If you want to test a decision, ask yourself how this will look on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
We see an example of that test in today’s WSJ.
Front page.
Above the fold.
Big font covering 4 columns.
Here’s the headline:
Partner who Audited Herbalife and Skeechers Admits Giving Stock Tips to Friend
How’s that looking?
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Live example of the ‘Wall Street Journal’ test Read More »
One thing that jumps out from Amy Wilson’s story is that she takes full responsibility for her actions and the consequences.
There is none of that ‘well, you just don’t understand the pressure I was under’, or ‘I had to do it’, or our culture’s favorite ‘it’s mommy and daddy’s fault’.
Instead, what happened is fully her fault.
Consider her comments, which I extracted from the article. I feel free to quote her extensively since I have permission to reprint her article.
Look at the strong statement early in the article: …
“Think outside the box” is the phase used for several decades to encourage creative thinking.
Your outside-the-box thinking won’t make the limits of your staffing, dollar resources, and competitive challenges go away. Won’t do anything to expand the day beyond 24 hours either.
Justin Lathrop suggests we should Stop Thinking Outside the Box.
He pondered this tweet from Bobby Gruenewald at Catalyst Conference: …
The president and EVP of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank have three suggestions in the Wall Street Journal on How to Shrink the ‘Too-Big-To-Fail’ banks.
The problem
Only 0.2% of the US banks control 70% of the assets in the industry. Those few banks are two-big-to-fail, too-big-to-jail, and even too-big-to-prosecute. They get special treatment from the federal government, specifically an explicit guarantee they won’t be closed, which gives them lower borrowing costs which means they have a government-sponsored competitive advantage.
Why that matters
Here are a few consequences mentioned in the article: …
Suggestions from two Fed officials on reducing the dangers of Too-Big-To-Fail banksRead More »
Suggestions from two Fed officials on reducing the dangers of Too-Big-To-Fail banks Read More »
The severe changes we see around us are not going to stop. In fact the rate of change is going to increase. This will turn our lives as CPAs upside down just like it is going to drastically affect everyone else.
Think about this:
Don’t believe me? Try this one on for size. What happens, tax preparers, when someone releases a mobile app that files your taxes for you? That ain’t science fiction — it’s already happened. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine a day when CPAs won’t be doing tax returns at all. What happens then?
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The Office of State Auditor (OSA) has issued several official reports on the fabricated June 30, 2011 financial statements from the New Mexico Finance Authority. You can find two of the reports here and here.
This is the third in a series of posts on the reports. Previous posts are here and here.
Are lots of new procedures needed inside NMFA?
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Official report on New Mexico Finance Authority’s faked audit report – Part 3Read More »
Official report on New Mexico Finance Authority’s faked audit report – Part 3 Read More »
Here are three posts from my other blog, Outrun Change, looking at some implications of the rapid technology change taking place around us.
New technology is very cool, yet we need to ponder the implications:
3 posts on implications of technology change Read More »
Wegelin & Co is a Swiss bank that still does the fabled secret bank account thingie. Correction, make that past tense.
They used to do that.
They will be closing their doors after admitting to a felony in U.S. courts for helping Americans hide untaxed money.
I’m scratching my head about that ‘too big to fail’ cncept. More on that after some background.
The guilty plea
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Cooking Libor. Money laundering. What are the big banks doing?
Where are the regulators?
I’ve been scratching my head about some of the things banks have been doing lately, such as manipulating Libor. Other people have long been blaming banks and other financiers as the primary cause of the 2008 financial crisis. I am definitely not in that camp, but that’s a topic for another day and a dozen posts. HSBC is setting a $1.5 billion reserve for possible fines related to money laundering, since they apparently allowed $7 billion to move from Mexico to the US in violation of US law.
In the midst of that head scratching, many people are wondering, where were the regulators? In the Libor issue at least, they were well aware of what was going on.
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On the other hand, you cannot say banks are underregulatedRead More »
On the other hand, you cannot say banks are underregulated Read More »
I’ve realized for a long time that the complexity of everything is increasing. About the time you get your brain wrapped around that idea, consider that the rate of change will accelerate. Especially in accounting.
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(cross-post from my other blog, Nonprofit Update with minor changes.)
August 29th marked the 2 year blogiversary of my blog Nonprofit Update, which talks about nonprofit issues. I split off posts of interest to CPAs to this blog (Attestation Update) on October 14, 2010 and started Outrun Change on October 3, 2011. That site ponders the radical change around us and how we can stay ahead of it.
Nonprofit Update is my lead blog and I consider its start to be the birth of all three blogs. So, this is also the blogiversary of Attestation Update.
Thanks so much to those who have stopped by. I hope it has been a blessing to you. In case you can’t tell, I’ve been having a blast.
Most visitors and page views are coming in from internet search engines. That is really cool.
One of the best things in the last year is a growing number of people interested enough is my musings to follow by e-mail or Google RSS feed. Thanks very much for stopping by.
For the second year, I will report some stats for my sites. Here’s some stuff for those interested in such things. I will adjust this time around to an August 31 cutoff instead of the 29th. I’ll list stats for this year with the prior year in parentheses.
I’ll provide this data for two reasons. First, to let those who may be interested in blogging see what data looks like for a really small blogger. Second, since I am active on three sites with different topics, it provides a test bed to see what different sites may look like for different blogs from the same author.
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Jim Peterson explores the hesitancy our society has to carry out capital punishment on seriously misbehaving organizations. See his post, Of Crimes and Punishments – And Where Shall Justice Be Found?
He starts by pondering a question from a retired Arthur Andersen partner. The retired CPA wonders if the conviction of a mid-level manager in the Roman Catholic Church who hid abuse by priests will result in the indictment of senior-level executives or the church itself. The painful irony felt by the questioner is that Arthur Andersen was indicted and put out of business because of the bad behavior by one partner and his audit team in following the bad advice of their general counsel.
Essentially, the penalty for Arthur Andersen was capital punishment. Not so for the Catholic Church, Penn State football, or a long string of financial institutions in the news during recent years.
The question is when does our society carry out capital punishment against misbehaving organizations?
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Blogger ejwcpa at NFP Audit and Accounting challenges us accountants to help our organizations, clients, and staff in the field by being creative and developing helpful ideas while working inside the box. The post is be creative.
It’s not so tough to get wildly creative if there are no boundaries.
It’s much harder when there are federal tax laws, state tax laws, local zoning issues, unending streams of employment laws, accounting rules, reporting requirements, internal control issues, sales tax, regulators from dozens upon dozens of agencies watching us, and privacy rules that create steel-reinforced concrete walls to the box we work in.
Check out this comment:
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Be creative *inside* the box Read More »
I had a great time watching the LeaderCast. After going through my notes a couple of times, wish I’d sent the above tweets. I have a few more here and here.
Tweets I wish I’d sent from the 2012 Chick-FIl-A LeaderCast Read More »
(cross-posted from my other blog, Outrun Change.)
One of the main computers I use in my business failed Sunday night. For various reasons, I’ve held off on making several major upgrades, like jumping to Windows 7 and Office 2010.
So I shopped for new computer, have it in place, and as of yesterday have almost all the software running. Still have a couple of things to bring online, but they can wait for the moment.
Making the jump to a host of new technology tools all at once highlights the volume of change surrounding us.
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Nothing like recovering from a computer failure to show how much change is going onRead More »
Nothing like recovering from a computer failure to show how much change is going on Read More »