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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!’

Facebook Finds a CFO, Hopefully One that is Okay with Awkward Interaction

Facebook Inc. announced today that David Ebersman will be the company’s Chief Financial Officer:

Ebersman, 39, will oversee Facebook’s finance, accounting, investor relations and real estate functions. He will formally start in September, Palo Alto, California-based Facebook said in a statement today.

You’ll note that Ebersman will oversee “investor relations”. It’s probably no coincidence that this is not a task that falls on Mark Zuckerberg who “has been known to have awkward interactions with other humans”:http://valleywag.gawker.com/344440/60-minutes-scoop-zuckerberg-remains-awkward-with-humans.
Thus, another challenge that will face Ebersman in his new position will be actually interacting with his boss. We here at Going Concern predict that awkward encounters with Zuckerberg will definitely be the biggest unforeseen challenge that Ebersman will wrestle with.
The article does not elaborate on whether Ebersman’s status updates on the social networking site are trite observations about the weather, his busy weekend, or a bad day at work.

Facebook Names Former Genentech Manager Ebersman Finance Chief”:http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a1vS1Ub87oSA [Bloomberg]