Episode 39: Auditing is a human business, Lessons from Zambia’s Liswaniso Namatama

Episode 39: Auditing is a human business, Lessons from Zambia’s Liswaniso Namatama

When people think about auditing, they often picture spreadsheets, ticking boxes, and endless calculations. But for Liswaniso Namatama, auditing is about something much bigger: people, relationships, and creating positive change.

In a recent conversation on Difference Makers Discuss, Liswaniso shared how his journey in accountancy has shaped both his professional career and his mission to support communities in Zambia.

Based in Lusaka, Liswaniso trained through the Zambia Institute of Chartered Accountants and now works as an assistant manager at a local audit firm. Over six years in auditing, he has developed a passion for understanding how businesses operate across industries, from NGOs to manufacturing and mining.

But what stood out most was his perspective on the human side of auditing.

“Audit is about understanding businesses, assessing risks, professional judgment, and helping organizations improve how they operate.”

While AI and automation are transforming the profession, Liswaniso believes human interaction remains at the heart of effective auditing. Building trust with clients, interpreting risks, and communicating findings clearly are skills technology cannot replace.

His story also highlights the wider impact of the accountancy profession. After attending the One Young World Summit, Liswaniso connected with fellow young leaders who inspired him to take action in his own community. Together with other Chartered Accountants, he became involved in a foundation focused on mentoring young people and supporting underserved communities through outreach programs.

For Liswaniso, accountancy has become more than a career, it is a platform for leadership and social impact.

His advice to aspiring accountants is simple:

“Accounting is extremely amazing.”

And judging by the passion and purpose behind his work, it is hard to disagree

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Chartered Accountants Global Update. I'm delighted you're with us for episode 39. Each week, this podcast brings you the latest from Chartered Accountants Worldwide, a global community of over 2 million trusted professionals. And this week, we're shining a light on the latest episode of Difference Makers Discuss, the series hosted by Sinead Donovan, in which she catches up with chartered accountants who are doing extraordinary things, professionally and personally. The guest in this episode is Liswani So Namatama. He goes by Liso. He's a chartered accountant based in Lusaka, Zambia, currently working as an assistant manager at ACT Core Accountants. He's been in audit for over six years. And he has a way of talking about this profession that I think you'll find genuinely inspiring. Liswaniso first came onto Shenade's radar at the One Young World Summit in Belfast in 2023. An event that brings together thousands of young leaders from every part of the world, each with a story of community impact to share. He describes it as mind-blowing. More than 2,000 delegates, each from a different region, each doing something meaningful in their community. And the thing that struck him most wasn't the scale of what they had achieved. It was the simplicity of how they had started. They didn't wait for a senior title, or a perfect set of circumstances, or permission from someone else. They just began. For Liz Waniso, that message stuck. Back in Zambia, he connected with a fellow chartered accountant he had met at the summit, a woman named Dorika, and together they became part of Young Dream Radiators, a foundation that provides mentorship to young people through community outreach programs. It's still in its early stages. But its purpose is clear, to reach into less resourced communities and show the people there that they are not alone and that someone believes in what they can become. It's a beautiful example of what Chartered Accountants Worldwide has always believed. That the Chartered Accountancy qualification doesn't just open doors to a career. It opens doors to a cause. Now Liz Waniso is passionate about auditing. And I mean genuinely passionate, not in a polished interview day kind of way. He's been doing it for six years, and he's clearly not tired of it. He told Sinead there are real misconceptions about what audit actually is. The caricature, number crunching, box ticking, fault finding, doesn't come close to capturing the work. The bigger picture, as Liso puts it, is about understanding businesses, about assessing risk, about exercising professional judgment, about helping organizations improve how they actually operate. And because auditors work across industries, one month you might be with an NGO, the next with a mining company, the next with a manufacturer. You build a breadth of knowledge that very few other roles can give you. You're constantly learning how different parts of the economy actually function. It really lays a strong foundation in terms of career, because it's very diverse in terms of the industries that one works with. And then there's the relational side of audit, which Lisa talks about with real enthusiasm. Audit means regular, substantive contact with management and senior staff across your client organizations, real conversations, real relationships, a network that builds over time across sectors and industries. We raise the question that's on everyone's mind at the moment artificial intelligence. And Liz Janiso's response is worth dwelling on. He's not dismissive of AI. He acknowledges it's already changing how auditors work, automating routine transactions, processing large data sets, generating reports more quickly. That's real, and it matters. But he's equally clear about what AI doesn't replace. Professional judgment, the kind that comes from sitting with a client and reading not just the numbers but the room, that requires human experience. Certain risks can only be assessed in direct conversation with the people who actually run the organization. And when it comes to communicating findings, when management needs to understand what you've found and why it matters, there is no substitute for a human being who can explain, respond, and adapt in the moment. It's a timely reminder, particularly as the profession continues to navigate the AI conversation, that the chartered accountance value has never been purely computational. It's relational, it's contextual, it's human. When pushed to sum up accountancy in three words, he went with two. Extremely amazing. And I think this episode makes a compelling case for exactly that. You can listen to the full Difference Makers Discuss episode with Liswaniso Namatama, wherever you get your podcasts, and at Chartered Accountantsworldwide.com. If it moves you the way it moved us, you might want to share it, because this is exactly the kind of story the profession should be telling more of. That's the Chartered Accountants Global update for this week. Thank you for listening. Take care of yourselves, and we'll be back with you very soon.