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The message behind
the scandals
The
past year hasn’t been terribly kind to the accounting
profession. From Enron to ImClone, accounting firms
have been front and center in the rash of corporate
scandals that have shaken investor confidence and tanked
stock markets. The biggest casualty yet is a major accounting
firm, Arthur Andersen, for shredding Enron’s books.
The
time, however, to truly show mettle is when the chips
are down as they are now. That’s why it is especially
important to keep in mind that there are some decent
and honest certified public accountants out there. They
will take the lead and guide their profession through
a needed period of rethinking and rebuilding.
Who
might they be? To find out, Virginia Business, along
with the Virginia Society of Certified Public Accounts,
is running the “Super CPA” report. We solicited
roughly 3,500 CPAs and received almost 300 responses.
From these, we picked 142 winners and profiled three
of them.
For
many years, CPAs have been lampooned as the dull guys
with the green visors. But as the scandals of the past
year have shown, it is the accountants whom businesses
rely upon to keep things honest. If anything, the woes
have underlined just how important CPAs are. When they
lose our trust, there is hell to pay.
—
Peter Galuszka
Return
to Virginia Business - November 2002
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