When accounting goes unaccounted for
Well done people. Your creativity is unmatched. Here’s the poll to appease your craving for democracy. Since we know this will be a tough choice, the poll closes at 11:59 pm on Monday, giving you the weekend to ponder your decision.
Vote, after the jump
Because we’ve been looking for some PR and haven’t seen much.
We’ve got no doubt that accounting firms large and small are doing their part to help out the relief efforts there but we’re surprised about the lack of PR. Other than a brief memo (PDF below) from the AICPA that we saw on Twitter this morning, we haven’t seen much of anything.
Our sister site Above the Law has covered the many law firms that have donated to the efforts in Haiti but we haven’t seen anything on accounting firm donations efforts. Even, everyone’s favorite ward of the state, Citi, is helping out in the big way.
Maybe it’s being kept internal but it seems like an opportunity to demonstrate what firms are doing to help.
If your firm has made efforts, or if you’re a PR professional for your firm and you have a press release describing your firm’s efforts let us know and we’ll spread the good word.
AICPA.pdf
Eli Mason, a driving force for the independence of accountants and an outspoken critic of large accounting firms, died last week at the age of 88.
He was a CPA for more than 60 years, starting his own firm in 1946 with two clients. He served on the NYS Board for Public Accountancy for ten years, including two as the chair. He was also the President of the NYS Society of CPA’s for 1972-1973.
According to the New York Times obituary:
Mr. Mason went to the business school of the City College of New York, where he studied accounting with Emanuel Saxe, a distinguished professor and one of the accounting world’s stars at the time. He graduated in 1940 and was a lifelong supporter of the college, now Baruch College of the City University of New York , where he endowed a chair for accounting in 1992 and financed the restoration of the school’s biggest auditorium, now called Mason Hall.
More, after the jump
Mr. Mason was taking on the big firms before most of us were born:
In 1979, he helped found the National Conference of C.P.A. Practitioners, which consisted of 1,500 small firms, and became one of the profession’s most vocal critics of the big accounting firms, then known as the Big Eight. In particular he resented the practice he referred to as lowballing, or aggressively cutting prices, sometimes below cost, to attract new clients.
He also saw the danger of firms offering consulting services and the consolidation of the large firms when the mergers began in the 1980s:
He also spoke against the industry’s mergers in the 1980s, which reduced the number of major firms to five, and he was critical of large firms that offered consulting services as well, fearing this would erode their independence from their clients. Many of his fears turned out to be justified later when the accounting scandals of Enron and WorldCom highlighted the cozy relationship between some of the world’s top accounting firms and the companies they were supposed to audit. Arthur Andersen was one, having been Enron’s accounting firm.
Mr. Mason was known as an accounting purist and earned the nickname “the conscience of the profession”, something we could certainly use more of. Follow this link to read an interview he did with the CPA Journal in 1999. He will be missed and our condolences go out to his family.
Eli Mason, 88, Outspoken Accountant, Is Dead [New York Times]
The voting ended last night and we know your anticipation is reaching fever pitch so we’ve finally presented the results, after the jump.
1. White Collar Slavery: 47.3%
2. Happiness Rating: Zero: 26%
3. Swap Green Visors:13.7%
4. Big Four Union: 13%
Troubling news as you can see. Nearly 75% of you are expecting to be underpaid and miserable. We recommend that you start some sort of cash only business and get your asses into therapy.
The bottom 27% of you seem to be proactive at least but 13% of you may be viewed by some as socialists. However, that seems to be the hot thing these days so we say go for it.