them down in six distinct categories for you.

• Teamwork
• Job Performance
• Intelligence & Capacity for Learning
• Time Management
• Communication Skills
• Leadership

Your job is to consider potential answers and be prepared!

Popular Titles

Accounting ManagerTax ManagerControllerSenior AccountantSenior Tax AssociateView All Titles

Job Performance

• Tell me about a time you had to explain extremely complex data to non-accounting professionals in a high-pressure situation. How did you go about it and what was the result?
• Describe a time your team and/or yourself highlighted an issue. Bad debt, for example. How was it pinpointed and estimated? And in what way was it reported?
• Tell me about your familiarity with the FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board) in relation to GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles). How have you implemented and maintained these standards within your teams?
• Describe your toughest experience putting together a financial statement, whether based on balance sheet, income or cashflow. What was the issue or issues and what did you do to create a successful outcome?
• Tell me about a time your team implemented improvements to accounting procedures. What or who was the source, and how did you convince your superiors that implementation would benefit the company?

Intelligence & Capacity for Learning

• Tell me about a time as an accounting manager when you needed to learn and put to use new information quickly. How did you involve your team in this process?
• Describe a time, if any, you had to decide if inconsistent data was the result of error or potential fraud. As a manager, how have you dealt with ethical dilemmas in your career?
• Tell me about the latest accounting platforms you mastered. What platform or platforms did they replace and why?
• Describe a time your own industry research and/or personal interests led to you making recommendations to improve accounting processes for your team.
• Describe a time you led your team to save money for your company. Assuming you’ve achieved this many times, why does your chosen example stand out for you?

Time Management

• Describe how you’ve organized, prioritized and delegated accounting tasks across your team in the past. Do you have one specific method that works, or is flexibility important to you?
• Describe multi-tasking from an account management point of view. Tell me about a real experience and describe the downside as well as the upside.
• Tell me about a time, if any, when a request to present data still being worked on to the C-Suite took you by surprise. How did you rally your team to meet the deadline?
• Tell me about a time you had more than one key project with deadlines, or which needed your special attention. How did you prioritise and what were the outcomes?
• What have you done in the past when there simply wasn’t enough time to be completely confident about your data? What did you do?

Communication Skills

• Tell me about a time when bridging the gap between those who answer to you and those you answer to was particularly difficult. What was the situation and how did you handle it?
• Tell me about a time you had to explain a complex accounting issue to higher management. What was it and how did you convey the problem in terms they could immediately grasp?
• Describe an experience, if any, when higher management were strongly in favor of a strategy or action you felt would likely produce a negative outcome. How did you express this?
• Tell me about a time you discovered that an accountant on your team was making errors. How did you communicate this issue to the team member and what was the result?
• Describe an error you made or discovered at a late point in a project that required others to be notified, to help with corrections, or for damage control. What happened?

Leadership

• Tell me about a time you had to oversee the preparation and production of an annual budget that was particularly complex. How did you approach the team and the process?
• Describe a time when team members experienced issues with, for example, a financial analysis project. What were those issues and how did you help your team resolve them?
• Have you ever experienced a breakdown, or near-breakdown, of professionalism in a team member or members? What happened and what did you learn?
• Describe a time, if any, when yourself or a team member discovered payment issues from an important company client. How did you confirm and report these issues?
• Based on your leadership experiences, how do you currently evaluate success for yourself as a manager, and for your team members?

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