Visible ink: the mark of the future accountant?

Citation

Evans, S. (2012), "Visible ink: the mark of the future accountant?", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 25 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/aaaj.2012.05925gaa.001

Visible ink: the mark of the future accountant?

Article Type: Literature and insights From: Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Volume 25, Issue 7

Ink matters. We make our mark with it, perhaps less so with the advent of computerised accounts, but it still matters. It is evidence of the process of auditing and a kind of reassurance that the formalities of outside review have been conducted.

I remember how, as a fledgling external auditor, I was handed a green ink biro pen for use on clients’ records (once we would have written “Biro”, in honour of its creator, László Bíró). I also learnt that purple ink was for internal audit use. Things may have changed but the lesson remains, along with a vivid impression of the associated colours.

I was thinking again about ink recently when I encountered a book on tattoos worn by scientists (Zimmer, 2011). One of the examples was a geology student’s extensive tattoo of a cross-section of a mountain chain that spread across his left shoulder blade. Such commitment!

It reminded me that when I had moved to another CPA practice several years after the first one, a partner and I were working on some company minutes. He rolled up his shirtsleeves, revealing a large tattoo of a dragon on one arm and a hula girl on the other. This fellow drove a sports car and had a background that even he admitted was unconventional for an accounting firm; something to do with a stint in the navy and then belonging to a bikie gang. Whatever his past, he seemed to have settled comfortably into his profession. Mind you, his sleeves were always neatly buttoned at the wrist whenever he was around clients.

There is plenty of debate over how to deal with applying for a job when one has a tattoo or two (Reddit, 2012). Perhaps best to avoid getting the flame tattoo up your neck and across your cheek, for example, unless you’re in the crash repair business or similar – but less obvious skin ink is still an issue. Body art is more common these days, and accountants are no exception. You can Google “accounting tattoos”, however, for confirmation that the argument continues over whether tattoos and accounting are seen as a good match.

According to Accounting Web (December 29 2010), workers under 30 will constitute “one third of the country’s [US] workforce by 2014 and, of that segment, 12 percent have a tattoo and 25 percent have a body part pierced other than earlobes”. I wondered whether similar ratios apply to those working in accounting and auditing as other occupations.

The article went on:

Times are changing and within a few years, the buttoned-down CPA image might have to move over. The day is coming, but that day is not today. Body art exists even in the most staid CPA firms. It lurks beneath the Brooks Brothers suits and dresses. But you aren’t likely to see much of it for a while.

Although interest in tattoos is drifting back somewhat as the number of piercings rise, 12 per cent of younger workers with tattoos is a significant proportion. Like clothes, tattoos say something about us as individuals. Showing off a tattoo is a statement of style, a mini-performance, and while it is still largely one saved for times outside work, that is changing.

With a plethora of TV shows these days about tattoos, however - and just about any celebrity you can mention having at least one somewhere, if not the full sleeve treatment – I wondered what kind of tattoos accountants would wear. A US website has a query from an accounting student over whether to get a tattoo of the Internal Revenue Service eagle logo or one that says “Assets=Liabilities + Owner’s Equity” (Cody, 2011). A difficult choice, since either would look quite good, especially in a romantic setting.

What kind of accounting tattoo you would like to see, on someone else if not yourself? It might be a calculator, or a dollar sign. Perhaps a set of scales, or a barcode. A T-chart down your spine? Or eschew the financial accounting aspects entirely (as would befit this journal) and have a statement of environmental accountability inscribed in beautiful cursive script across your collarbones?

The deeper you go, the stranger this could get. If one were covered in special tattoos to assist passing an accounting exam, would that be regarded as cheating? It’s a thorny issue and I look forward to your reports on this after you have tried it, especially if the tattoos are so extensive as to require sitting the exam semi-naked. Think of the ethical dilemmas. If there were the risk that students nearby would read the answers off your skin, would that be considered cheating on their part? Could you have an open shirt exam? If you did it in henna, so that it would wear off, would that be a different class of contravention compared with having a permanent tattoo?

In this issue, Vida Botes alludes to another set of colours at work with her classification of accountants that is offered in the mode of a Shakespearean soliloquy. Dianne Dean brings us another of her insightful stories. This one, on “selling the farm”, faces the issue of the future of Australian farming in the microeconomic context of families on the land, right where people live. Neither of them mentions tattoos; maybe that literary contribution to these pages is on its way.

I always welcome your email correspondence: steve.evans@flinders.edu.au

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ) welcomes submissions of both research papers and creative writing. Creative writing in the form of poetry and short prose pieces is edited for the Literature and Insights Section only and does not undergo the refereeing procedures required for all research papers published in the main body of AAAJ.

Author guidelines for contributions to this section of the journal can be found at: www.emeraldinsight.com/products/journals/author_guidelines.htm?id=aaaj

Steve Evans

Literary Editor