Career Compass

Waypoint: The Detour That Changed Everything

By: Annie Iden, Aleutian Atlas Co-Founder

Sometimes the most important career turns aren’t the ones we plan—they’re the ones that feel like detours. For me, that detour started when I began to veer away from accounting.

Marrying Profession and Passion

At first, it didn’t feel like leaving—it felt like expanding. I took my subject matter expertise and paired it with something I had always been passionate about: helping people learn. Suddenly I was writing guidance, developing instructional design, and running workshops that blended our audit methodology with technology. Watching people “get it” at a time when everything in the industry was changing lit me up.

Far from My Roots

Then came the chance to move from my national office in the UK to the global office in the US. The timing felt right. The large software rollout I had been supporting was ending, and I couldn’t see a future path where I was. So I said yes. I moved 3,000 miles to a city where I knew no one—for the second time in my career.

The new role was slower to take off, and when it did, it was not what I expected. Instead of using my accounting expertise, I was suddenly managing a massive content database distributed to firms in 150+ countries. It was technical, precise, deadline-driven work. I wasn’t an accountant anymore; I was learning database structures, managing releases, and living in cycles of long waits followed by frantic sprints. I flexed my project management skills and even enjoyed the precision required, but I felt far away from my roots. Within a year, I chose to return to accounting.

Back to Familiar Ground—Or So I Thought

That “return” came in the form of a role at a large pharmaceutical company. It felt safe, familiar, and exciting in its own way. Four months in, though, I was asked to lead a software selection and implementation project for the finance function. Suddenly, all that database knowledge I thought I’d left behind was essential. I found myself working with IT, bridging the gap between finance and technology—and this time, I loved it.

That was the moment I realized something important: the path is less important than the waypoint. The detour I thought had pulled me too far from my profession had actually given me tools and perspectives I never would have picked up otherwise. And those tools—knowing how to bridge disciplines, how to translate between “languages”—made me valuable in ways I hadn’t imagined.

Waypoints Over Roads

Since then, my career has continued through more unexpected turns, each one expanding my toolbelt. My road doesn’t feel less murky, but it does feel more exciting. The detours keep opening doors. And every waypoint along the way reminds me: what feels like a detour may be the very thing that changes everything.

Your next career move doesn’t start with a promotion. It starts with a pause.

The Waypoint Pause Pack is a free resource that gives you simple exercises and micro-bets to find clarity and build momentum in under an hour.

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