Miscellany

Miscellany — interesting items that caught my eye during the week.

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Francine McKenna is the dean of the accounting bloggers with her re: The Auditors blog.  She never disappoints.  Her comments in “More Sarbanes-Oxley Anniversary Thoughts, ” should be read.

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Mark Holtzman, Accounting Department chair at Seton Hall, is an exceptional example of today’s social media enabled professor.  He has three blogs, a twitter feed and a YouTube channel.  Wow.  You don’t want to miss the essay I asked him to write, “Rise and Fall of the Gatekeepers -or- Why I Blog.”  I write more on this later.

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Edith Orenstein, FEI Financial Reporting Blog, has published her thoughts following a blogging panel at the American Accounting Association Annual Meeting earlier this week.  Please read, “What Catanach, Albrecht, Holtzman and I Had to Say at AAA.”

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Rick Broida at PCWorld writes, “Save a Web Page as a PDF with Just One Click.” He recommends Web2PDF. It’s handy.

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Bob Jensen (retired professor from Trinity U) writes, “As the textbook purchasing season begins, I noticed that Amazon.com has free two-day shipping for college students.  I did not investigate the terms and limitations of this offer or whether it applies to used books and food items as well as new books.”  I’ll be sure to e-mail my students about this.  Why don’t you?

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Some of you might like, “Top 100 Motivational Quotes of All Time!”  Any more, I need motivation to get out of bed in the morning.

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Debit and credit – – David Albrecht

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Miscellany

Miscellany — interesting items that caught my eye during the week.

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Francine McKenna of @re: the Auditors was up to bat and she clobbered it out of the park in, “Big Four Auditors and Jury Trials: Not In The U.S.”

A big part of the audit problem in the USA is not being able to sue audit firms.  The risk of legal loss seems to be the only thing that can keep them honest.  Because Francine explains their lack of legal loss, in my opinion they don’t stay all that honest.

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Terri Eyden of the Accounting Web has a nice write-up of an interesting survey in, “Global Survey on Business Ethics.”  The survey was conducted by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA),

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Sue Shellenbarger writes about the explosion of bad grammar in office conversations, messages and reports in, “This Embarrasses You and I: Grammar Gaffes Invade the Office in an Age of Informal Email, Texting and Twitter.”  I agree that most people write in an embarrassingly poor manner.

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Courtney Shelton Hunt, founder of Social Media in Organizations, has a must read article for everyone on Twitter.  In, “15 Twitter “Worst Practices” for Rookies (and Others) to Avoid,” Hunt lists mistakes that many make.  Even me.

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Isabel Sales is co-author of one of the world’s top accounting blogs, Contabilidade Financeira. In English, it would be called Financial Accounting. Her co-authors are Cesar Tiburcio and Pedro.  Isabel lives and works in Brasilia, Brazil.

I have followed Contabilidade Financeira for years to gain insight into Brazilian world of accounting.

Her latest blog post is on a video about how Millenials differ from prior generations.  It is titled, “Você faz o que gosta?” (You do what you love?).  She writes, “Um vídeo que nos faz refletir, inspira e diverte. PERFEITO!” (A video that makes us reflect, inspire and entertain. PERFECT!).

[http://vimeo.com/44130258]

Hint:  If you don’t speak Brazilian Portugese but want to surf Brazilian accounting sites, use Google Chrome.  It has an effective translation mechanism.

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Debit and credit – – David Albrecht

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Want more of The Summa? Sign up to receive email notification of posts.  And please follow me on Twitter (@profalbrecht).

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Miscellany

Miscellany — interesting items that caught my eye during the week.

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Little girl (age 9) from Scotland starts blog, NeverSeconds. It goes viral!

Gotta read, “Little Girl’s Lunch Review Blog Persuades Her School to Serve Healthier Meals.”

If blogs can be written by a 9-years-old girl and can evoke change, then why is it difficult for so many professors and accountants to get started?

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Wow!  I picked a winner.  From BusinessInsider, “Google Chrome Just Passed Internet Explorer To Become The World’s Most Popular Web Browser.”

Google Chrome has been my browser of choice for the past 12-18 months.  Prior to that it was Firefox.  Prior to that, I don’t remember.  Oh, I sometimes use Opera.

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No surprise here.  From Forbes, “IBM Study: If You Don’t Have a Social CEO, You’re Going to be Less Competitive.”

I’m sure the same characteristic applies both to CPA firms and individually to accounting and finance professionals.  Hint:  a firm hiring an outsider to do all social media activity is not the same as having a social CEO.

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Unbelievable!  So says Francine McKenna.  So say I. From Bloomberg, “SEC Staff Ends Probe of Lehman Without Finding Fraud.”

