Philosophical Underpinnings

(Examiner image)

Out of curiosity more than necessity your humble retired accountant has been sampling online Continuing Professional Education courses that CPA's take to maintain their active status.

It's a hard slog, with tax modules grinding through Internal Revenue Code sections and accounting training covering the recently recompiled accounting bible, the Accounting Standards Codification. Right, I could barely keep my eyes open writing the previous sentence.

If you can handle the tedium, you can find nuggets of substance, such as:

An entity should aggregate or disaggregate disclosures so that useful information is not obscured by either the inclusion of a large amount of insignificant detail or the aggregation of items that have substantially different characteristics.

Don't overwhelm the reader with "insignificant detail", yet don't combine dissimilar information if it will mask meaning. Holding to these principles requires deep understanding of the material by the writer and an ethical obligation both to present and not to omit significant information.

Long ago I seriously considered a career in journalism, and I thought its aspiration to report the truth without fear or favor was similar to accountancy.

Both professions fall short of that ideal, of course, but IMHO most journalists no longer view truth as their ideal anyway; rather, they seek to weave a narrative to influence readers toward a particular point of view.

Accountancy harks back to an Enlightenment perspective: present all information that will be important to rational, intelligent readers of financial statements (e.g., lenders, investors, employees, customers, etc.) in making their decisions. Despite the mockery they must endure, accountants can take pride in the philosophical underpinnings of their profession.

Now, back to the dusty ledgers and green eyeshades....