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IntermediateBEHAVIORAL
In your most recent finance role, describe a time when you identified a variance or anomaly in the monthly financial statements that others had missed. How did you investigate it, and what actions did you recommend to management?
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Sample Answer

In my last role, I noticed our gross margin for one product line dropped by about 3.5 percentage points month‑over‑month, but revenue and unit volumes looked normal. It had cleared the initial review because the overall company margin was flat. I pulled transaction‑level data from the ERP and rebuilt the margin analysis by SKU and customer. That’s when I saw freight and rebates jumping unusually for one region. I traced it back to a new pricing promotion that hadn’t been properly mapped in the system, so discounts were hitting COGS and some freight was misallocated. I documented the impact—about $180K understatement of margin that month—then walked the commercial and ops teams through it. We corrected the mapping, restated the month, and implemented a simple monthly margin bridge by product/region, which helped us catch two smaller issues in the following quarter.

Keywords

Spotted a 3.5pt margin variance others missed at aggregate levelRebuilt margin by SKU and region using transaction-level ERP dataDiscovered mis-mapped promotions and freight allocation causing $180K errorImplemented monthly margin bridge to prevent recurrence
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