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The final item in this week’s list comes from Caleb Newquist of Going Concern. Caleb’s blog is so well done, he was named to Accounting Today‘s list of most influential people in accounting.  In his story, “The Dixon, Illinois Fraud Is the Latest Example of Why Reasonable Assurance Is Bullshit,” Newquist is highly critical of today’s audit:

See? Audits can be great and fraud can still happen! And we wouldn’t be shocked! OR audits can suck and fraud can still happen! And we wouldn’t be shocked! There’s really nothing you can do. The good professor knows, as all auditors, that most people out there don’t have any idea of what an audit really is. Fine, an expectations gap. It’s a crock, but again, there’s really not much you can do about it. You an try to explain to your cousin in Dixon why it’s not the auditor’s job to detect frauds like this and (s)he would look at you, confused, and say, “Then what good is it?” AHA!

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Debit and credit – – David Albrecht

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Miscellany

Miscellany — interesting items that caught my eye during the week.

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Tom Selling (The Accounting Onion) writes about folk hero judge Jed Rakoff in, “Is the Judiciary about to Give the SEC a Backbone?” Some day I’m gonna be like Jed.

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Jim Peterson of re:Balance talks about how a relatively small judgment could potentially lead to the demise of a Big 4 firm in, “The Big Four Accounting Firms’ Financial Tipping Point — Time for a Fresh Look.”

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Francine McKenna (re:TheAuditors) discusses how Deloitte is pretty bad off, in “At Deloitte, More Pain Before Any Quality Gain.” What a mess over there.

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Lisa Du of the Embargo Zone blog writes about the information sifting habits of the New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin in, “Andrew Ross Sorkin Reveals What He Reads At The Gym And His Favorite Twitter Account.”

Sorkin and I are a lot alike.  He’s young, famous, rich, smart and good looking.  I’m not.

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Search engines give biased results to your queries?  You betcha.  Please watch this video filmed by Mark Schaefer of {Grow}.  Helen Brown talks about Google’s filter bubbles and how to minimize the effect.

Schaefer consistently publishes must read content at {Grow}. Subscribe today.

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Debit and credit — David Albrecht

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Tom Selling on Blogging

Tom Selling, author of The Accounting Onion

Tom Selling, author of the The Accounting Onion, has just published a new post, “Why Do Accounting Academics Blog Less Than Other Academics?” [October 12, 2011]

There is a very select list of bloggers who I view as must reads.  Tom is on that list.  He is both an excellent writer and an insightful commentator.  He also is a retired professor.

The organizational structure of his post is very interesting.  I can’t ever recall Tom sharing details of his speaking engagements, but he does today.  He starts his post by disclosing that he will be the keynote speaker to an accounting academic conference (Northeast Section, American Accounting Association) on Friday, October 28, 2011.  He has been asked to speak on IFRS issues, a subject he has blogged on dozens of times in recent years.  He’s the only blogger who has written more frequently on the subject than I.

In other words, the organizers of an accounting academic conference have decided to give top billing to a blogger.  Yet, accounting academics shun the act of blogging for themselves?  Why is that?

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ProfAlbrecht’s Most Influential

Last year, the Accounting Today published its list of the Top 100 Most Influential People in [American] Accounting on September 9, 2010.  I don’t know that it ever causes a stir, but we talked about it on AECM.  AECM is the e-mail listserv for accounting professors (with a membership of 750).  We wondered why no one from the academic side of accounting made the list (or ever makes the list, for that matter).  Upon closer examination, it turned out that Frank Ross (Howard U) made the list.  Bob Jensen contacted the editor and suggested the names of 20 academics for the 2011 list.

It’s an interesting question, I think, as to who should qualify to be on the list.  The accounting industry in the U.S. is so large, certainly over 1,000,000.  There are auditors, accountants, thought leaders, professors and students who are all directly part of it.  Then there are those who are indirectly related, such as companies/investors that benefit from using accounting information, businesses that serve the accounting industry, journalists, bloggers, government regulators and even tax collectors.  And what about those Europeans who have their IFRS, FRC and the EC?  And should the person’s contribution be for only the most recent 12 months, recent years, or a lifetime of activity?  And what about fraudsters who influence the accounting industry?

For that matter, what does it mean to be to have been influenced?  I look at the list and I wonder how the honorees influenced me?  I have heard of almost none of them.  Does being influential mean having had an impact?

I’m sure the editorial staff at Accounting Today has grappled with these questions over the years, time and time again.

A short while ago, I was asked who I would say are the most influential.  Here are the people in the accounting world who have influenced me the most in the past year.

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AECM Bloggers

AECM (Accounting Education Using Computers and Multimedia) is the listserv for accounting professors.  Membership fluctuates between 600-1,000.

