Past-forward.
Posted on April 16, 2009 Leave A Comment
My grandfather’s prescient note on the increasing commercialization of Accounting, leading the way to enmeshed relationships with corporations . . . which of course paved the way for things like Enron and created a firm platform of poor accounting ethics for the current housing loan & bank crisis.
“It seems that the effects of the phenomenal growth in the profession and competitive pressures have created in some CPAs attitudes that are intensely commercial and nearly devoid of the high-principled conduct that we have come to expect of a true professional. It is sad that we seem to have become a breed of highly skilled technicians and businessmen, but have subordinated courtesy, mutual respect, self-restraint, and fairness for a quest for firm growth and a preoccupation with the bottom line.”
Taken from a speech in 1980 as the outgoing Board Chairman of the American Institute of CPAs a year before his death from cancer.
