Is Business Analyst the right field for me?

Hi all,

New to the forum here...I've been doing research for the past couple weeks with the goal of choosing a new field to start a career in. I have a BS in Accounting, an MBA and my CPA (certified public accounting) license and have been working in accounting for the past 4 years. Over the course of several different jobs, I gradually came to the conclusion that accounting is not a field that interests me (quite the contrary it bores me to tears!)

Anyways, I'm still fairly young at 28 with my only debt being my mortgage. So I've been considering cutting my losses in accounting and getting into a field within IT or programming. My reasoning is that I've always loved working with computers and finding ways to automate/minimize work by using computers. Every job I've had, I compulsively look for ways to improve the systems and processes from writing excel macros, to working with the IT department to implement more complex solutions. This is the type of work I could get lost in and enjoy thoroughly.

So to get to the point, my ideal job would involve aspects discussed above, along with:
- possibility for telecommute
- possibility to freelance
- ability to work with or lead teams
- environment with little to no micro-managing (I've been told I have a problem with authority ;) )

Business analyst/intelligence look like fields that might meet some or most of these ideals. But I wanted to get some input from those of you already living it...Thanks for any feedback!

I did a career change to BA, and am an "independent BA" meaning I just look for contract positions. I have been the lead on teams in my specialty. I would say no on the telecommute as you need to be in front of your end users, and micro manage would depend on the individual assignment. With this, I pay the mortgage and still have $$ left over.

BA can telecommute for sure. There are many BA telecommute jobs out there. You can find many BA related telecommute jobs at searchtelejobs.com