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Bean Counter Art: The Staff Inquiry

Editor’s Note: The following cartoon was drawn by Jack Britton, a former Big 4 auditor. You can visit his blog, colorcartoon.blogspot.com for more of his work. You can also follow him on Twitter @rumblebozzle.
CFO is Bored.jpg
Occasionally, being a staff auditor involves having awkward conversations with controller/CFO types. You have to ask them about fraud, legal matters, SEC inquiries, etc. etc. Regardless of the tomfoolery going on at the client, these people will not be telling you about it.
If this empty interrogation goes on long enough, the interviewee’s boredom (and possible physical reaction from lying so much) may cause uncontrollable fidgeting, as illustrated above. Discuss your awkward inquiry experiences with your clients in the comments. Especially the ones where you jumped on the conference room table and screamed ‘LIAR!’

3 thoughts on “Exposure Drafts: What Do Arthur Andersen and Tony Hawk Have In Common? They Both Shred”

  1. oops- you forgot that the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously overturned the verdict against Arthur Andersen. Unanimously. Or does that not count?

    Disposing of superseded, errant, extra and extraneous material by shredding is part of every accounting firms standard process so as to exercise effective version control.

    How would you do this?

    What an insipid comment and childish drawing. And insensitive to all who lost their employnet never having done anything wrong.

    1. “Workers at four Andersen offices in the U.S. and Europe toiled around the clock for two weeks to destroy ‘tons’ of documents after federal regulators launched a probe into Enron’s accounting.”

      You’re absolutely correct that no charges stuck to Arthur Andersen, but it’s also absolutely clear to me that — although they followed the auditing standards of the time — they failed their responsibility to the public.

      Also, yes, the cartoon is insensitive to the Arthur Andersen employees who lost their jobs. But isn’t defending them insensitive to all the innocent people who lost their life savings as a result of Arthur Andersen being more interested in revenue than in calling out unethical (albeit compliant) accounting practices.

      And, admittedly, the quality of the drawing is on par with a nine-year-old.

    2. I agree that Greggy’s attempted illustration sucked. It was also way outdated as no one really cares what happened 20-22 years ago. Many good people got screwed but Greggy could care less.

      But I will defend ole Greggy boy…we give him every right to be a tool and he has surpassed our expectations.

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