Accounting “Strategy,” Ethics, and the Law

Unfortunately, you may also be well on your way to becoming the Bernie Ebbers of the small-business set. In 2002, when the giant telecom company WorldCom collapsed under the weight of an $11 billion fraud scheme, CEO Ebbers, who was convicted of securities fraud and conspiracy, got twenty-five years in a federal penitentiary (“I don’t know accounting,” he told the judge). And Ebbers wasn’t the only person on the WorldCom payroll who was charged with illegal activities: Accounting department managers went down with him. Betty Vinson, for example, a forty-seven-year-old midlevel accountant who’d followed orders to falsify accounting records, was sentenced to five months in jail. And she was lucky—she got minimal jail time because she cooperated with federal prosecutors.See Susan Pulliam, “How Following Orders Can Hurt Your Career,” CFO.com, October 3, 2003, http://www.cfo.com (accessed July 22, 2010).

The damage done at WorldCom spread to innocent employees as well, not to mention investors, creditors, and business partners. In 2001, when Enron, the seventh-largest company in America, melted down in the heat of an investigation into its financial-reporting practices, it took down an entire accounting firm with it—eighty-nine-year-old Arthur Andersen, then one of the “Big Five” public accounting firms. Volumes have been written about what went wrong, but we can pretty much boil it down to this: Enron executives behaved unethically and illegally, and Andersen auditors looked the other way. Instead of performing its role as public watchdog, Andersen was watching its own pocketbook: The accounting firm protected the revenues generated by lucrative consulting contracts with its client instead of protecting the client’s stakeholders. In so doing, Andersen not only shirked its responsibilities as a public auditor but also covered up evidence of its own inappropriate actions.

In 2002, Andersen gave up its licenses to practice as certified public accountants in the United States, and a company that had employed 85,000 people only 10 years earlier now employs about 200, most of them to deal with lawsuits and to oversee the process of shutting down the company for good.See Michael Moffett, What Happened at Enron? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Review, July 2004); and Barbara Ley Toffler with Jennifer Reingold, Final Accounting: Ambition, Greed, and the Fall of Arthur Andersen (New York: Broadway Books, 2003), http://books.google.com (accessed July 22, 2010).

Who Can You Trust?

In a very real sense, the issue at the bottom of all this financial misconduct is trustworthiness. As we’ve seen, accountants are supposed to provide users with financial reports that are useful because they’re relevant, timely, and, most important, accurate. It should go without saying that if users—whether internal or external—can’t trust these reports to be accurate, they can’t rely on them to be as useful as they should be. Would you, for instance, invest in or loan money to a company whose financial reports you can’t trust?

Which—appropriately—brings us back to you and your little foray into falsifying accounting records. Let’s say that in February of your second year of operations, you have an unexpected opportunity to expand into the vacated store right next to The College Shop. It’s too good to pass up, but you’ll need quite a bit of money to outfit the space and expand your inventory. First, you go to the friend for whose benefit you “adjusted” your financial statements, but he’s just lost a bundle in the stock market and can’t help you out. Your only option, then, is to get a bank loan. So you go to your banker, and some version of the following exchange occurs early in the conversation:

She means, of course, the first-year statements that you falsified, and if you’re offered and accept a loan under these circumstances, you could be guilty of a financial crime that, according to the FBI, is normally characterized by “deceit, concealment, or violation of trust” and committed “to obtain personal or business advantage.” The maximum you could get under federal law is twenty years, although your case no doubt calls for a sentence measured in mere months.Federal Bureau of Investigations, Financial Crimes Report to the Public (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Justice, 2005), http://www.fbi.gov (accessed July 22, 2010).

Are You Ethical?

We could give you the benefit of the doubt and agree that you wouldn’t have gotten yourself into this mess had you known the legal ramifications. We must assume, however, that you knew what you did was ethically wrong. Ethics refers to the ability and willingness to distinguish right from wrong and to know when you’re doing one or the other. Ethical and trustworthy behavior is critical in both business and accounting, and although the vast majority of businesspeople and accountants behave ethically, all of them—especially providers of financial information—constantly face ethical dilemmas in the course of their work.

Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX)

It will be helpful to remember that both the law and the accounting profession have taken steps to remind you of your responsibilities when you’re reporting financial information. In the wake of corporate scandals like the ones we described above, Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX)A federal law enacted to encourage ethical corporate behavior and discourage fraud and other wrongdoing. of 2002, which was designed to encourage ethical corporate behavior and to discourage fraud and other forms of corporate wrongdoing. Among other things, SOX requires its top executives to take responsibility for a company’s financial statements and subjects them to criminal penalties for falsely certifying its financial reports. SOX also set up the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) to regulate accounting professionals, especially in the area of auditing standards.