Over the years, the e-mail discussions have been carried out between Bob Jensen, David Fordham, Paul Williams, Jagdish Gangolly, Amy Dunbar, Ed Scribner, Richard Campbell, myself and several others (my apologies for not mentioning any that want to be recognized).

How do these discussions get started?  It’s just like in any group.  Usually there’s a leader, who in this case is Bob Jensen (emeritus professor from Trinity University).  He’s always finding interesting articles out on the web (he’s a prolific surfer).  He’ll bring them to our attention, sometimes with his own comment.  Then, if the article strikes someone’s fancy, they’ll respond and pretty soon there’s a pretty good exchange going.  Discussions can get started in other ways, but not usually.

In recent years, Bob has been picking up on the commentary provided by bloggers.  Bob has passed along links to many posts written by some of the AECM members.

Bill McCarthy (Michigan State AIS guru) got the idea that a blogger panel discussion at the American Accounting Association annual meeting would be a good idea.  Five of us–Tom Selling, Ed Ketz, Francine McKenna, Joe Hoyle and myself–quickly jumped on board.  At the last minute, I’ve had to drop off due to a scheduling conflict.  It has been eating at me for weeks that I won’t be there on Wednesday, August 4, 2010 in San Francisco.

Here’s a preview of these bloggers and what they mean to AECM.

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What Is Accounting Pornography? REVISED.

[Ever get something wrong?  I made an error in the first version of this post (March 9, 2010).  I have fixed the error.  My apology to several fine people for implying they are accounting pornographers.  They aren’t.]

We get into some strange conversations over on AECM (Accounting Education Using Computers and Multimedia), the listserv for accounting professors.  One started out innocently enough, then took a exotic turn in the direction of wierd.

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They Are the Must Reads

Today I shine a bright light on some blog posts that are not only interesting, but also imaginative and compelling.   More than posts, they truly are articles in the fine tradition of business journalism.   They are examples of a powerful force in accounting news.

In a perfect world, everyone would have a focus on current events.   I recently wrote the following in “Questions From a Future Blogger” (Jan. 14, 2010).

Accounting and/or financial blogs are a big deal. As the world evolves and becomes faster paced, long-lived jobs will disappear. We accountants will adapt by piecing together a career from many project-length opportunities. I believe it will be a matter of professional life or death for accountants to get on top of evolving current events and stay there. For there to be life, we all need to make life-long learning a lifestyle …

How will we learn to think [new] ways and grow our thinking? Independent blogs commentaries like The Summa, and re: The Auditors, and TaxGirl. Blogs provide input to fuel critical thinking, seeds for creating thinking, and energy for practical thinking.

The purpose of today’s installment of The Summa is to bring a few of last week’s best and smartest to your attention.  By doing so, I hope to whet your appetite for the good stories to be written this coming week.  These are the must reads.

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Francine McKenna Scores Again!

Francine McKenna, author/editor of re: The Auditors and watchdog of the public accounting industry, has scored again with They Weren’t There: Auditors And The Financial Crisis.  Thus she continues to add to her single season scoring record.

U.S. auditing has never been very good.  The auditing of financial statements was voluntary in the U.S. until passage of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Exchange Act of 1934.  The Exchange Act also gave us the Securities and Exchange Commission.  Corporatations had a long history of disobeying accounting rules and publishing whatever.  Auditors were so unsuccessful in getting companies to properly report, that in the 1960s the U.S. explored junking the AICPA’s Accounting Prinicples Board as standard setter and turning to a newsly formed IASC.  Ultimately, it formed the FASB instead.

But companies had little concern for the rules because they could bully auditors.  And bully they did.  Auditor switching was pandemic by the 1970s, and the SEC passed regulation after regulation, hoping that shedding light on it would dry up the nefarious practice of marginalizing auditors.   By the early 90s, auditor switching slowed a bit, but the irrelevance of auditors didn’t change. Arthur Andersen (AA) was able to keep its clients, but it did so by playing ball.  After the 1990s bubble burst in the early 2000s, AA was driven out of business.

There was hope that SOX and its PCAOB would give auditors sufficient backbone to stand up to corporate bullies. There is anecdotal evidence that it worked in some industries.  But it is obvious that auditors were ghosts for banks and other financial statements.  Madoff–where where the auditors.  Banks–where were the auditors.   Frolicking in the wealth of their 404 audit fees.

So where where the auditors?  I’ll close with Francine telling us:

And so when I ask, “Where were the auditors?” and decry the fact that “they weren’t there,” it’s not due to some unreasonable, unfair focus on the most milquetoast of potential culprits.

No.

I bang this drum because the auditors should have been there, as a last stop, where the buck should have stopped, as gatekeepers, watchdogs, advocates, and the last bastion of standards and expected values shareholders can look to.

But they weren’t. (Empahsis added)

You go, girl.

Debit and credit – – David Albrecht

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