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We Read Another Vapid, Metaphor-riddled Interview with a Deloitte Bigwig So You Don’t Have To

Posted on by Caleb Newquist

Communications teams at accounting firms, particularly the Big 4, have a difficult job. And for the most part, they're nice people. I've talked to plenty of them. NO! I'm being serious. They work for private companies that are notoriously secretive, newly regulated, but still have come under heavy scrutiny as capital market servants, thus, leading nosy reporters and bloggers to ask all kinds of questions whose answers are best not revealed. The job of these spinmeisters is to deflect/ignore the bad news (usually around failed audits) and to find opportunities for their sharpest professionals to provide quotable quotes in the most prestigious publications.

For whatever reason, it's abundantly clear that Deloitte's PR team is running on all cylinders. They're quite good at declining comment (or simply not returning calls and emails) to every newswire reporter or blogger that calls them up  when there's bad news and they seem have no problem finding publications that want to sit down with a CEO to hear their recycled thoughts on the business of accounting that is ubiquitous throughout the very little coverage that actually exists. Don't believe me? Here's Global CEO Barry Salzberg talking to the New York Times. Here's Salzberg talking to Reuters. Here's U.S. CEO Joe Echevarria talking to the Wall Street Journal. Here's Joe E. talking to Reuters. You get the pic. All these on-the-record conversations with nothing of any real consequence being discussed but Barry and Joe are getting their faces out there and telling the story that the PR team has teed up for them.  

Today in the continuing Deloitte PR offensive, we have a relative unknown being offered. Deborah DeHaas is a Vice Chairman and Central Region Managing Partner. Impressive, right? John Carpenter interviewed her for the Chicago Tribune and at first, you almost sense that Carpenter knows what he's getting himself into:  

Deborah DeHaas says a company is nothing without integrity, and that people are its most valued asset. She says that difficult challenges and a sense of obligation to the community have shaped her outlook and leadership style. Boilerplate stuff, right? [YEP!] The kind of pronouncements you find on every management bio on every corporate website. But there's an extra measure of intensity when DeHaas says those words.
Oh! The extra measure of intensity factor! Up until that point, I really thought this was going to be some groundbreaking stuff. But judging by this last sentence, Ms. DeHaas is considerably more sincere about these platitudes than say, her boss, which makes this particular interview even more banal. Is there anything more gag-worthy than an executive who actually believes the script they've been handed is a real story?  
 
Of course, when Carpenter (who I'm sure is a fine reporter) starts to get to some questions that might actually require honest answers, DeHaas steers the conversation in the direction she wants to take it:
When asked about Andersen, DeHaas, now vice chairman and central region managing partner of Deloitte LLP and one of Chicago's most visible executives, likes to talk not about the Enron scandal but about the neighbors who showed up when the house burned down.
 
"What was incredibly inspiring here in Chicago was the support that we had from business and government leaders to help find places for our people," she said. "We had about 5,000 Andersen people in Chicago. I remember Mayor Daley having a press conference with a bunch of leaders, saying: 'The people in Chicago had nothing to do with the issues that Andersen was facing. These are great people. Let's find jobs for them, because this would be a tragedy, to lose this talent from Chicago.' That was really quite an amazing experience."
This is probably standard rhetoric from an Andersen refugee – focusing on the positive things that came out of tragedy. That's all well and good but I know a few people who were at Andersen when Enron went down, and you know what? Their stories are AWESOME. Offices were like ghost towns, people were sitting around wondering if the sun would rise the next day, unconfirmed accounts of fisticuffs breaking out over mechanical pencils and 10-key calculators. PURE MAYHEM. And seriously, Enron was 10 years ago. Aren't we laughing about it yet? At the very least we should be grateful that the whole thing is behind us and we've all moved on.
 
ANYWAY, as for all the recent troubles Deloitte has been having (e.g. Diamond Foods and Part II of the PCAOB's 2008 inspection report), DeHaas has those talking points down too.
Of the current climate in general, DeHaas said: "Perhaps at no time has our role been more important —thinking about the investor, that they have good information to make decisions."
God, who writes this stuff for them? How many different ways can "Our role is critical to the markets and we have a bigger responsibility than ever," be articulated? And if that's not enough, they squeezed in work-life balance as well: 
DeHaas' thinking on the question of work-life balance has evolved over the years. Indeed, she prefers other metaphors. Speaking to a group of about 100 female college students at a recent Deloitte Women's Leadership Seminar, she said she sees her life less like a scale and more like a tapestry. "The balance concept to me means they're kind of separate from each other," she said. "What I've thought about is how do you integrate them? How do you weave them together?"

Anyone else nauseas yet? And you didn't even read the whole thing.

Executive profile: Deborah DeHaas, vice chairman and central region managing partner of Deloitte LLP [CT]

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The Financial Times published an interview with PwC International Chairman Dennis Nally over the weekend and we learn a few interesting things about DN that you probably didn’t know. For starters, he’s very aware that his firm is in a tussle for title of the largest professional services firm ON EARTH, “We’re in a real dog race to continue to sustain our leadership position as the largest professional services network in the world,” he told the FT. Of course this gives us the impression that Denny doesn’t believe that P. Dubs has relinquished the Biggest of the Big 4 title, as some other CEOs have claimed.

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1) Leaders he admires – he wants to meet The Pope because “[Nally] seems impressed by the feat of co-ordination.”

2) Feats of strength – He practiced hot yoga to “strengthen his golf swing” but gave it up because “I found that you had a tendency to over-workout your muscles.”

Despite those little tidbits, Helen Thomas manages to get under Nally’s skin a little when she asks if “auditors should rightly find themselves in the line of fire” when fraud or “disingenuous” accounting occurs:

Mr Nally crosses his arms across his monogrammed shirt, for the first time looking a touch defensive. “There are professional standards out there [and] an audit is not designed under those standards to detect fraud,” he says, pointing out that detecting fraudulent behaviour rests on other indications including a company’s governance, management tone and control systems. “The reasons it has been done that way is because, while we always hear and read about the high-profile fraud, the number of those situations that you actually encounter in practice is very de minimis.

Notice that he doesn’t directly address the “disingenuous” accounting. Examples which might include, say, AIG and Freddie Mac, but rather addressed fraud which is easy to fall back on, since the expectations gap is so blatant (something he has mentioned before).

His statement also appears to indicate that he feels situations like Satyam are immaterial, unless by “de minimis” he intended to mean “rare in occurrence.” But, then again, I suppose semantics are also de minimis.

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Barry Salzberg Is Going To Talk About Diversity Again

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And we’re guessing he won’t make reference to the Chief Diversity Officer because if you don’t happen to have one, it’s simply impossible to be a diverse company.

Oh, and never mind the whole H-1B controversy at Deloitte Consulting. That will blow over.


This particular chat will be going on at the DiversityInc’s “How Global Diversity Impacts the Domestic Diversity” event that is going on Washington, DC next week. The agenda indicates that the speech will address the following issues:

What are global values? What are emerging global standards for accountancy? What standards should companies meet in every country? How can you get your top leadership to understand that diversity efforts must be global?

Now if you are able to understand these questions, please inform us of their meaning because we’re a little lost.

Will the speech be about global values for accounting firms? Are global diversity standards the next thing that will be converged? If so, we’ll remind you that the whole accounting convergence thing hasn’t gone so well. How do you think global diversity rules will work out?

Will the top leaders in companies need to attend training about global diversity first before they understand that world is diverse? Apparently some men at Deloitte don’t understand women yet, how the hell are they going understand someone in another country that might be across an ocean?

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