Accountants Don't Want to Stand Up and Be Counted

In 2008 I contrasted my profession of accounting with that of journalism:

CPA’s can’t get too close. Accountants’ principal duty is to the shareholders, lenders, and anyone else who reads the financial statements. There may come a time when auditors must disclose information that will damage the stock price. They have to make a choice between their client and their responsibility to the public. There is no question what they are expected to do.

Keeping their distance and independence is a must for CPA’s if they are to maintain trust and a reputation for integrity. Some accountants violated that trust during the go-go tech boom and Enron / Worldcom scandals. In order to save the profession, accountants had to reassert the guiding principles of independence and integrity. You don’t see auditors standing up and cheering at shareholders meetings.

...Today the profession of news journalism has lost its way. Opinion has leaked beyond the editorial pages to the rest of the newspaper. “Newsmen” publish unconfirmed rumors that support their stances and ignore inconvenient facts that don’t. Outside the office, they openly display their political preferences; there’s no attempt to maintain even the appearance of objectivity.

Yet when Obama emerged from a curtain on stage, the audience of more than 2,000 [minority journalists] bolted to its feet, cheered and whistled. His remarks drew repeated applause throughout the 30-minute broadcast, which CNN and Time Inc. sponsored.

12 years later accountancy by and large has held steady to the principles of independence, objectivity, and the appearance of objectivity, while journalism has only gone downhill.

But back to accountants: I wonder if there's any connection between their ethics and political preferences?

Headline: Accountants favor Trump in election by large margin

In a survey of over 400 accountants from across the country conducted by Arizent, the publisher of Accounting Today, 55 percent of respondents said that they plan to vote for the incumbent president, against 38 percent who plan to vote for his rival, Democrat Joe Biden....

"If we end up with a Democratic presidency and Democratic control of both houses, then the 2017 tax act will probably be vitiated and as much as the market increased due to the lower corporate rates, it will fall," predicted one respondent. "Ironically, raising the corporate rate will almost certainly cause less government revenue due to multinational business fleeing our shores, and less capital gains income tax income."

...Respondents were roughly evenly divided about the potential impact of lots of mail-in ballots, with 44 percent saying they would be not very or not at all confident in the results of such an election, and 39 percent saying they would be very or extremely confident in them.

...When asked if they thought social media platforms and the media business were doing enough to stop the spread of misinformation and to help protect the integrity of the election, the vast majority of responding accountants said they weren't — but their direct responses suggest that they don't want media to do more, so much as to do it very, very differently.

"It is not the job of social media companies to regulate political speech," said one accountant. "It is, however, the job of our news outlets to report news without political bias and without opinion. Our country is being fed distorted news every day!"

"Social media should stay out of deciding on reliability of information," added another. "The mainstream media is so biased, their reporting is largely ignored."

Bucking the stereotype, accountants are white-collar and college-educated, yet prefer Republican policies. I suspect the reasons are:

1) In college and later at work accountants are in an environment where there is "objective truth" to be discovered. There are different opinions about what the numbers can mean, but Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and Generally Accepted Auditing Standards keep the differences to a defined range. There is little room for "your truth," "my truth", and diverse perspectives when it comes to preparing financial statements and tax returns;

2) Accountancy is not glamorous, and most practitioners do not seek publicity or influence. Consequently it has escaped the left's notice as an institution to be captured, that is, to be made "woke".

Flying under the radar is how accountants like it; let them do their jobs and don't discuss matters that have nothing to do with work. It's no surprise that the political party that is more likely to leave them alone gets accountants' vote.

© 2020 Stephen Yuen