The Profession’s Code of Ethics

Finally, you can always turn to the Code of Professional Ethics of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), which sets down two hallmarks of ethical behavior:American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, AICPA Code of Professional Conduct—Current and Historical Versions (2006-2010), http://www.aicpa.org (accessed July 22, 2010.

• Integrity. An accountant should be “honest and candid” and should never subordinate the “public trust…to personal gain and advantage.”
• Objectivity and independence. An accountant should be “impartial, intellectually honest, and free of conflicts of interest.” He or she is “scrupulous in [the] application of generally accepted accounting principles and candid in all…dealings with members in public practice.”

Job Descriptions

If you choose a career in accounting, you have two career options:

• Work as a public accountant, whether for a “Big Four” public accounting firm or for a midsize or smaller company
• Work as a private accountant for a business, not-for-profit organization, or government agency

Let’s take a closer look at these options. Public accounting firms provide clients with accounting and tax services in return for fees. Most members of such firms are certified public accountants (CPAs)Accountant who has met state-certified requirements for serving the general public rather than a single firm. who have met educational and work requirements set by the state and passed a rigorous exam. Although public accounting firms offer consulting and tax services, the hallmark of the profession is performing external auditsAccountant’s examination of and report on a company’s financial statements.: the public accountant examines a company’s financial statements and submits an opinion on whether they’ve been prepared in accordance with GAAP. This “stamp of approval” provides the investing public with confidence that a firm’s financial reports are accurate. Typically, public accountants are self-employed, work for small, sometimes regional firms, or are associated with one of the “Big Four” public accounting firms—Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, KPMG, and PricewaterhouseCoopers—or one of the large second-tier public accounting firms, such as BDO Seidman or Grant Thornton.

Often called management or corporate accountants, private accountantsAccountant who works for a private organization or government agency. may work for specific companies, nonprofit organizations, or government agencies. A firm’s chief accounting officer is called a controller. As a rule, the controller reports to the organization’s chief financial officer (CFO), who’s responsible for all of its accounting and other financial activities. The jobs of private accountants vary according to the company or industry in which they’re employed. Most private accountants record and analyze financial information and provide support to other members of the organization in such diverse areas as marketing, strategic planning, new product development, operations, human resources, and finance. Private accountants also conduct internal audits. In this capacity, they ensure that accounting records are accurate, company policies are adhered to, assets are safeguarded, and operations are efficiently conducted. Finally, they may also provide a variety of specialized services:

• Develop and prepare financial reports
• Prepare tax returns
• Perform cost accounting functions (that is, determine the cost of goods or services)
• Prepare and supervise budgets
• Manage such functions as payroll, accounts payable, and receivables

Accountants who pass a special exam and meet other professional requirements in the field of management accounting are designated certified management accountants (CMAs). CMAs often have greater job responsibilities and receive higher compensation than other accountants.

The Job and Its Prospects

So, what’s the job like? For that matter, what’s the professional life of an accountant like? Or perhaps even more important, what are your prospects for getting a job in accounting, and what kind of income can you expect if you’re able to make a career for yourself in the field? “If you’re looking for a career that’s challenging and for which the dynamics change constantly…then this is where its at,” advises one practicing CPA.“Ask a CPA,” Start Here Go Places, http://www.startheregoplaces.com (accessed July 27, 2010). Beatrice Sanders, former director of Academic and Career Development for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, agrees: “Whatever form of practice you choose, accounting provides a challenging and rewarding career in which there are no limits on where you can go, or how far.”Gloria A. Gaylord and Glenda E. Reid, Careers in Accounting, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006), http://books.google.com (accessed July 27, 2010).

The Job Market Today

“The one great benefit of choosing accounting as your career is that you will always have a job when you graduate.” Or so says one accountant CPA (in fact, the same CPA who promises a challenging career in a dynamic profession). Obviously, we can’t make any guarantees, but in order to help you better assess your prospects for a satisfying career in accounting, we can offer you some relevant facts and figures.

First of all, we can confirm that accounting graduates have always faced a favorable job market and that, according to a survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), the year 2010 is no different. In the June edition of its Salary Survey, NACE reported that accounting employers extended the largest number of offers to new college graduates.National Association of Colleges and Employers, “Top Employers for the Class of 2010,” Knowledge Center, www.naceweb.org (accessed July 26, 2010).And what about the area that probably interests you most right now—salary? For the most part, we can report good news. The NACE survey, for example, reports that, with average salary offers of just over $50,000, 2010 accounting graduates could expect to be among the highest-paid entrants into the workforce.