Graduate wins accounting competition

Andrés Gallegos

André Joan Pulido Gómez, a graduate of the Bachelor's Degree in Accounting and Corporate Governance from ITESO in the Spring 2025 school year, won first place in the 34th edition of the Distinguished Student Contest, a competition for university students organized by the College of Public Accountants of Guadalajara (CCPG).

The graduate attributes this achievement both to the effort he dedicated to studying, preparing and solving the almost 200 questions that made up the written exam of the competition, held on October 2nd, and to the support provided by his classmates, professors and the career coordinator, Claudia Verónica Cambero Partida.

"The coordinator made physical resources available for studying, such as the Financial Reporting Standards, the Federal Labor Law, and the Social Security Law, and she opened up the support of the professors in the program," she shared. "All of this helped me a lot when I took the exam."

After registering for the Distinguished Student Contest at the invitation of the career coordinator, André was the best of around 40 participants from universities in Jalisco, answering questions on topics such as taxes, costs, audits, social security or finance.

On November 7, the 23-year-old received the news of his victory, which was greatly celebrated by his family (his parents are accountants) as well as by teachers and students in his field.

André will be recognized and awarded at the CCPGJ General Assembly on Friday, January 30, 2026. He will have the opportunity to study a diploma program offered by this organization, which brings together public accounting professionals in Jalisco and offers them courses, training, and other tools to improve their work.

The first place in this competition closes a fruitful trajectory for André in the Bachelor's Degree in Accounting and Corporate Governance, which, he says, provided him with a complete training both professionally and ethically.

"Something that's emphasized a lot in this career is acting ethically. Within the accounting profession, it's very easy to stray and do bad things, like selling invoices or money laundering, but in our studies we were always taught that, although it may take more work and time, easy money doesn't exist and you have to do things right, not skip processes, and remain ethical," he shared.

Today, André begins a promising professional career and has been working full-time for four months at Skatt, a tax consulting firm. His work focuses on taxes, a topic of great importance to millions of Mexicans who have recently faced stricter tax authorities, with more rigorous collection regulations and more technical and specific tax processes.

Given this context, taxpayers need to learn how to declare and invoice better in order to avoid owing money to the tax authorities and unpleasant surprises, and therefore they need the support of more qualified and socially conscious public accountants.

"Accounting is a very relevant profession and will become even more important because economic packages and tax reforms are becoming increasingly aggressive; the authorities are taking certain things more seriously that they didn't previously review, and are even becoming a bit more obsessive and invasive in their audits of taxpayers," André mentioned.

The graduate stated that there are many branches within accounting that require new talent, such as auditing or cost accounting, but emphasized that the most important thing to study a career like Accounting and Corporate Governance — and subsequently have a successful professional career — is to have a liking for those subjects.