Warning: silliness ahead

Citation

Evans, S. (2008), "Warning: silliness ahead", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 21 No. 8. https://doi.org/10.1108/aaaj.2008.05921hae.001

Warning: silliness ahead

Article Type: Literature and insights From: Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Volume 21, Issue 8

In the USA recently, a woman had her husband’s ashes made into an egg timer so he could still “help” in the kitchen, and a man sued his doctor because he survived his disease longer than the doctor predicted (both tales are from Randy Cassingham’s True Stella Awards, www.stellaawards.com/ and This is True, www.thisistrue.com/ web sites). Somehow, discovering the more outlandish behaviour of others is comforting; I do not feel so strange, anymore … and, of course, you would never be so wacky either. The legal arena, in particular, is a complex one with professional reputations built on debate about meaning and intent, and the spirit of the law. There is constant testing of the boundaries of legislative power. It is interesting to see, also, just how much we expect to be minded by the law, in the sense that someone else should be looking after us, and taking responsibility for us. Or is it that so many people are cautious about their exposure to punitive legal action? A bit of both? It got me thinking.

In some articles and reviews these days, especially ones concerning books or movies, one is likely to encounter a spoiler alert. In effect, it means that the writer is warning the reader that if they proceed they may learn something they did not want to know just yet, such as that the main character of the story does not marry her sweetheart, or that the apparent baddie is not the true villain, after all. Whodunits are particularly susceptible to this sort of disclosure since so much of the suspense in a crime thriller hinges on a deferred revelation of the “facts”. When I happened to read such a spoiler warning recently, it made me think about accounting and other business reports and whether there is any scope for similar messages to readers.

Articles in the finance pages of newspapers tend to sum up their content in a headline: there is no attempt at withholding information for dramatic effect. The same seems to be true of accounting reports. It is basically because the expedient delivery of the opinion or news is what is highly valued, and because there is not usually much of a narrative thread, but what of some other features of such reports? What if you were greatly alarmed to a newspaper heading that revealed your long-term investment in seaweed futures had plummeted? Where could you turn for compensation because your heartbeat leapt madly as a result of this alarming news? Perhaps, each business article and report could carry an appropriate classification; GN for good news, for instance, though one person’s GN may be another’s bad. Still, there could be a warning notice (or an “advisory” as some of our US friends might say): “The contents of this report may be harmful to those with a heart condition”, or “Language advisory: this bulletin contains terms of a banking nature.” Would that be enough to protect both the poor bearer of bad news and the reader? Maybe we would have to expand the disclaimers normally found on published reports, letting readers know that they “should not rely on the information contained herein as a substitute for the advice of a qualified professional counsellor?” Should we each be accompanied by a qualified reader, a kind of mine-sweeper, before setting out into unchecked accounting reports? Should I stop right now before this idea actually takes-off? I think so.

There is no warning needed for the poem on the following pages, written by Graham Bowrey. It offers a situation in which a researcher at the beginning of his career endures the trials of critical feedback and personal doubt as he develops a paper for a conference. You may identify moments in it that are similar to events from your own history, or which your students are going through. Are you one of the “Researched?”

Next time, without advisory notices (I promise), I want to focus on the image of the accountant. Please continue to send me your contributions of prose or poems about accounting and the lives of people in the profession.

Steve EvansLiterary Editor